Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c30.88

c30.88

**Dhanakaṭaka (Bezwada).** In the country of Dhanakaṭaka (modern Bezwada) was a crowd of ruined monasteries, of which "about twenty were in use with 1,000 Brethren, mostly adherents of the Mahāsaṁghika system". Near the capital were the Pūrvaśilā and Avaraśilā monasteries built on steep hills the sides of which were utilized in their construction curiously identified by Burgess with the great Amarāvatī Tope. According to the *Life*, the pilgrim spent here several months, studying "certain Abhidharma treatises of the Mahāsaṁghika school with two local brethren whom he in turn instructed in Mahāyāna scriptures" (p. 217). In the neighbourhood is a mountain-cliff [identified as "the isolated steep mountain to the south of Bezwada" (p. 221)], associated with the famous Buddhist scholar Bhā(va)viveka, author of two works in which he makes use of Sāṁkhya terminology in explaining the system of Nāgārjuna.