The early Tamils who wrote the Sangam poems, Pathupaattu / Ettuthokai were mostly nature worshippers or local deity worshippers. Only some of the names are appropriated by Brahminism at a later stage. Even then, there are scanty references to gods, religious rituals in these poems. This was followed by Post-Sangam period where the five major epics of Tamil literature was written. What is interesting is, none of them are Hindu literature. All five are Buddhist or Jainist, includes tales of people converting from Brahminism to Buddhism / Jainism. Many of the moral literature of Tamil such as Naladiyar, Inna narpathu, almost all of pathinenkeezhkanakku corpus contain logic and lessons from Buddhism and Jainism. While this is not a clear evidence that majority of the Tamils were Buddhist / Jains at that time, at least we can be sure that the religious discourse was rich in dialogue between these two religions. Later we hear tales where disputes between Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Buddhism and Jainism led to people being impaled and murdered and burnt in public sight. So with all this happening, how come Hinduism became a prominent religion after 7-8th century with almost all tamil literature revolves around religious poems from then till around 15-16th century.. like Alwars Divyaprabandam, Thirumurai, Thiruvasagam etc. The main role was with Chola empire. The Cholas espoused Brahminism and built huge temples, gave lands to priests and favored Brahmins. They did so not because the Cholas were religious but because they burdened the people with heavy taxes. Brahminism, with all its rituals and caste system oppressed people and led them not to revolt against a king. Whereas Buddhism with focus on total renunciation, embracing suffering and liberation of soul would not help corporates, familial system, nationalism or loyalty towards king. Hence, it is natural Buddhism got weeded out, and same reason why Hindutva is a powerful tool for BJP.
Not sure if this theory is true. How does it matter now... Country needs to move ahead taking all together. Present state of affairs of marginalising minorities, will break the country
Kushans are Indo-Aryans, which means they were Caucasian tribes, NOT CHINESE and NOT TURKIC tribes. This has been even genetically proven., Basic GOOGLE search will help. Chinese have historical records of their conquest of Xinjiang (note this is 250BC, turkic tribes started migration into Xinjiang when Mongol tribes started rising up)
This smacks of leftist propoganda to show Muslims never converted anyone and RSS is BAD. Just ask ur community members, there are Chitpavan Muslims who will tell you story of how their ancestors had to forcibly convert in Konkan to save their life's.
May be next articles of yours will be Taliban is doing no wrong, it's people voluntarily doing it to themselves as they were Buddhist one time.
गौतम बुद्ध जन्म से लेकर मृत्यु तक सनातनी थे। उन्होंने कभी नही कहा कि में एक नया बुद्ध धर्म स्थापित कर रहा हु। उन्होंने कहा कि में सब को धर्म का ज्ञान दूंगा।
Not sure if this theory is true. How does it matter now... Country needs to move ahead taking all together. Present state of affairs of marginalising minorities, will break the country
Thank you. This is a slap on the faces of those who use revisionism to demonize, radicalize, and divide peoples, while hiding their own histories of colonial barbarism.
The battle for historical narratives looks like it started with the arrival of colonial looters who were only looking to fund (and repay) their (usually) holy financiers. They have played to the righteous gallery for centuries. The choices they face today are to either declare themselves as several centuries of several types of evil. Or to perpetuate the 15th century purported drive against paganism, which was just a cover for looting gold and other wealth to fund mercenary city-state armies in Europe.
All peoples at the receiving end of these pseudo-religious colonial bullies for centuries should expect the narrative battle to continue for centuries more and prepare their trade routes and militaries accordingly. It isnt over till they start teaching their children respect for those their ancestors killed in the name of religion for money and land.
Please Unite and don't divide India on basis of caste. Many unstabilize countries like Pakistan(countless terrorist organisation,fake hospitality,double game ),Afghanistan(Hooligans killing anybody on street),Orthodox China(debt game:Loas) and Myanmar(Rohingya).Only India is safer place(Afghanistan refugees ).Not easy to run government with 130 crore of population. Hence support India.India has given me respect by education,identity,job.Thank God, I am not in place of refugee(Syrian,Afghani,Somali,Sudan,Morocco,Libya.Rohingya,Chinese Xingiang,North Korean,South American drug mafia etc etc etc)
In this long narrative there is very less about the topic for which this essay was meant to be.Even if your narrative is taken to be true, it answers only the wipe of Buddhism in Sindh.What about the rest of India ? Madam, no one gives his faith so voluntarily as you say only for trade reasons & that's too in the old days when bigotry was so common.Do you mean to say the lands belonged to only Hindus ? Do you mean to say that Budfhists were land less? If some Buddhists had lands, then they would not have converted & so an appreciable population must have remained Buddhists!!!
So, Madam , in short you have utterly failed in discovering how Buddhism was wiped out in India ? I know the exact reason & want to tell you in short bcz I don't believe in writing unnecessary long essays.Please go through my narrative as below.
Buddhism was the first & the greatest attempt to rationalize religion totally devoid of " blind belief" element.The rational element was so strong that it certainly had the capacity of sweeping naive Hinduism altogether & it succeeded in doing so.So such a rational religion will not vigorously & voluntarily give in to a religion where " blind faith" is the most vital content as in Islam.So the "force" element must have been very important in their conversion to Islam,but this conversion cannot lead to wiping out of a Great Religion all together!!!
The real reason for the wiping out of Buddhism from the face of India was the Philosophical Revolution in both Buddhism & Hinduism from 2nd to 8th century AD. Nagarjuna in Buddhism & Adi Shankeracgarya in Hinduism interpretated their respective religions in such a GRAND WAY that after passing away of Shankera ,it was concluded that NAGARJUNISM = SHAKERISM which only meant in the last analysis BUDDHISM= HINDUISM.
So, now Buddhism lost its reason d'etre to remain a separate religion in India & slowly got assimilated into Hinduism.This is the real reason of vanishing of Buddhism in India.Thnx.
Can you answer me! Then why does the state or country which had been in very few time under islamic ruler witness very minscule number of moslems? Like North Eastern India and Rajasthan. How come people in the south (kerela) who were devout hindu started eating cow? and not any other place?
Extremely interesting article. While a lot of it makes sense, to label conversion of Buddhists to Islam as a peaceful transition would be far too simplistic. A religion that believes in spreading by conversion would surely involve violence and force. Muslim rulers destroyed Hindu temples and disfigured idols is a reality as seen in countless temples even today.
No history hidden here. It's a well known fact and Buddhist traders facilitated the Arab invasion as well as Arab rule. Obviously, they also later converted to Islam for the same reasons. It's recorded history, specially that Buddhists helped the Arab invaders & were instrumental in the capture of Sind
This article is first rate BS. Buddhists meekly converted to Islam. Wah.Islam is known only for for ed conversions. Is it not logical that they were killed. The Islamists are known for that everywhere but for these apologist like Ms Sonali. She may be another Islamists in garb of Hindu the perfect Jaichand.
Aryans? A theory invented by Germans amd Brits and these apologists qoute it. Wah. Kudos to theories. Even the Brits and Germans could not proceed beyond calling it as a theory and theory it is. So apologist Sonali take a walk or can you smell the coffee of Hinduism gaining acceptance in West and most in US. Probably that is worrying for these apologists.
So Ms Sonali Jaichand Buddhists are missing because they were mass murdered in cold blood and no invader will tell you. I can smell blood of Buddhists in Islamic hands and in Jaichands while you should be smelling coffee.
Good hypothesis. I also think that Buddhism/Jainism in India was more a monastic religion rather than a religion of the masses. The monasteries(Viharas) depended very much on official patronage and when the patronage disappeared following the invasions or when the ruler's whims changed, they died out. The people surrounding the monastery who could be nominally Buddhists were more like followers of specific teachers and masters in the monastery. I doubt the lay people had strong convictions for any religion in this period. The population simply followed the sufi teachers who replaced the Buddhist teachers and hence became nominally Muslim. All this nominal association with a religion changed with the strong identity politics starting from 19th century. The British census which for the first time ever insisted on people choose their religion as "either/or" and census takers classified entire communities/tribes as Hindu/Muslim at a time when these tribes themselves were confused on what their identity was. This is the key reason why people of the subcontinent strongly identify with a specific religion today. Without politics and census, we would have been nominally Hindu/Muslim/Jain/Buddhists/Christians/Sikhs/?? with overlapping individual belief systems.
The early Tamils who wrote the Sangam poems, Pathupaattu / Ettuthokai were mostly nature worshippers or local deity worshippers. Only some of the names are appropriated by Brahminism at a later stage. Even then, there are scanty references to gods, religious rituals in these poems. This was followed by Post-Sangam period where the five major epics of Tamil literature was written. What is interesting is, none of them are Hindu literature. All five are Buddhist or Jainist, includes tales of people converting from Brahminism to Buddhism / Jainism. Many of the moral literature of Tamil such as Naladiyar, Inna narpathu, almost all of pathinenkeezhkanakku corpus contain logic and lessons from Buddhism and Jainism. While this is not a clear evidence that majority of the Tamils were Buddhist / Jains at that time, at least we can be sure that the religious discourse was rich in dialogue between these two religions. Later we hear tales where disputes between Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Buddhism and Jainism led to people being impaled and murdered and burnt in public sight. So with all this happening, how come Hinduism became a prominent religion after 7-8th century with almost all tamil literature revolves around religious poems from then till around 15-16th century.. like Alwars Divyaprabandam, Thirumurai, Thiruvasagam etc. The main role was with Chola empire. The Cholas espoused Brahminism and built huge temples, gave lands to priests and favored Brahmins. They did so not because the Cholas were religious but because they burdened the people with heavy taxes. Brahminism, with all its rituals and caste system oppressed people and led them not to revolt against a king. Whereas Buddhism with focus on total renunciation, embracing suffering and liberation of soul would not help corporates, familial system, nationalism or loyalty towards king. Hence, it is natural Buddhism got weeded out, and same reason why Hindutva is a powerful tool for BJP.
Not sure if this theory is true. How does it matter now... Country needs to move ahead taking all together. Present state of affairs of marginalising minorities, will break the country
Kushans are Indo-Aryans, which means they were Caucasian tribes, NOT CHINESE and NOT TURKIC tribes. This has been even genetically proven., Basic GOOGLE search will help. Chinese have historical records of their conquest of Xinjiang (note this is 250BC, turkic tribes started migration into Xinjiang when Mongol tribes started rising up)
This smacks of leftist propoganda to show Muslims never converted anyone and RSS is BAD. Just ask ur community members, there are Chitpavan Muslims who will tell you story of how their ancestors had to forcibly convert in Konkan to save their life's.
May be next articles of yours will be Taliban is doing no wrong, it's people voluntarily doing it to themselves as they were Buddhist one time.
गौतम बुद्ध जन्म से लेकर मृत्यु तक सनातनी थे। उन्होंने कभी नही कहा कि में एक नया बुद्ध धर्म स्थापित कर रहा हु। उन्होंने कहा कि में सब को धर्म का ज्ञान दूंगा।
Not sure if this theory is true. How does it matter now... Country needs to move ahead taking all together. Present state of affairs of marginalising minorities, will break the country
Thank you. This is a slap on the faces of those who use revisionism to demonize, radicalize, and divide peoples, while hiding their own histories of colonial barbarism.
The battle for historical narratives looks like it started with the arrival of colonial looters who were only looking to fund (and repay) their (usually) holy financiers. They have played to the righteous gallery for centuries. The choices they face today are to either declare themselves as several centuries of several types of evil. Or to perpetuate the 15th century purported drive against paganism, which was just a cover for looting gold and other wealth to fund mercenary city-state armies in Europe.
All peoples at the receiving end of these pseudo-religious colonial bullies for centuries should expect the narrative battle to continue for centuries more and prepare their trade routes and militaries accordingly. It isnt over till they start teaching their children respect for those their ancestors killed in the name of religion for money and land.
Please Unite and don't divide India on basis of caste. Many unstabilize countries like Pakistan(countless terrorist organisation,fake hospitality,double game ),Afghanistan(Hooligans killing anybody on street),Orthodox China(debt game:Loas) and Myanmar(Rohingya).Only India is safer place(Afghanistan refugees ).Not easy to run government with 130 crore of population. Hence support India.India has given me respect by education,identity,job.Thank God, I am not in place of refugee(Syrian,Afghani,Somali,Sudan,Morocco,Libya.Rohingya,Chinese Xingiang,North Korean,South American drug mafia etc etc etc)
Most interesting
Sonalijee.
Yours is really Jabberwocky.
In this long narrative there is very less about the topic for which this essay was meant to be.Even if your narrative is taken to be true, it answers only the wipe of Buddhism in Sindh.What about the rest of India ? Madam, no one gives his faith so voluntarily as you say only for trade reasons & that's too in the old days when bigotry was so common.Do you mean to say the lands belonged to only Hindus ? Do you mean to say that Budfhists were land less? If some Buddhists had lands, then they would not have converted & so an appreciable population must have remained Buddhists!!!
So, Madam , in short you have utterly failed in discovering how Buddhism was wiped out in India ? I know the exact reason & want to tell you in short bcz I don't believe in writing unnecessary long essays.Please go through my narrative as below.
Buddhism was the first & the greatest attempt to rationalize religion totally devoid of " blind belief" element.The rational element was so strong that it certainly had the capacity of sweeping naive Hinduism altogether & it succeeded in doing so.So such a rational religion will not vigorously & voluntarily give in to a religion where " blind faith" is the most vital content as in Islam.So the "force" element must have been very important in their conversion to Islam,but this conversion cannot lead to wiping out of a Great Religion all together!!!
The real reason for the wiping out of Buddhism from the face of India was the Philosophical Revolution in both Buddhism & Hinduism from 2nd to 8th century AD. Nagarjuna in Buddhism & Adi Shankeracgarya in Hinduism interpretated their respective religions in such a GRAND WAY that after passing away of Shankera ,it was concluded that NAGARJUNISM = SHAKERISM which only meant in the last analysis BUDDHISM= HINDUISM.
So, now Buddhism lost its reason d'etre to remain a separate religion in India & slowly got assimilated into Hinduism.This is the real reason of vanishing of Buddhism in India.Thnx.
Can you answer me! Then why does the state or country which had been in very few time under islamic ruler witness very minscule number of moslems? Like North Eastern India and Rajasthan. How come people in the south (kerela) who were devout hindu started eating cow? and not any other place?
Extremely interesting article. While a lot of it makes sense, to label conversion of Buddhists to Islam as a peaceful transition would be far too simplistic. A religion that believes in spreading by conversion would surely involve violence and force. Muslim rulers destroyed Hindu temples and disfigured idols is a reality as seen in countless temples even today.
No history hidden here. It's a well known fact and Buddhist traders facilitated the Arab invasion as well as Arab rule. Obviously, they also later converted to Islam for the same reasons. It's recorded history, specially that Buddhists helped the Arab invaders & were instrumental in the capture of Sind
This article is first rate BS. Buddhists meekly converted to Islam. Wah.Islam is known only for for ed conversions. Is it not logical that they were killed. The Islamists are known for that everywhere but for these apologist like Ms Sonali. She may be another Islamists in garb of Hindu the perfect Jaichand.
Aryans? A theory invented by Germans amd Brits and these apologists qoute it. Wah. Kudos to theories. Even the Brits and Germans could not proceed beyond calling it as a theory and theory it is. So apologist Sonali take a walk or can you smell the coffee of Hinduism gaining acceptance in West and most in US. Probably that is worrying for these apologists.
So Ms Sonali Jaichand Buddhists are missing because they were mass murdered in cold blood and no invader will tell you. I can smell blood of Buddhists in Islamic hands and in Jaichands while you should be smelling coffee.
Good hypothesis. I also think that Buddhism/Jainism in India was more a monastic religion rather than a religion of the masses. The monasteries(Viharas) depended very much on official patronage and when the patronage disappeared following the invasions or when the ruler's whims changed, they died out. The people surrounding the monastery who could be nominally Buddhists were more like followers of specific teachers and masters in the monastery. I doubt the lay people had strong convictions for any religion in this period. The population simply followed the sufi teachers who replaced the Buddhist teachers and hence became nominally Muslim. All this nominal association with a religion changed with the strong identity politics starting from 19th century. The British census which for the first time ever insisted on people choose their religion as "either/or" and census takers classified entire communities/tribes as Hindu/Muslim at a time when these tribes themselves were confused on what their identity was. This is the key reason why people of the subcontinent strongly identify with a specific religion today. Without politics and census, we would have been nominally Hindu/Muslim/Jain/Buddhists/Christians/Sikhs/?? with overlapping individual belief systems.
Competing historical narratives add to our understanding of the past. This one does so, too. Proper references would have made it credible.
Why did then the parsis flew away from their own land , if Buddhist can accept why not them then ?