The Buddha a Buddhist

Melbourne, 19 July. There is an article on the Buddhist Council of New South Wales website (from 1993) that poses this interesting question in a discussion about the then campaign to liberate the Mahabodhi temple. quote from part of the article. "The local leader of the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) geography Professor Lalan Singh from Bihar's Magadh University argues that there's no difference between Hindus and Buddhists and its the MAC leaders who want to create conflict.

"We always said that Lord Buddha was the 10th reincarnation of Lord Vishnu. So Buddhists and Hindus are both from the same sect" he said. This is a view supported by Dwarko Sundarani who was the secretary of the MMC for over 30 years. "Buddha was a Hindu.

He lived as a Hindu, he died as a Hindu" he argues, thus adding that the joint MMC has worked well for 40 years. Prof Singh says that the Buddhists who are now in the MMC wants to get control of the shrine to stop the Hindus worshipping there. He also claims they want to make money out of tourism. He notes that there's increasing numbers of South-East Asian Buddhists now visiting Budhagaya.

Ven Pragyaseel agrees that a lot of problems are due to money and potential tourist revenue. Because the potential for tourism is good. So the Hindus want to get its hands on it (money)" he says.some Hindus hold that Buddha was the ninth incarnation of Vishnu, a famous instance of this is in the 12th century Gita Govinda by the Bengali Poet Jayadeva which describes the ten incarnations.