The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c9.20

c9.20

I-tsing, who died in A. D. 713, at the age of seventy-nine, was himself a pilgrim of no small distinction. ‘This great monk, no less famous in the Buddhist world of China than Hiuen Thsang with whom we are more familiar, was pre-eminently a scholar and the best Sanskritist amongst the Chinese pilgrims whose writings have yet reached us. His stay at the centres of learning in the Hindu colonies of Sumatra, and ten years’ study at the university of Nalanda under the greatest professors of the time, gave him an intimate knowledge of the methods of the teaching of Sanskrit and the complete curriculum in vogue in those days, and enabled him to describe them in faithful detail. The unique treatment of the subject forms the thirty-fifth chapter of *The Records of Buddhist Practices in India*.’³ His interesting work, *A Record of the Buddhist Religion as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago* (A. D. 671–95), has been skilfully translated by J. Takakusu (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1896). This book, while invaluable for the history of Buddhism and Sanskrit literature, contributes little to the materials for political history.