Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c32.s6.19

c32.s6.19

**Indian Scholars working as Missionaries in China.** According to Maspero, the Chinese emperor Ming-ti (a.d. 58–75) interested himself in Buddhism and sent to India an embassy of eighteen persons to study its doctrines. They returned with Buddhist holy books, statues, and two Hindu monks named Kāśyapa Mātaṅga and Dharmaratna. Kāśyapa was a Śramaṇa of Central India and a Brāhmaṇa by caste, but was in Gandhāra when he was invited by the Chinese envoy to come to China. He faced all the difficulties of the journey from Gandhāra to China through Chinese Turkistan over steep hills and across the desert of Gobi. He had also to face the difficulties of language. Sanskrit was then spoken up to Khotan. The Indian Paṇḍit and his associate picked up only the local frontier dialect of China on their journey, and later regular Chinese, into which they translated a Buddhist sūtra and five other Sanskrit works.