Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c32.s1.2

c32.s1.2

**Early History.** Nālandā was the name of an ancient village which Cunningham [*Ancient Geography of India*, p. 468] identified with modern Baragaon, 7 miles north of Rajgir in Bihar. The earliest mention of the place is that in the Buddhist scriptures which refer to a Nālandā village near Rājagṛiha with a Pāvārika (or Pāva) Mango Park in Buddha's time [*Sum. Vil.*, p. 35; *Maj. Nik.*, vol. i, p. 377; cf. *Dīgha*, i, 221, 212; ii, 81–4]. The Jain texts carry the history earlier than the Buddhist. It was the place where Mahāvīra had met Gosāla and was counted as a *bāhira* or suburb of Rājagṛiha where Mahāvīra had spent as many as fourteen rainy seasons [*Bhagavatī Sūtra*]. A later Jain work, *Sametasikhara Tīrthamālā*, even mentions Burgaon as the then name of Nālandā. According to *Sūtrakṛitāṅga* [*SBE.*, xlv, 420], Nālandā had hundreds of houses and counted a rich citizen, Lepa, possessed of many "slaves, cows, buffaloes, sheep, horses, beds, seats, vehicles, chariots, gold and silver wares", who offered his hospitality to the Buddha and became his disciple. Next, Tārānāth, in his *History of Buddhism* (of *c.* A.D. 1500), records the tradition that Nālandā was the birthplace of Sāriputta whose *Chaitya* was seen by Asoka who added a temple to it. And "in this way the first founder of the Nālandā *vihāra* was Asoka" (p. 72). But the place did not become educationally important before the rise of Mahāyāna Buddhism at the beginning of the Christian era. Tārānāth makes Nāgārjuna spend a large part of his life at Nālandā, with which he also associates his pupil, Ārya Deva. As these two Buddhist literary celebrities are generally assigned to the fourth century A.D., we may conclude that the institution had by that time become sufficiently known to have attracted scholars from the South from which both of them hailed. The importance of the place may be traced to the further interesting fact testified to by Tārānath that a Brahman contemporary of Nāgārjuna, Suvishṇu by name, erected there as many as 108 temples for the conservation of the Abhidharma of the Mahāyāna. It is also said [*cf. JASB.*, vol. i, N.S., p. 227] that the celebrated Buddhist Logician, Diṅnāga, came on invitation to Nālandā where he defeated in argument the Brahman Sudurjaya and other Tīrtha dialecticians. Since Diṅnāga was a disciple of Vasubandhu, he must have lived about A.D. 400. This story shows that Nālandā even in the fifth century was still the seat of Brahmanical learning and the chosen home of the Tīrthikas. This fact may explain why it has not received any notice in the hands of Fa-Hien in whose evidence we come, however, upon solid historical ground.