The great centres of Buddhist learning and monastic life, mentioned by both pilgrims, were Valabhi or Balabhi in Gujarat and Nalanda.  The former was a district rather than a single locality and contained 100 monasteries with 6000 monks of the Sammitiya school.  Nalanda was in Magadha not far from Gaya.  The date of its foundation is unknown but a great temple (though apparently not the first) was built about 485 A.D.[263] Fa-Hsien mentions a village called Nala but without indicating that it was a seat of learning.  Hence it is probable that the University was not then in existence or at least not celebrated.  Hsuean Chuang describes it as containing six monasteries built by various kings and surrounded by an enclosing wall in which there was only one gate.  I-Ching writing later says that the establishment owned 200 villages and contained eight halls with more than 3000 monks.  In the neighbourhood of the monastery were a hundred sacred spots, several marked by temples and topes.  It was a resort for Buddhists from all countries and an educational as well as a religious centre.  I-Ching says that students spent two or three years there in learning and disputing after which they went to the king’s court in search of a government appointment.  Successful merit was rewarded not only by rank but by grants of land.  Both pilgrims mention the names of several celebrities connected with Nalanda.  But the worthies of the seventh century did not attain to more than scholastic eminence.  The most important literary figure of the age is Santideva of whose life nothing is known.  His writings however prove that the Buddhism of this period was not a corrupt superstition, but could inspire and nourish some of the most beautiful thoughts which the creed has produced.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 230:  See Vasilief, Le Bouddhisme, Troisieme supplement, pp. 262 ff.  Koeppen, Rel. des Buddha, I. 151.  Takakusu in J.  Pali Text Society, 1905, pp. 67-146.]

[Footnote 231:  Records, translated by Takakusu, p. 15.]

[Footnote 232:  They are mentioned in the Sarva-darsana-sangraha.]

[Footnote 233:  Kern (Indian Buddhism, p. 126) says they rejected the authority of the Sutras altogether but gives no reference.]

[Footnote 234:  See Vasilief, pp. 301 ff. and various notices in Hsuean Chuang and Watters.  Also de la Vallee Poussin’s article in E.R.E.]

[Footnote 235:  Hsuean Chuang informs us that when he was in Srughna he studied the Vibhasha of the Sautrantikas, but the precise significance of this term is not plain.]

[Footnote 236:  Fa-Hsien’s Travels, chap.  XVI.]

[Footnote 237:  This figure is probably deduced from some artificial calculation of possible heresies like the 62 wrong views enumerated in the Brahma-Jala sutra.]

[Footnote 238:  He must have lived in the fourth century as one of his works (Nanjio, 1243) was translated between 397 and 439.]