Ancient Indian Education: An Inquiry into its Origin, Development, and Ideals c6.38

c6.38

About two hundred years later came Hiuen Tsiang (629 to 645 A.D.). He found Buddhism still flourishing, though a revival of Brāhmanism had taken place. The Mahāyāna form of Buddhism was spreading and the Hinayāna form declining. He mentions monasteries at a great many places, but also speaks of some as in ruins. Some of these monasteries were very large, and often there were groups of them in one place. Thus at Hiraṇyaparvata, on the Ganges, there were ten saṅghārāmas (or monasteries) with about four thousand monks, and at Tamralipti also there were ten with a thousand monks. At Tiladaka, only twenty-one miles west of Nālanda, there was a monastery, with regard to which he says¹:—