6_Glorious_Epochs_of_Indian_History

136 SIX GLORIOUS EPOCHS OF INDIAN HISTORY
onward march through Sindh met with the same disaster*".
BUT WHAT WERE THE BUDDHISTS DOING IN THIS
NATIONAL CATASTROPHE ?
332. At the fnews of the fall of King Dahir and the
victory of the Muslims, these Buddhists began to ring bells
in their vihars*^ to greet the Muslim conquerors, and prayed
in congregations for the prosperity of the Muslim rulers !
333. But what they thus asked for as a boon proved
to be an inexorable curse for them. After winning the final
battle, when the Muslims rushed violently, like a stormy
wind, throughout Sindh, they went on beheading these
Buddhists even more ruthlessly than they did the Vedic
Hindus**. For, the Vedic Hindus were fighting in groups or
individually at every place and so they struck atleast a
little awe and terror in the minds of the Muslims. But as
there was no armed opposition in Buddhist Vihars and
Buddhist localities, the Muslims cut them down as easily as
they would cut vegetable. Only those of the Buddhists who
took to the Muslim faith were spared, while all their vihars
throughout Sindh and the innumerable shrines in them were
knocked down, and hammered to pieces ; for the Muslims
hated these 'Buddh parastis'—these shrine-worshippers.
334. The very word, "Buddhaparasta", which found its
way into the Islamic tongue, is itself a corrupt form of the
original Sanskrit work of the Buddhists, 'Buddhaparastha'.
The Muslims began to call the shrine-worshippers 'Buddha-
parashta' because on their way to India they first found such
numerous shrines nowhere but in the Buddhist Vihars. To
annihilate such shrine-worshippers was for the Muslims a sort
of religious commandment**.
BUDDHIST AHIMSA AND MUSLIM HIMSA
335. This is now the place where the question that we
have discussed at length in Chapter II (Paras 152 to 159) of
this book, about the downfall of Buddhism in India should be
chronologically concluded. By the year A.D. 700, of which