We fear that the one telling factor that contributed to the fall of Buddhism more than any other has escaped that detailed attention of scholars which it deserves. But as the subject in hand does but remotely involve its treatment here we cannot treat it here in full. All that we can do here is to make a few general remarks and leave them to be expounded and detailed out to a more favourable occasion if the work be done by others better fitted to do it. Can it be that philosophical differences alone could have made our nation turn against Buddhism ? Not wholly : for, these differences had been there all along and even flourished side by side with each other. Can it be the general inanition and demoralization of the Buddhistic Church itself ? Not wholly : for, if some of the Viharas sheltered a loose, lazy and promiscuous crowd of men and women who lived on others and spent what was not theirs on disreputable persuits of life, yet on the other hand the line of those spiritual giants of Arhat and Bhikkus had not altogether ended : nor had such scenes been peculiar to the Buddhistic Viharas alone! All these and many other shortcomings would not have attracted such fierce attention and proved fatal to Buddhistic power in India had not the political consequences of the Buddhistic expansion been so disastrous to the national virility and even the national existence of our race. No prelude to a vast tragedy could be more dramatic in its effect in foreshadowing the culminating catastrophe than that incident in the life of the Shakya Sinha, when the news of the fate of the little tribal republic of the Shakyas was carried to their former Prince when he was just laying the foundation stone of the Buddhistic Church. He had already enrolled the flower of his clan in his Bhikkusangha and the little Shakya Republic thus deprived of its bravest and best, fell an easy victim to the strong to the strong and warlike in the very life time of the Shakya Sinha. The news when carried to him is said to have left the Enlightened unconcerned. Centuries rolled on; the Prince of the Skakyas had grown into the Prince of Princes-the Lokajit-the great conqueror of worlds. The confines of his little Shakya State expanded and embraced the confined the confines of India; and as if to give a touch of poetical precision and peotical justice, the woeful fate that had overtaken the tribal republic of Kapil-Vastu befell the whole of Bharatvarsha itself and it fell an easy prey to the strong and warlike-not like Shakyas to their own kith and kin-but the Lichis and Huns. Of course the Enlightened would perhaps remain as unaffected as ever, even if this news could ever reach him like the first. But the rest of Hindus then could not drink with equanimity this cup of bitterness and political servitude at the hands of those whose barbarous violence could still be soothed by the mealy - mouthed formulas of Ahimsa and spiritual brotherhood, and whose steel could still be blunted by the soft palm leaves and rhymed charms. We do not mean to underrate-much less accuse the services of the great brotherhood and its divine mission. We have only to point out the concomitance that is too glaring to escape the attention of any student of history. We know that it could easily be pressed against this statement that the greatest and even the most powerful Indian Kings and Emperors known, belong to the Buddhist period. Yes, but known to whom ? to Europeans and those of us who have unconsciously imbibed not only their thoughts but even their prejudices. There was a time when every school history in India opened from the Mohammedan invasion because the average English writers of that time knew next to nothing of our earlier life. Lately the general knowledge of Europe has extended backwards to the rise of Buddhism and we too are apt to look upon it as the first and even the most glorious epoch of our history. The fact is, it is neither. We yield to none in our love, admiration and respect for the Buddha-the Dharma-the Sangha. They are all ours. Their glories are ours and ours their failures. Great was Ashoka, the Devapriya, and greater were the achievements of Buddhistic Bhikkus. But achievements as great if not greater and things as holy and more politic and statesmanly had gone before them and indeed enabled them to be what they were. So, we do not think that the political virility or the manly nobility of our race began and ended with the Mauryas alone or was a consequence of their embracing Buddhism. Buddhism has conquests to claim but they belong to a world far removed from this matter-of-fact world-where feet of clay do not stand long, and steel could be easily sharpened, and trishna-thirst-is too powerful and real to be quenched by painted streams that flow perennially in heavens. These must have been the considerations that must have driven themselves home to the hearts of our patriots and thinkers when the Huns and Shakas poured like volcanic torrents and burnt all that thrived. The Indians saw that the cherished ideals of their race-their thrones and their families and the very Gods they worshipped-were trampled under foot, the holy land of their love devastated and sacked by hordes of barbarians, so inferior to them in language, religion, philosophy, mercy and all the soft and human attributes of man and God-but superior to them in strength alone - strength that summed up its creed, in two words-Fire and Sword ! The inference was clear. Clear also was the fact that Buddhistic logic had no arguement that could efficiently meet this new and terrible dualism -this strange Bible of Fire and Steel. So the leaders of thought and action of our race had to rekindle their Sacrificial Fire to oppose the sacrilegious one and to re-open the mines of Vedic fields for steel, to get it sharpened on the alter of Kali, ’the Terrible so that Mahakal -the ‘Spirit of Time’ be appeased. Nor were their anticipations belied. The success of the renovated Hindu arms was undisputed and indisputable. Vikramaditya who drove the foreigners from the Indian soil and Lalitaditya who caught and chastised them in their very dens from Tartary to Mongolia were but complements of each other. Valour had accomplished what formulas had failed to. Once more the people rose to the heights of greatness that shed its lustre on all departments of life. Poetry and philosophy, art and architecture, agriculture and commerce, thought and action felt the quickening impulse which consciousness of independence strength and victory alone can radiate. The reaction as usual was complete even to a fault. ‘Up with the Vedic Dharma !’ ‘Back to the Vedas ! ’ The national cry grew louder and louder, more and more imperative, because this was essentially a political necessity.