Tribes in Ancient India c31.159

c31.159

According to the *Mahāvaṃsa*, there was a large community of monks at Isipatana in the second century B.C. For we are told that at the foundation ceremony of the Mahā Thūpa in Anurādhapura, twelve thousand monks from Isipatana were present.³ Isipatana was still a monastic centre in Hsüan-Tsang’s time, for he found 1,500 monks studying the Hīnayāna there.⁴ He quotes the *Nigrodhamiga Jātaka* (*Jāt.*, I, 145ff.) to account for the origin of the Migadāya or Deer Park at Isipatana. According to him, the Deer Park was the forest which was given by the king of Benares for the deer to wander in it unmolested.