The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c35.s4.21

c35.s4.21

Hiuen Tsang, who visited Kānchī (Conjeeveram) in A. D. 640, during the reign of Narasimha-varman I, and stayed there for a considerable time, calls the country of which Kānchī was the capital by the name of Dravida, and describes it as being about 1,000 miles in circuit. It corresponded, therefore, very closely with the traditional 'Chola country' between the Northern Pennār and the Southern Vellāru rivers. The soil was fertile and regularly cultivated, producing abundance of grain, flowers, and fruits. The capital was a large city 5 or 6 miles in circumference. In the kingdom the pilgrim found more than a hundred Buddhist monasteries,² occupied by a large number of monks, estimated at above ten thousand, all attached, like the majority of the Ceylonese, to the Sthavira school of the Mahāyāna. The Hindu, including the Jain, temples numbered about four-score, and, as in other parts of Southern India, the sect of nude, or Digambara, Jains had many adherents. In the Pāndya country farther south Buddhism was almost extinct. Kānchī, which is reckoned among the seven Hindu sacred cities, enjoyed special fame among the Buddhists as having been the birthplace of Dharmapāla, a celebrated metaphysician, who was the predecessor of Hiuen Tsang's teacher Sīlabhadra in the headship of the great monastery at Nālandā.¹