History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c16.9

v1.c16.9

No account of Orissa would be complete without a reference to Mahākośala and Andhra, countries which bounded the three ancient divisions of Orissa on the south and west. Yuan Chwang’s description of Mahākośala or the Southern Kośala is very long on account of the association of that country with the great Buddhist scholar Nāgārjuna. He went to Southern Kośala by retracing his steps northwards for three hundred miles through dense jungles on both the slopes of the Eastern Ghats. He describes the country as being more than one thousand miles in circumference. It was surrounded by high mountains and consisted almost entirely of forests and marshes. The capital of this country was bigger in size than those of any of the three parts of Orissa, being forty li or six-and-a-half mile in circumference. The king of this country was a Kshatriya by birth but a follower of Buddhism. There were more than one hundred monasteries and about ten thousand Mahāyānist monks. Just outside the capital of the country there was an old Buddhist monastery with a stūpa built by Aśoka. The great Nāgārjuna was at one time a resident of this monastery. A king called Sha-to-p’o-ha or Sātavāhana was his contemporary. The Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna was one of the greatest scholars India has ever produced. He is regarded as the father of ancient Indian chemistry and medicine, and the works ascribed to him prove that in mediæval times he was regarded as one of the greatest exponents of *Mahāyāna* doctrines. He was a profound philosopher. He is generally regarded as a contemporary of the Great Kushān Emperor Kāṇishka I, who ascended the throne either in 78 or 120 A.D. Nāgārjuna is supposed to be one of the leaders of Northern Buddhism who persuaded Kāṇishka I to assemble the fourth *Mahāsangīti* or Great Council of Buddhist Monks at Jullundur or in Kashmir. During Nāgārjuna’s residence in this monastery another great Buddhist philosopher named Deva came to visit him. Unfortunately, for us, we do not know what was the capital of the country in the first half of the 7th century A. D., and the Chhattisgarh division and the Bastar State have been so imperfectly surveyed by archæologists that the location of the ancient capital is not possible for us even now. Fergusson wanted to locate this capital at Wairagaḍh which is mentioned as Vajiraghara in the Hāthigumphā inscription of Khāravela, king of Kaliṅga and as Vayirākara in certain rock inscriptions of Kuloṭṭunga Choḷa I. The Sanskrit equivalent of the term is Vajrākara or Vajragaḍh meaning “Diamond Mine” or the “Adamantine fort.” According to tradition, the Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna was born in Southern or Western India and, according to Tibetan authorities, he spent much of his time at Nālanda. He was the fourteenth or the thirteenth patriarch according to the apocryphal line of succession. His name is mentioned in the final verses of the *Laṅkāvatāra sūtra*. The kings Kāṇishka, Kilika, Vasumitra, Aśvaghosha, and Dharmagupta are mentioned in works assigned to Nāgārjuna. Twenty of these works are preserved in Tibetan and Chinese translations. Buddhists ascribe a very long life, five hundred and twenty-nine years, to Nāgārjuna Bodhisattva. He is mentioned in the Harshacharita of Bāṇabhaṭṭa as having obtained from a Nāga king in hell a wreath of pearls which was a very potent medicine for all sorts of poisons.