The spread of Buddhism

1. Buddhism emphasizes the opportunity to follow one's destiny.

Buddhism is practiced first in the Hinayana and then in the Mahayana. The Buddha said that those who do not practice Mahayana before Hinayana are not disciples of the Buddha.

After the demise of the Buddha, his disciples spread the Dharma from all directions. At that time, the Indian kingdoms prevented the spread of the Dharma. Therefore, the stingy law led to the decline of the Dharma.

The Dharma also declined in the west, because of insufficient karma.

The Buddha's teachings spread northward to the western region, which is now Xinjiang, and when the emperor heard that the Venerable Master had propagated the Dharma, he invited him to the Middle Kingdom, where the Buddha's teachings coincided with the environment of China's Confucianism and Taoism. Because China's Confucianism and Taoism and Buddhism and Hinayana have similarities and similarities. It immediately took root in China and surpassed the achievements of India. Later, because the Chinese traditional culture is rooted in the people, starting from young children, so the ancient masters gradually replaced the Hinayana with Confucianism and Taoism, and after the Song Dynasty, the Hinayana school was no longer available, and only the Mahayana was rooted in the environment of China's Confucianism and Taoism.

2. At that time, because of the spread of the king, King Ashoka's son Mahindra preached Buddhism for the first time and established the Buddhist monarchy of Ceylon, and led the wives and daughters of the king's family to become monks.

Xuanzang recorded the historical development of Buddhism in Ceylon in the Records of the Western Regions of the Great Tang Dynasty, and said that Ceylon: "Follows the Mahayana Theravada Dharma". Therefore, it is said that the Buddhism introduced to Ceylon by King Ashoka's son, Māyā Indra, was "Mahāyāna Theravāda" Buddhism.

In describing the development of Buddhism in Ceylon at that time, Xuanzang said that in Ceylon, "Mahavihara lived in a department that rejected Mahayana and practiced Hinayana," and that "Ashoka lived in a department that studied both the Mahayana and the Triratna,":

The next 200 years of Buddhism, each specializing in one of two departments: the Mahayana, the Theravada, the Theravada, the Mahayana, the Mahayana and the Theravada.

Buddhism to the next two hundred years, each specializing in two divisions: one is said to be Mahabharata department, repudiation of the Mahayana, practice of the Hinayana. The second said a trekkie gi li live department, learning both the hayana, promote the evolution of the three Tibet, is the precepts of chastity, the wisdom of the condensed bright. The king's palace side there is the Buddha's tooth refined house, refined house built on the table column, put the bowl of Dharmarāja (Dharmarāja) big treasure. On the side of the Buddha's Tooth Cloister was a small cloister, which was also decorated with many treasures. In the middle of the gold Buddha statue, the country's first king and cast, meat bun is decorated with precious treasures.

Xuanzang said here, "Buddhism to after more than two hundred years", should have referred to the Prince of Ayothaya Buddhism to Ceylon after more than two hundred years, because Xuanzang also think that the Prince of Ayothaya in Ceylon at the beginning of the transmission of Buddhism. But Xuanzang's understanding of the situation of the establishment of the Dasi school, and Ceylon scholars say differently. According to Xuanzang, it was more than two hundred years after the introduction of Buddhism to Ceylon that Buddhism in Ceylon was divided into two divisions: the Mahāvihāra (the Great Monastery Division) and the Abhayagiri (the Vihāra, the Wudhu Division). Vihāra (Abhayagiri Vihāra, Fearless Mountain Monastery Division).

Xuanzang was not an ordinary monk; he studied in India for nineteen years (627-645) and, in addition to being well acquainted with the development of both Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhism in India at that time, he was also recognized as a teacher of Mahayana Buddhism in India at that time. During his study in Nālandā, he held a debate at the King of Precepts (?ilabhadra), in which he "established the Mahayana doctrine and broke down all the dissenting views, and since the eighteenth day no one has dared to argue, so it is appropriate for all to know. The crowd rejoiced, and competed for the Venerable Master to establish a beautiful name, the Mahayana crowd called Mahayana Tiburu, this cloud Mahayana heaven; the Hinayana crowd called Moksha Tiburu, this cloud liberation heaven." [76] Xuanzang's Buddhist literacy is such that his translation of the Heterodox Zonglun Lun has shown that he regarded the history of the sectarian division of Buddhism contained in the Heterodox Zonglun Lun as a correct or reasonable history. Although the Dhammapada does not state that Theravada is a Mahayana school, a similar text, the Manjushri Sutra, which accompanies the Eighteen-Part Treatise translated by Zhenshi in the Chen dynasty (557-589), clearly mentions that Theravada is a Mahayana school:

In the eleventh century, the land of Ceylon and its Buddhist religion were tragically invaded and destroyed by a foreign power. invasion and destruction. In the twelfth century, during the time of the first Bharatkarmavatara, Theravada Buddhism was revived and flourished for a time. Then there were internal and external conflicts and Buddhism was again destroyed.

In the fourteenth century, the Muslims invaded the semi-dietary states of South India and also Ceylon.

In 1505, Ceylon was invaded by the Portuguese, who were even more vicious and cruel from the Western colonialists.

In 1658, the Dutch again expelled the Portuguese, taking all the territory taken from the Portuguese as their own colony.

By the eighteenth century, the religious form of Buddhism in Ceylon was extinct, with not even a single full-fledged bhikkhu, and only a handful of unofficial satsangs remaining who were not ordained, and who supported their wives and families by practicing divination, astrology, etc.

By the eighteenth century, Buddhism in Ceylon was extinct in its religious form.