Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c29.8

c29.8

**Its Extent.** Buddhist India in Fa-Hien's time embraced a large area, extending from Udyāna on the north-western frontiers to Tāmalipti on the east, and was noted for the abundance of its monasteries, those strongholds and distributing centres of Buddhist culture which enabled it to maintain its hold upon the country, and helped to spread it evenly among the different parts thereof. In Udyāna (modern Swat) alone, where Buddhism was "very flourishing", Fa-Hien noticed no less than 500 Saṅghārāmas or monasteries peopled by monks of the Hīnayāna school (p. 28). In Pe-too or the Panjab, also, he found Buddhism very flourishing and represented by both its schools, Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna (p. 41). From this place, as he travelled south-east, he passed "by a succession of very many monasteries, with a multitude of monks who might be counted by myriads" (p. 42), until he came to Mathurā. Thence, following the course of the Yamunā river, he found, on both banks of the river, "twenty monasteries which might contain 3,000 monks"; for there "the Law of Buddha was very flourishing". Indeed "everywhere, from the Sandy Desert, in all the countries of India, the kings had been firm believers in that Law" (p. 42). But Buddhism in Fa-Hien's time had not merely an extensive but also an intensive growth. He mentions the eighteen Schools of Buddhism, of which "each one has the views and decisions of its own masters" (p. 98), while he names only three of them, viz. the Mahāsaṁghika, the Sabbatthivāda (ib.), and the Mahīṁsāsaka (p. 111).