Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c30.44

c30.44

**Matipura.** At Matipura, "there were above ten Buddhist monasteries with above 800 Brethren, mostly adherents of the Sarvāstivādin school of the Hīnayāna" (ib.). In the neighbourhood was a small monastery famous as the place where "the Śāstra-master Guṇaprabha composed above 100 treatises" (ib.). At a distance from it was another monastery with above 200 Brethren, all Hīnayānists, where the Śāstra-master, Saṁghabhadra, who was "a profound scholar in the Vaibhāsha śāstras of the Sarvāstivādin school" ended his life (p. 325). He was the contemporary of Vasubandhu, the great Buddhist Doctor far-famed as peerless in dialectics, the author of Abhidharmakośa-śāstra, to refute whose doctrines Saṁghabhadra had left a treatise (ib.). From the *Life*, we learn that Hiuen Tsang remained for several months in this district, studying the work of Guṇaprabha named *Tattvasandeśa-śāstra* and that he met hèra a ninety-year old disciple of his, Mitrasena by name, who was a profound scholar in Buddhist learning (p. 328).