Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c32.s6.57

c32.s6.57

It will be seen from the above account that, contrary to the prevailing opinion, Indian scholars played a far more active and prominent part than Chinese scholars (of the eminence of Fa-Hien, Hiuen Tsang, or I-tsing) in introducing Indian thought to China, and maintaining a fruitful cultural intercourse with that country, on the basis of the creation of a new Buddhist Literature in Chinese through so many centuries. This is a story of self-sacrifice in the cause of Learning and Religion which has hardly a parallel. The self-sacrifice involved not merely facing physical risks of life attending the pilgrim's progress from the Indian frontiers to China, along difficult and dangerous land-routes crossing steep hills, and inhospitable deserts, and through politically unsettled and hostile regions. It also meant a life of long or permanent exile where only a burning zeal for learning could keep up the drooping spirit. It again meant unusual linguistic capacity in mastering a difficult and strange language like Chinese into which abstruse Sanskrit works had to be translated in forms intelligible to the Chinese. It was the same self-sacrifice of Indian scholars that found for itself another vast field of work in Tibet whose religion and civilization it had built up by the continued work of centuries. It was a credit to the many centres of Indian Learning where such efficient linguistic schools of Tibetan and Chinese had been built up, and where scholars were so efficiently trained not merely in intellect and academic studies, but also in character, in enthusiasm for the truths taught, in capacity for the utmost self-sacrifice in the sacred cause of Learning, and carrying it to distant and unknown foreign countries. The gradual growth of a Greater India was the work of these Indian Schools. It is a romance of Indian History, and a unique achievement in the annals of mankind.