भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

thereafter?
349. Some time ago, historians, and especially western historians, had a
presumption that sometime in the past, or at frequent intervals, the Vedic
rulers must have massacred these Buddhists and destroyed them root and
branch, or reconverted them to Hinduism forcibly. In order to find some
credence to this theory of theirs, they examined the historical records of the
times most scrupulously. but even after taking into consideration a few
trifling exceptions. they could find no proof to establish any deliberate, pre-
planned, or systematic attempt on the part of the Vedic rulers to annihilate
the Buddhists completely.
349A. At last, the more conscientious of these historians declared
honestly, that this presumption of theirs was totally unfounded and the very
idea of forcible extinction of the Buddhists at the hands of the Vedic people
was basically wrong.
350. Who then was responsible for this total ousting of the Buddhist faith
from India? The historians, foreign as well as native, do not seem to have
found an answer to this pressing question, or they have, at least, preferred to
be silent on this point.
The third cause—Confrontation with Muslims
351 A. We have already briefly described in the foregoing pages how, in
spite of their traitorous solicitations of the Muslims, these
‘Buddhaprasthees’—the idol-worshipping Buddhists who preached extreme
non-violence—were violently exterminated from Sindh by the Muslim
aggressors under Kasim, owing to their innate hatred for that sect. For the
same reason, and in the very same manner, the Muslims went on liquidating
the Buddhist pockets of influence, as they advanced, conquering province-
after-province in India. With a sword in one hand and the Koran in the
other, every Muslim military chief broke down, demolished and razed to the
ground the Buddhist ‘stoopas’, ‘sangharams’, ‘viharas’, the idols of
Buddha, pillars, everything belonging to or relating to the Buddhists. As
most of the Buddhists showed, through fear of death, willingness to
embrace Islam, they were all converted. Not a single Buddhist remained
alive in the northwestern provinces like Gandhar, Kamboj and others;
everyone became a Muslim or was silenced by the victor’s sword. On
seeing Bakhtyar Khilji march on Bihar, several Buddhists took their
religious books and fled to Tibet and China. The rest were polluted and
taken over into the Muslim fold. Some might have preferred dying rather to