The University of Nalanda c8.4

c8.4

In Sanskrit, a monastery is called a “*saṅghārāma*”¹. Sometimes the word “*vihāra*” is also used in the same sense. Now, by a “*saṅghārāma*” or a “*vihāra*” we understand a place where Bhikkhus [—] generally Buddhists [—] lived. “*Ārāmas*” i.e., parks were usually the places where Buddha put up with his disciples.² The resting place, where the *saṅgha* stayed, therefore, came to be called a “*saṅghārāma*”.³ These *Bhikkhus* had renounced the world; they were mendicants; their sole purpose in life was to practise and to propagate the religion of Buddha. To India such religious mendicants were not a novel thing. She had them in her Ṛṣis of the Vēdic and the Upaniṣadic times, in her *Brahmacārins*, and *Sanyāsins*. It was only the goal which differentiated the Buddhist *Bhikkhus* from the Ṛṣis and others.