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- Buddha’s teachings became the foundation for what would develop into Buddhism. In the 3rd century B.C., Ashoka the Great, the Mauryan Indian emperor, made Buddhism the state religion of India. Buddhist monasteries were built, and missionary work was encouraged. Over the next few centuries, Buddhism began to spread beyond India.
www.history.com/topics/religion/buddhism
Buddhism expanded in the Indian subcontinent in the centuries after the death of the Buddha, particularly after receiving the endorsement and royal support of the Maurya Empire under Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE. It spread even beyond the Indian subcontinent to Central Asia and China.
Buddhism is an ancient Indian religion, which arose in and around the ancient Kingdom of Magadha (now in Bihar, India). It is based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha [note 1], who lived in the 6th or 5th century BCE and was deemed a "Buddha" ("Awakened One" [3]).
- Overview
- Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia
With the collapse of the Pala dynasty in the 12th century, Indian Buddhism suffered yet another setback, from which it did not recover. Although small pockets of influence remained, the Buddhist presence in India became negligible.
Scholars do not know all the factors that contributed to Buddhism’s demise in its homeland. Some have maintained that it was so tolerant of other faiths that it was simply reabsorbed by a revitalized Hindu tradition. This did occur, though Indian Mahayanists were occasionally hostile toward bhakti and toward Hinduism in general. Another factor, however, was probably much more important. Indian Buddhism, having become primarily a monastic movement, seems to have lost touch with its lay supporters. Many monasteries had become very wealthy, so much so that they were able to employ indentured slaves and paid labourers to care for the monks and to tend the lands they owned. Thus, after the Muslim invaders sacked the Indian monasteries in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Buddhist laity showed little interest in a resurgence.
The first clear evidence of the spread of Buddhism outside India dates from the reign of King Ashoka (3rd century bce), whose inscriptions show that he sent Buddhist missionaries to many different regions of the subcontinent as well as into certain border areas. Ashokan emissaries were sent to Sri Lanka and to an area called Suvarnabhumi, which man...
Apr 23, 2013 · The key question is how Buddhist monastic communities integrated themselves within the social, religious and economic fabric of the areas in which they arrived, and how they generated sufficient patronage networks for monastic Buddhism to grow into the powerful pan-Indian and subsequently pan-Asian institution that it became.
- Julia Shaw
- 2013
Aug 16, 2019 · Buddhism was born under a giant fig tree, which, today, grows at the center of the remote and unbeautiful town of Bodh Gaya, in India’s destitute northeastern state of Bihar.
The Lord Buddha arose in northern India around 500 B.C. as an ethical reformer, a rationalist and what some. writers (H. G. Wells among them) have called an atheist. He. swept away caste, ritual, superstitions and privileges of all sorts. To him there was little that was good in traditional Hinduism.
Although Buddhism became virtually extinct in India (ca. 12th century C.E.)—perhaps because of the all-embracing nature of Hinduism, Muslim invasions, or too great a stress on the monk's way of life—as a religion it has more than proved its viability and practical spirituality in the countries of Asia to which it has been carried.
