Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c31.41

c31.41

**Literary Celebrities of the Times.** I-tsing also mentions the literary celebrities of India in his time. He refers to them either as his contemporaries or personal acquaintances who were all alive between A.D. 670-700. He says: "The following are the most distinguished teachers who now live in the West. Jñānachandra, a Master of the Law, lives in the monastery Tiladha (in Magadha); in the Nālanda monastery Ratnasiṁha (who was teacher of Hiuen Chao when he was at Nālanda about A.D. 649); in Eastern India Divākaramitra (of whom Bāṇa's *Harsha-charita* gives an interesting account too); and in the southernmost district, Tathāgatagarbha. In Śrībhoga of the Southern Sea resides Śākyakīrti who travelled all through the five countries of India in order to learn, and is at present in Śrībloja (in Sumatra) " (p. 184). To these names are to be added Rāhulamitra (p. 63) and Chandra (pp. 164, 183). The former belonged to the Tāmralipti monastery when I-tsing visited it. He was then about thirty years old; of "excellent" conduct and "exceedingly great" fame; thoroughly conversant not only with the three Piṭakas, but also with "the secular literature on the four sciences"; who "was honoured as the head of the priests in Eastern Ārya-deśa"; who had never spoken with women face to face except his mother and sister, and when questioned on this puritanism by I-tsing, answered in all humility: "I am naturally full of worldly attachment and without doing thus I cannot stop its source. Although we are not prohibited (to speak with women) by the Holy One, it may be right (to keep them off), if it is meant to prevent our evil desires." Every day he used to "read over the Ratnakūṭa-sūtra, which contains 700 verses" (p. 64). Mahāsattva Chandra lived in Eastern India and "was still alive when I-tsing visited that country". He was "like a Bodhisattva endowed with great talent" (p. 183). We have already referred to his authorship of the poem about Viśvāntara-Jātaka.