Historical Geography of Ancient India c6.646

c6.646

Sārnāth (Śāraṅanātha).—The Sārnāth Stone Inscription mentions the ancient site of Sārnāth in the Benaras district, situated at a distance of about seven miles from Benaras city, where there is a large collection of Buddhist ruins (C.I.I., Vol. III). The Sārnāth Stone Inscription was dug out to the north of the Dhamek stūpa, to the south of the raised mound running east and west over the remnants of the old monasteries of the Gupta period (E.I., III, 44; E.I., IX, 319-28). Its ancient name is Isipatanamigadāya (Ṛṣipatana-mṛgadāva) where Buddha first turned the Wheel of Law.¹ Cunningham found it represented by a fine wood, covering an area of about half a mile extending from the great tope of Dhamek on the north to the Chaukundi mound on the south (Archaeological Report, I, p. 107). There was a large community of Buddhist monks at Isipatana in the 2nd century B.C. It was a monastic centre in Hiuen Tsang's time, for he found 1,500 Buddhist monks studying Hinayāna Buddhism there. As regards the origin of the Deer Park at Isipatana, readers' attention is drawn to the *Nigrodhamiga Jātaka* (*Jātaka*, I, 145ff.). The Deer Park was a forest given by the king of Benaras for the deer to wander in it unmolested.