Historical Geography of Ancient India c8.359

c8.359

Nālandā was influential, prosperous, full of folk, crowded with people devoted to the Exalted Buddha. It contained many hundreds of buildings. A rich and prosperous householder of Nālandā had a beautiful bathing hall containing many hundreds of pillars. There was a park called Hastiyāma (*Jaina Sūtras*, II, 419ff.). The village of Baragaon or Nālandā surrounded by ancient tanks and ruined mounds possessed very fine specimens of sculpture. The remains there consist of numerous masses of brick ruins, among which the most conspicuous is the row of lofty conical mounds running north to south. These high mounds are the remains of gigantic temples attached to the famous University of Nālandā. There are many monasteries and several inscribed domes scattered over the ruins of Baragaon. There are many objects worthy of notice at Baragaon, as for example, the colossal figure of the ascetic Buddha, a life-size ascetic Buddha and a number of smaller figures in a Hindu temple; two low mounds to the north of the village of Baragaon, one having a four-armed image of Viṣṇu on Garuḍa and the other having two figures of Buddha seated on chairs; a Jain temple having the same style of architecture as the Great Temple at Buddha Gayā. There are several Jain figures. There are tanks which surround the ruins on all sides (vide Cunningham, Archaeological Survey of India Reports, 1862-1865, Vol. I, pp. 28ff.; Annual Report, Archaeological Survey of India, 1915-16, Pt. I, pp. 12-13). Besides there are many statuettes and seals discovered at the site of Nālandā. The ruins of many monasteries have been discovered and the official seal of the Nālandā establishment is an important discovery made by the Archaeological Department (Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India, Pt. I, 1916-17, p. 15). All available evidences point to the fact that within a few years of Buddha's enlightenment Buddhist headquarters were established in many important places among which the name of Nālandā occurs (vide B. C. Law, Life and Work of Buddhaghosa, p. 49). T. W. Rhys Davids points out that Nālandā was one of the stopping places for those who took up the trade route between Sāvatthī and Rājagṛha (Buddhist India, p. 103). In the 5th century A. D. Narasimha Gupta of the Gupta Dynasty built a brick temple more than 300 ft. high at Nālandā in Magadha, which was remarkable for the delicacy of its decoration and the lavishness of its furniture (V. A. Smith, Early History of India, 4th ed., p. 329).