History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c91.345

v7.c91.345

The author has cited the above as the main causes of the disappearance of Buddhism following what most have written Different writers attach importance to a few of them according to their individual leanings. While prepared to concede that the causes noted above went a long way in bringing about the downfall of Buddhism in India, he feels that the principal cause was that large sections of the Indian population came to realize that the persistent teaching of the world being a place of suffering, of giving up all desires and of monasticism, which were preached by the writers on Buddhism to all and sundry, was too much for ordinary men to attempt and that the Hindu ideal of an ordered scheme of life into four *āśramas*,¹⁶⁵⁴ with peculiar duties and rights, particularly the importance attached to the gṛhasthāśrama showed to vast populations that family life properly regulated and disciplined was capable of realizing the highest that man was capable of and that too much insistence on the giving up of all desires (including desire for life) sapped the very stability and continuance of human society and gradually led on to the loss of physical and mental virility, to idleness, base morals and race suicide. Manu III. 77–78, VI. 89–90, Vas. Dh. S VIII 14–17, Visnu Dh. S. 59, 29, Daksa II. 57–60 and many other sages and writers praise the stage of householder as the highest.¹⁶⁵⁵ The Mahābhārata (Śānti 270. 6–11) and the Rāmāyaṇa, Ayodhyā 106, 2) and the Purāṇas also sing the same tune, vide H of Dh. vol. II. pp. 425–426 and 540–541.