Decline of Buddhism in India and its revival in 20th Century: with special reference to Dr B R Ambedkar

The historic significance of the rise of Buddhism must be realised in its proper context before the paradox of the disappearance of Buddhism from its land origin can be resolved, Buddhism was not to call to existence a new and juster social order to redress the balance of the old. Originators as a pre-eminently rational system of philosophy, Buddhism were sanctified by the intense moral earnestness and profound humanism of Buddha. Buddha never thought of himself as a prophet. He did not begin like Moses or Muhammad by repudiating the past and crying down all the gods of old as false gods. It was not for him to hold out any assurance to lead the straying flock back, under his pastorship to the promised land. Indeed, salvation was promised to none by Buddha except by one’s individual effort and discipline. It can very well be questioned if a keenly introspective ethical system based on atheism, or at best a guarded form of agnosticism can be called a religion at all Buddha’s professed role was that of a pioneer in a grand quest, the quest of a new spiritual goal to be attained from a novel non-personal point of view by uprooting the age old fixations on the continuity of a personal soul nourished in its beginning by the thought and moral discipline of the Upanishad and the early Vedanta. Buddhism never cut itself from the parent stock of Brahmanism, from which it has been enriched and revitalised from time to time in its long career in India. It developed in an almost organise relationship with Brahmanism. Its decay was also as natural and unperceived as the withering away of a branch that leaves its sap and its essence in the giant asvathha tree out of which it had shot out. In spite of the lofty soarings of his spirit, the great Buddha was held fast to his most ancient moorings.