Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c32.s1.48

c32.s1.48

**Library.** We have already seen that I-tsing stayed for his studies at Nālandā for the long period of ten years (A.D. 675–685), during which he collected there some 400 Sanskrit texts amounting to 500,000 slokas (p. xvii). This shows that Nālandā possessed a well-equipped library. Information on the Nālandā University Library is given in the Tibetan accounts, from which we know that the Library, situated in a special area known by the poetical name of Dharmagañja (Mart of Religion), comprised three huge buildings, called Ratnasāgara, Ratnodadhi, and Ratnarañjaka, of which Ratnasāgara, which was a nine-storeyed building, specialized in the collection of rare sacred works like *Prajñāpāramitā-sūtra* and Tāntrika books like *Samājaguhya* and the like. "After the Turushka raiders had made incursions in Nālandā, the temples and chaityas there were repaired by a sage named Mudita Bhadra. Soon after this, Kukuṭasiddha, Minister of the King of Magadha, erected a temple at Nālandā, and while a religious sermon was being delivered there, two very indigent Tīrthika mendicants appeared. Some naughty young novice-monks in disdain threw washing-water on them. This made them very angry. After propitiating the sun for twelve years, they performed a yajña, fire-sacrifice, and threw living embers and ashes from the sacrificial pit into the Buddhist temples, etc. This produced a great conflagration which consumed Ratnodadhi" [Dr. S. C. Vidyābhushaṇa's *Mediaeval School of Indian Logic*, p. 146].