Page:Discovery Of Living Buddhism In Bengal.djvu/6

 ''DISCOVERY OF LIVING BUDDHISM IN BENGAL''

Eastern India was great stronghold of Buddhism. It had its in Eastern India, it developed in Eastern India, and. it lingered longest in Eastern India. The Bhiksus of Eastern India carried the religion of Çákya Simha to Ceylon, to China, to the Eastern Archipelago, to Farther India, to Tibet, and even to Mongolia. The best Buddhist works were mostly written in Eastern India, and Eastern India contained the four great places of pilgrimage for the whole of the Buddhist world. Yet it is confidently asserted that for the last three or four centuries there has not been even a single votary of that religion in the whole of the Provinces of Bengal, Bihár, and Uḍisyá, nay, even in the whole of India. All the great places of pilgrimage are in shapeless ruins. Buddhist religious terms have disappeared from the language of the people. Not a single Buddhist MS. has been found even after a careful search of thirty years. The name of Buddha is, of course, known but as the ninth incarnation Visnu. The names of his followers and his doctrines are absolutely unknown. The of his doctrine that is known, is known from the works, now little studied, of Nai- yáyikas who wrote treatises to refute them. In Eastern India itself the previous existence of Buddhism had to be discovered by the antiquarian zeal of European Orientalists.

It is said that the expulsion of Buddhism was complete, But can this ever be a fact that the religion which counted its votaries by the million should altogether disappear from the soil of its birth and the scenes of its greatest power and influence? One is not disposed to believe such a thing. And the