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The road was not direct but ran up northwards and then followed the base of the mountains, thus enabling travellers to cross rivers near their sources where they were still easy to ford. The stopping-places from Râjagaha onwards were Nâlanda, Pâṭaliputra, Vesâlî, Bhandagâma, Pâvâ, Kusinârâ, Kapilavatthu, Setavya, Sâvatthî.
The Buddha is walking along the high road from Râjagaha to Nâlanda with a great company of disciples. Or he is journeying through Kosala and halting in a mango-grove on the banks of the Aciravatî river. Or he is stopping in a wood outside a Brahman village and the people go out to him.
XXXVIII and XXXIX. He seems to say that it is right for the laity to make an offering of their bodies by burning but not for Bhikshus. The practice is recognized and commended in the Lotus, chap. Takakusu, pp. 153-4 somewhat abridged. Much information about Nâlandâ will be found in Satis Chandra Vidyabhusana's Mediæval School of Indian Logic, pp. 145-147.
Nalanda and the other viharas continued to be seats of learning and not merely monasteries, and for some time there was a regular succession of teachers. Târanâtha gives us to understand that there were many students and authors but that sorcery occupied an increasingly important position. Of most teachers we are told that they saw some deity, such as Avalokita or Târâ.
The most celebrated was the Nalanda monastery, founded in the first century by Nagarjuna, which accommodated ten thousand priests, and was enclosed by a wall measuring sixteen hundred feet by four hundred. It was to Central India what Mount Casino was to Italy, and Cluny was to France, in the Middle Ages, the seat of learning and art.
In the three temples were large images representing the Buddha, Târâ and Avalokita. The great centres of Buddhist learning and monastic life, mentioned by both pilgrims, were Valabhî or Balabhi in Gujarat and Nalanda. The former was a district rather than a single locality and contained 100 monasteries with 6000 monks of the Sammitîya school. Nalanda was in Magadha not far from Gaya.
So far back as twenty-five centuries, India welcomed to its ancient universities, at Nalanda and Taxila, scholars from all parts of the world. This restraint confers the power to hold the mind to the pursuit of truth with an infinite patience." Tears stood in my eyes at the scientist's concluding words. Is "patience" not indeed a synonym of India, confounding Time and the historians alike?
His name is derived from that of his mother Sarika, the wife of Tishya, a native of Nalanda. Several Sastras are ascribed to him, and indeed the followers of the Abhidharma look on him as their founder. He died before Sakyamuni; but is to reappear as a future Buddha. Eitel, pp. 123, 124. Mugalan, the Singhalese name of this disciple, is more pronounceable.
Successful merit was rewarded not only by rank but by grants of land. Both pilgrims mention the names of several celebrities connected with Nalanda. But the worthies of the seventh century did not attain to more than scholastic eminence. The most important literary figure of the age is Śântideva of whose life nothing is known.
All were followed in Magadha, no doubt because the holy places and the University of Nâlandâ attracted all shades of opinion, and Bengal seems to have been similarly catholic.
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