By- Maria Wirth
Prince Siddhartha, who was later called Buddha, was a Hindu. He didn’t promote “Buddhism”. Emperor Ashoka, who was born a few centuries later, promoted Buddhism. He wanted his subjects to follow what Buddha had taught and what was compiled in some councils, long after Buddha’s death. The story goes that Ashoka felt so much repentance after a cruel war that he converted to Buddhism. This story may not be true. Another version says that, as he had killed his brother to get to the throne, he was censored by a Brahmin council. Consequently, he declared himself a Buddhist.
Whatever may be the reason for his conversion, fact is, that it needs force to push a new faith onto people, and Ashoka did use force, especially against Jains and Brahmins. It also needs the claim that the new faith is better than the old one, otherwise, why would people change their faith?
Christianity and Islam repeated this recipe of using force and unsubstantiated claims a few centuries later with grave consequences for humanity. Luckily Buddhism didn’t have such negative outcome because Buddha’s teaching was basically Hindu teaching, which doesn’t divide humanity into those who are saved and those who are damned, depending on what they believe. Moreover, most Buddhists reverted back to Hinduism after some centuries, and many were killed in the brutal Muslim invasion. Yet Buddhism survived in other countries in Asia.
Today we can observe that Buddhists usually insist that theirs is a different religion, whereas Hindus don’t see much difference and not only respect Buddha, but also consider him as one of their avatars. Buddhists follow
only Buddha, whereas Hindus have so many sages to choose from. To justify their claim that Buddhism is a separate religion, Buddhists try to find “differences” in regard to Hinduism. These differences are often only
differences in terminology and not real differences.
