ABSTRACT
Buddhism, like Jainism, was mainly a reform movement in India's spiritual life. Like Jainism, it accepted all the gods of the orthodox tradition and rejected the authoritativeness of the Vedas and the utility of sacrifices. It also started, therefore, without any scriptures and began reflecting upon life independently. It disappeared from nearly the whole of India by about the fifteenth century, but it ruled the life of the Indians for nearly two thousand years, from the sixth century BC till then. But unlike Jainism, it allowed more freedom of thought to its followers, so that in India itself quite a large number of Buddhist sects, with new ideas, developed new philosophies out of the few basic doctrines taught by Buddha. In Jainism we find only one system of metaphysics, but in Buddhism many. And when Buddhism disappeared, it was not due to any violent religious conflicts within the Indian religious tradition, but in part to the invasion of Islam, and in part to the gradual development of its own doctrines towards the Upaniṣadic ones, and to the ease with which the developed doctrines could be assimilated and adopted by the philosophies based upon the Upaniṣads. Buddhism never attempted to formulate its own codes of social conduct, allowed the castes to continue as such, and, confining itself to the monasteries, sought only to teach spiritual doctrines and discipline. To be sure, it did not allow caste distinctions within monasteries, and like Jainism, established nunneries for women ascetics. There was no asceticism and there were no convents for women in the orthodox tradition. Now, when the teachings of Buddhism were absorbed by the othodox schools, since Buddhism itself admitted liberality in its doctrines and practices and did not adhere to a fossilized way of thought, it lost the grounds for its separate existence and almost disappeared as a separate institution. Buddha himself was made one of the incarnations of Viṣṇu and his teachings were made an important strand of the philosophical thought of India.
