Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c30.138

c30.138

**Spread of Education.** We have now considered the kind and type of intellectual and moral training provided for in these Buddhist monasteries. The total number of such monasteries (about 5,000 in our pilgrim's computation), each of which was a centre of higher education, shows how largely and evenly was such education diffused in the country. The education spread both intensively and extensively. Hiuen Tsang very often gives us notices of large monasteries flourishing in the vicinity of one another in the same local area. Within only 20 miles of Nālandā, for instance, there was the large and famous Tiloshika Monastery peopled with 1,000 Brethren and hardly less renowned than Nālandā as a seat of learning. According to our pilgrim, 'it was a rendezvous of eminent scholars who flocked to it from all regions." Magadha, of all the provinces of India, shows the most intensive spread of education in our pilgrim's account.