The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c10.s10.28

c10.s10.28

Śākyaism was all the time moving from region to region and race to race. In the process of these mobilizations it gradually lost sight of the very language in which Śākya and the Śākyan apostles had taught, namely, Pali. The Pan-Indian language of culture, Sanskrit, was accepted by the Śākyans and Buddhists of the new epochs on account of the exigencies of their propaganda and annexed to their conquests. And so Buddhist philosophy, moral, social or political, came to have a vast literature in Sanskrit. Nothing demonstrates the vitality and strenuousness of the Buddhistic ideologies more than this Sanskritization of Śākyaism and the utilization of the "Hindu" (Brāhmaṇical) paraphernalia in order to maintain its usefulness under altered conditions.