e down to
us, but when we enquire what was their political importance, or the
scope and extent of the movement which they championed we are
conscious (as so often) of the extraordinary vagueness of Indian
records even when the subject might appeal to religious and
philosophic minds.[269] Kumarila is said to have been a Brahman of
Bihar who abjured Buddhism for Hinduism and raged with the ardour of a
proselyte against his ancient faith. Tradition[270] represents him as
instigating King Sudhanvan to exterminate the Buddhists. But nothing
is known of this king and he cannot have had the extensive empire with
which he is credited.

Sankara was a Brahman of the south who in a short life found time to
write numerous works, to wander over India, to found a monastic order
and build four monasteries. In doctrine and discipline he was more
pliant than Kumarila and he assimilated many strong points of
Buddhism. Both these teachers are depicted as the successful heroes of
public disputations in which the interest at stake was considerable.
The vanquished had to become a disciple of the vanquisher or to
forfeit his life and, if he was the head of an institution, to
surrender its property. These accounts, though exaggerated, are
probably a florid version of what occurred and we may surmise that the
popular faith of the day was generally victorious. What violence the
rising tide of Hinduism may have wrought, it is hard to say. There is
no evidence of any general persecution of Buddhism in the sense in
which one Christian sect persecuted another in Europe. But at a rather
later date we hear that Jains were persecuted and tortured by Saiva
princes both in southern India and Gujarat, and if there were any
detailed account, epigraphic or literary, of such persecutions in the
eighth and ninth centuries, there would be no reason for doubting it.
But no details are forthcoming. Without resorting to massacre, an
anti-Buddhist king had in his power many effective methods of
hostility. He might confiscate or transfer monastic property, or
forbid his subjects to support monks. Considering the state of
Buddhism as represented by Hsuean Chuang and I-Ching it is probable
that such measures would suffice to ensure the triumph of the Brahmans
in most parts of India.

After the epoch of Sankara, the history of Indian Buddhism is
confined to the Pala kingdom. Elsewhere we hear only of isolated
grants to monasteries and similar acts of piety, often s