The University of Nalanda c2.4

c2.4

This preface, contributed at the request of Mr. Sankalia, is being written in front of another Buddhist [illegible text] which may also have been in communication with Nālandā. Bāmiyān, in the centre of Afghanistan, was the last outpost of Buddhism towards the West. Hiuen Tsiang passed through it in the first half of the 7th century, and from Bāmiyān he visited India and Nālandā. Bāmiyān was in those days the centre of communications between India and Central Asia. Situated practically midway between Purushapura (Peshawar) and Bactres (Balkh), this valley (which was even then adorned with the beauties of nature that are reflected in the waters descending from the Koh-i-Baba snows) inherited the religion of India and the art of Bactriana. The large Buddhist communities that practised ascetism in this place, have left marks of their devotion to their Master and of their fondness for art, in the sculptures and paintings that still adorn their dwellings; their learning and condition of life is revealed in the scanty fragments of MSS. lately found in one of the caves by the French Archæological Delegation, which have been studied by Monsieur Silvain Lévi.