Search for Origins of Mahayana Buddhism

Dalitistan, makes a lot of unprovable claims. I would not rely on what's produced there.

actually when i am not deliberately antagonising people like laddu --cos its fun!--i have a lot of respect for buddha as a person and admire his life but i think his philosophy doesn't explain much about the world...

Today neither we nor most Japanese can readily imagine just how much the Shinto we know has changed from what it used to be. Here is a brief summary of some of those changes. In 1868 the new Meiji regime ordered local gods to be dissociated from Buddhism. In other words, all worship halls for gods were stripped of their Buddhist names, Buddhist powers, Buddhist religious rituals, Buddhist art, and Buddhist symbols, and given new "Japanese" identities. Thousands and thousands of Buddhist temples were destroyed to create what subsequently became known as "Shinto." In 1873 the Meiji government outlawed many so-called "superstitious" religious rites performed at the newly independent Shinto institutions. In 1882 the government ruled that Shinto is NOT a religion but a civic duty. They defined Shinto shrines as "civic centers," the rituals of which bond together royal subjects and government officials with the mythological ancestors of the royal family. They forbad Shinto celebrants from performing private religious rituals. In 1906 the government initiated a nationwide program of shrine "mergers," a euphemism for the elimination of shrines that were too small for government supervision. Nationwide more than 52% of Shinto shrines were destroyed, thereby depriving rural villagers of local worship halls. In 1945 the occupation GHQ forbid Shinto shrines from exercising any government-controlled civic role. Deprived of their nationalist and ideological purpose, most shrines were forced to adopt new identities as primitive nature cults, dependent on private individuals. This is the reason why in 1947 the famed folklorist and scholar Orikuchi Shinobu (1887-1953) wrote that Shinto as a "religion" is only 2 years old. In short, first the Buddhist roles were stripped away, then the religious roles were stripped away, then the local roles were stripped away, and finally the national role was stripped away. What was left? Thus, use of the word "shinto" without historical qualifications begs the question: Which Shinto?

_____
The first person to attract widespread attention to the problems with the label "shinto" was a Japanese scholar named Kuroda Toshio (1926-1993), whose work has revolutionized the way that scholars examine medieval Japan. For a brief English-language summary of his view of Shinto, see:

Kuroda, Toshio. 1981: "Shinto in the History of Japanese Religion." Translated by James C. Dobbins and Suzanne Gay. Journal of Japanese Studies 7: 1-21.

Re: # 147
Nationalism can be just as destructive, in japan thousands of Buddhist temples were destroyed by nationalists because it was perceived to be a foreign religion

Dalistan usually have stuff from Ambredkar .


and Ambredkar definately is Baised....right..??

LOL


who said ' khiljee ' was a Brahmin.


the point is, it was destroyed 'TWiCE' ...before this Khiljee thing , who was a Muslim Invader did that....

note not once, but twice.....

Dear Mahfari,

How do you relate holocaust with godhra and nandigram? And secondly, I think we were debating about the tendency of certain groups of people to destroy the religious and cultural places of others. I was trying to inform you that there is enough evidence to show that abrahamic faiths have quashed and estroyed other cultures' temples or learning centers. Don't take it personally but even the portugese did the same in Elephanta caves. This issue is deeply seated in the desert cultures/religions.

Also ,I was trying to point out that most pakistanis falsely assume that objective historical records were made by al beruni and other europeans.
History remains objective as long as it does not concern the author's nationality or religion. Work done by others and translated into one's own language does not automatically bestow a new authorship.

Adios

[RE:#143 Posted by aquaris on December 6, 2007 6:15:20 am]

Right and you don't seem to understand. Selective quotes from Goyal etc on a Pakistani site don't exactly add up to evidence.
Dalistan.org is also undoubtedly unbiased.
You are so smart.
I thought you were HP but I don't think so, he's got brains.

Now where did I mention Muslim in my post?

Aquaris,

(the last time it was destroyed by the Khiljee whatever )

Khiljee sounds like a good Brahmin name.

Regards

and by the way Nalanda was destroyed three times..

the last time it was destroyed by the Khiljee ....whatever

#142

right

LOL

that why I posted the complete article...not any selective portion from it..

Also of interest is the Bibliography of the article
Let me repost that bibliography to quote the exact sources.


Bibliography.

Ahir, D.C. "Buddha Gaya Through the Ages", Bibliotheca Indo-Buddhica Series No.
134, Delhi 1994.

Goyal, S.R., "A History of Indian Buddhism", Meerut 1987. Jayaswal, "An
imperial history of India", Lahore 1934.

Joshi, L.M. "Studies in the Buddhistic Culture of India", New Delhi 1967.

Marshall, John, "Taxila" Cambridge University Press 1951.

Prakash, Buddh, "Aspects of Indian History and Civilisation", Agra 1965.

Taranatha, "History of Buddhism in India", Indian Institute of Advanced
Studies, Simla, 1977.

Vaidya, P.L. ed. "Divyavadana", Darbhanga 1959.

Watters, T. "On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India," ed. by T. W. Rhys Davids and
S.W. Bushel, London 1904, 1905.

no Muslim in it, right...??

[Re:#139 Aquaris]

I love selective quotings from a web site that has this url
http://www.geocities.com/pak_history/buddhists.html.

Ain't it wonderful how unbiased the world is.

I forgot to add Kautilya existed a while before the term muslim as related to a religion landed up.

[ RE:#90 Posted by tahmed32 on December 5, 2007 10:38:31 am
mahfari: btw, John Keay in his excellent book A History of India, supports your thesis that it was with the arrival of muslims that we start getting significant written records of indian politics, economy and society. thus, e.g., much of the earlier history of the deccan is gleaned from pottery tablets, stone pillars etc. which were sometimes meaningful as in case of Asoka, but often merely told tall tales about the king that are of no scientific value. he gives the example of one tablet that credits the king as having a light coming out of his big :-).]

Tahmed32 you must really delve deeper than quote selectively. There are written records in India dating back from BCE on philosophy , aesthetics, mathematics, society. What does your book talk about the Lokyata traditions (maligned by both Buddhist and Hindu Vedantists), Samkhya philosophers, people like Abhinavagupta and his treatises on hasya etc.
Or could it be that a lot of those libraries were destroyed in North India for other reasons? Do take your head out of the sand once in a while.

I querried

" who destroyed Nalanda " and
came up with this one..





Brahmanist assault on Buddhists

The massacres and oppression perpetrated by Brahmanist zealots out of religious
hatred for Buddhists in ancient times are a matter of the historical record.
Yet, for reasons best known to themselves, Brahmanists have been trying to
conceal the hideous, blood-stained record of Hinduism.

The truth must be told.

As the revival of Brahmanical Hinduism progressed, atrocities against Buddhists
increased both in strength and in number. As Goyal [394] notes, "According to
many scholars hostility of the Brahmanas was one of the major causes of the
decline of Buddhism in India." The hatred poured out against Buddhists in Hindu
scriptures offers ample evidence of this. To quote Goyal again [394-5]:

"Yajnavalkya (I. 271-72) declares that the very sight of a Buddhist monk, even
in dreams, is inauspicious. The Brhannaradiya-purana lays it down as a
principal sin for a Brahmana to enter the house of a Buddhist even in times of
great peril. The drama Mrchchhakatika shows that in Ujjain the Buddhist monks
were despised and their sight was considered inauspicious. The Vishnupurana
(XVIII 13-18) also regards the Buddha as Mayamoha who appeared in the world to
delude the demons. Kumarila is said to have instigated King Sudhanvan of Ujjain
to exterminate the Buddhists. ... The Kerala- utpatti describes how he
exterminated the Buddhists from Kerala."

Earlier Post 7th Century Assualts on Buddhism

The Chinese traveller Yuan Chwang (Huen Tsang), who visited India in the
seventh century records the oppressions of Shashanka, the king of Gauda, who
was a devotee of Shiva. Yuan Chwang's account reads, "In recent times
Shashanka, the enemy and oppressor of Buddhism, cut down the Bodhi tree,
destroyed its roots down to the water and burned what remained." [Watters II
p.115] He also says that Shashanka tried "to have the image (of Lord Buddha at
Bodhgaya) removed and replaced by one of Shiva". Another independent account of
Shashanka's oppressions is found in the Aryamanjushrimulakalpa, which refers to
Shashanka destroying "the beautiful image of Buddha" [Jayaswal, 49-50].

Another prominent seventh century murderer of Buddhists was Sudhanvan of
Ujjain, already mentioned in the quotation from Goyal above as having been
supposedly instigated by Kumarila Bhatt. Madhava Acharya, in his
"Sankara-digvijayam" of the fourteenth century A.D., records that Suddhanvan
"issued orders to put to death all the Buddhists from Ramesvaram to the
Himalayas".

Nalanda Destroyed by Hindu Zealots

Even after the Islamic invasions of India, Brahmanist bigotry and hatred for
Buddhists was not subdued. According to Sharmasvamin, a Tibetan pilgrim who
visited Bihar three decaes after the invasion of Bakhtiaruddin Khilji in the
12th century, the biggest library at Nalanda was destroyed by Hindu mendicants
who took advantage of the chaos produced by the invasion.

He says that "they (Hindus) performed a Yajna, a fire sacrifice, and threw
living embers and ashes from the sacrifice into the Buddhist temples. This
produced a great conflagration which consumed Ratnabodhi, the nine-storeyed
library of the Nalanda University". [Prakash, 213].

Numerous destroyed Buddhist shrines were converted into Hindu temples after
their destruction. Ahir [58] notes that "The Seat of Buddha's Enlightenment was
in the possession of a Hindu Mahant till 1952. Huen Tsang, tells us that in the
seventh century A.D. not only was the Bodhi Tree at Gaya cut down by the
Shaivite Shashanka, but that that worthy tried to install an image of Shiva in
place of that of the Tathagata. One easy conclusion: there was not at that time
an idol of Shiva at the spot; now, there is a shivalingam in the temple. The
Indian Supreme court has not given its verdict in the case after 50 years!

Similarly, at Kushinara, where the Buddha had entered into Mahaparinirvana, the
cremation stupa had been converted into a Hindu temple, and on top of it stood
the temple of Rambhar Bhavani when Cunningham discovered the site in 1860-61.
Among the shrines which still continue to be dedicated to Hindu gods mention
may be made of the Caityas of Chezrala and Ter in Andhra Pradesh which are now
Shiva and Vishnu temples respectively. The temple of Madhava at Sal Kusa,
opposite Gauhati in Asam, was once a sacred shrine of the Buddhists. ... And
the famous Jagannatha temple at Puri in Orissa was also originally a Buddhist
shrine. Similarly, the Vishnupada temple at Gaya was also once a Buddhist
shrine." As Rajendralal Mitra notes in his famous work of 1878 [quoted in Ahir,
59] the feet of Buddha at Gaya were rechristened the feet of Vishnu and held as
the most sacred object of worship in the new Vishnupada temple.

Hinduism's record of violence and bigotry against the peaceful followers of
Lord Buddha is unparalleled. I trust this marshalling of the available evidence
for the benefit of readers who may not have had access to it will impel
Brahmanists to accept and apologise for the crimes committed in the name of
Hinduism.

Bibliography.

Ahir, D.C. "Buddha Gaya Through the Ages", Bibliotheca Indo-Buddhica Series No.
134, Delhi 1994.

Goyal, S.R., "A History of Indian Buddhism", Meerut 1987. Jayaswal, "An
imperial history of India", Lahore 1934.

Joshi, L.M. "Studies in the Buddhistic Culture of India", New Delhi 1967.

Marshall, John, "Taxila" Cambridge University Press 1951.

Prakash, Buddh, "Aspects of Indian History and Civilisation", Agra 1965.

Taranatha, "History of Buddhism in India", Indian Institute of Advanced
Studies, Simla, 1977.

Vaidya, P.L. ed. "Divyavadana", Darbhanga 1959.

Watters, T. "On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India," ed. by T. W. Rhys Davids and
S.W. Bushel, London 1904, 1905.

More on the Brahmanist genocide of Buddhism in India:
http://www.dalitstan.org/books/decline/index.html

Re: # 133

This Wali is a charlatan - a wolf in sheep's clothing. Mooh mein Allah bagal mein Churah!!!