[259] Chaps. XXXVIII and XXXIX. He seems to say that it is right for the laity to make an offering of their bodies by burning but not for Bhikshus. The practice is recognized and commended in the Lotus, chap. XXII, which however is a later addition to the original work.
[260] I-Ching, transl. Takakusu, pp. 153-4 somewhat abridged. I-Ching (pp. 156-7) speaks of Mâtricheta as the principal hymn writer and does not identify him with Aśvaghosha.
[261] I believe the golden image in the Arakan Pagoda at Mandalay is still washed with a ceremonial resembling that described by I-Ching.
[262] I-Ching says that monasteries commonly had a statue of Mahâkâla as a guardian deity.
[263] By the Gupta king, Narasinha Gupta Bâlâditya. Much information about Nâlandâ will be found in Satis Chandra Vidyabhusana's Mediæval School of Indian Logic, pp. 145-147. Hsüan Chuang (Life, transl. Beal, p. 111) says that it was built 700 years before his time, that is, in the first century B.C. He dwells on the beauty of the buildings, ponds and flowers.
CHAPTER XXIV
DECADENCE OF BUDDHISM IN INDIA
The theme of this chapter is sad for it is the decadence, degradation and ultimate disappearance of Buddhism in India. The other great religions offer no precise parallel to this phenomenon but they also do not offer a parallel to the circumstances of Buddhism at the time when it flourished in its native land. Mohammedanism has been able to maintain itself in comparative isolation: up to the present day Moslims and Christians share the same cities rather than the same thoughts, especially when (as often) they belong to different races. European Christianity after a few centuries of existence had to contend with no rival of approximately equal strength, for the struggle with Mohammedanism was chiefly military and hardly concerned the merits of the faiths. But Buddhism never had a similarly paramount and unchallenged position. It never attempted to extirpate its rivals. It coexisted with a mass of popular superstition which it only gently reprobated and with a powerful hereditary priesthood, both intellectual and pliant, tenacious of their own ideas and yet ready to countenance almost any other ideas as the price of ruling. Neither Islam nor Christianity had such an adversary, and both of them and even Judaism resemble Buddhism in having won greater success outside their native lands than in them. Jerusalem is not an altogether satisfactory spectacle to either Christians or Jews.[264]
Still all this does not completely explain the disappearance of Buddhism from India. Before attempting to assign reasons, we shall do well to review some facts and dates relating to the period of decadence. If we take all India into consideration the period is long, but in many, indeed in most, districts the process of decay was rapid.