I read an interesting article on the subject. I am providing
excerpts and my views on it. Trite messages like follow-the-
path-of-ahimsa, life-is-full-of-misery, respect-life, could not
have gained Buddha so may followers. Esoteric ideas like
Nirvana, dukkha, et al, could not have been the reason. People
don’t change so much for so little! Or resist change so much
when confronted by the sword! This was obviously not because
Buddha’s statues were prettier than the statues of previous
deities. Or because Buddhist chants sounded better. If that,
anyway, was the reason, the statues of previous divinities could
have been prettified…. Buddhism for long disappeared from the
Indian scene, but the fundamentals of its philosophy were
formulated as part of Indian philosophical thought with its
traditional polemics and constant exchange of ideas between
different schools. This deep familial link of Buddhism with the
Indian philosophical soil that engendered it is being missed by
both Buddhist and Hindu philosophy studies.