After the death of Vasubandhu few names of even moderate magnitude stand out in the history of Indian Buddhism.  The changes which occurred were great but gradual and due not to the initiative of innovators but to the assimilative power of Hinduism and to the attractions of magical and emotional rites.  But this tendency, though it doubtless existed, did not become conspicuous until about 700 A.D.  The accounts of the Chinese pilgrims and the literature which has been preserved suggest that in the intervening centuries the monks were chiefly occupied with scholastic and exegetical work.  The most distinguished successors of Asanga were logicians, among whom Dinnaga was pre-eminent.  Sthiramati[238] and Gunamati appear to have belonged to the same school and perhaps Bhavaviveka[239] too.  The statements as to his date are inconsistent but the interesting fact is recorded that he utilized the terminology of the Sankhya for the purposes of the Mahayana.

Throughout the middle ages the study of logic was pursued but Buddhists and Jains rather than by Brahmans.[240] Vasubandhu composed some treatises dealing exclusively with logic but it was his disciple Dinnaga who separated it definitely from philosophy and theology.  As in idealist philosophy, so in pure logic there was a parallel movement in the Buddhist and Brahmanic schools, but if we may trust the statements of Vacaspatimisra (about 1100 A.D.) Dinnaga interpreted the aphorisms of the Nyaya philosophy in a heterodox or Buddhist sense.  This traces the beginnings of Indian logic to a Brahmanic source but subsequently it flourished greatly in the hands of Buddhists, especially Dinnaga and Dharmakirti.  The former appears to have been a native of Conjevaram and a contemporary of Kalidasa.  Both the logician and the poet were probably alive in the reign of Kumaragupta (413-455).  Dinnaga spent much time in Nalanda, and though the Sanskrit originals of his works are lost the Tibetan translations[241] are preserved.

The Buddhist schools of logic continued for many centuries.  One flourished in Kashmir and another, founded by Candragomin, in Bengal.  Both lasted almost until the Mohammedan conquest of the two countries.

From about 470 to 530 A.D. northern India groaned under the tyranny of the Huns.  Their King Mihiragula is represented as a determined enemy of Buddhism and a systematic destroyer of monasteries.  He is said to have been a worshipper of Siva but his fury was probably inspired less by religious animosity than by love of pillage and slaughter.

About 530 A.D. he was defeated by a coalition of Indian princes and died ten years later amid storms and portents which were believed to signify the descent of his wicked soul into hell.  It must have been about this time that Bodhidharma left India for he arrived in Canton about 520.  According to the Chinese he was the son of a king of a country called Hsiang-Chih in southern India[242] and the twenty-eighth patriarch