The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c21.9

c21.9

Aryan religion, which was based upon a profound philosophy of life, physical and spiritual, became bound up with the personal interests of a corrupt priestly caste which exploited the instinctive piety of the people, and the original simple meanings of its formularies were buried under a mass of ritualistic mummery. The respect paid by the people to monasticism led thousands to adopt it solely for the easy life and prospects of worldly advantages which it held out to its votaries. Philosophy, losing touch with realities, stultified itself with hair-splitting dialectics, and as in the Middle Ages in Europe, religion, superstition, and rascality too often went hand in hand. As a religion Buddhism had become infected with the prevailing sacerdotal vices against which the original teaching of Sâkiya Muni was a protest. His ethical doctrines had long since become the common property of Hinduism, and the Buddha himself was acknowledged as one of the ten incarnations of Vishnu; but as a sect Buddhism was fast declining in the land of its birth, although in China and the Far East it was gaining many adherents.