Resources Request: Development of Buddhism at Nalanda (5th-7th century)

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Padmist
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Joined: Fri Jan 01, 2021 3:12 am

Resources Request: Development of Buddhism at Nalanda (5th-7th century)

Post by Padmist »

I would like to learn how Nalanda's form of Buddhism developed. I haven't come across historical academic materials or videos on the development of Buddhism in the area from the time of the councils to the 5-6th century. Can you name any Buddhologists that talked about this period?
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Aemilius
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Re: Resources Request: Development of Buddhism at Nalanda (5th-7th century)

Post by Aemilius »

Atleast you can find information about the chinese monk Xuanzang who visited Nalanda in India.

Xuanzang [ɕɥɛ̌n.tsâŋ] (Chinese: 玄奘; fl. 602 – 664), born Chen Hui / Chen Yi (陈祎), was a Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator who traveled to India in the seventh century and described the interaction between Chinese Buddhism and Indian Buddhism during the Harsha-Vardhan Empire.

"He was then accompanied by local monks to Nalanda, the greatest Indian university of the Indian state of Bihar, where he spent at least the next two years, He visited Champa Monastery, Bhagalpur. He was in the company of several thousand scholar-monks, whom he praised. Xuanzang studied logic, grammar, Sanskrit, and the Yogacara school of Buddhism during his time at Nalanda. René Grousset notes that it was at Nalanda (where an "azure pool winds around the monasteries, adorned with the full-blown cups of the blue lotus; the dazzling red flowers of the lovely kanaka hang here and there, and outside groves of mango trees offer the inhabitants their dense and protective shade") that Xuanzang met the venerable Silabhadra, the monastery's superior. Silabhadra had dreamt of Xuanzang's arrival and that it would help spread far and wide the Holy Law. Grousset writes: "The Chinese pilgrim had finally found the omniscient master, the incomparable metaphysician who was to make known to him the ultimate secrets of the idealist systems." The founders of Mahayana idealism, Asanga and Vasubandhu, trained Dignaga, who trained Dharmapala, and Dharmapala had in turn trained Silabhadra. Silabhadra was thus in a position to make available to the Sino-Japanese world the entire heritage of Buddhist idealism, and the Cheng Weishi Lun, Xuanzang's great philosophical treatise, is none other than the Summa of this doctrine, "the fruit of seven centuries of Indian Buddhist thought."

From Nalanda, Xuanzang traveled through several kingdoms, including Pundranagara, to the capital of Pundravardhana, identified with modern Mahasthangarh, in present-day Bangladesh. There Xuanzang found 20 monasteries with over 3,000 monks studying both the Hinayana and the Mahayana. One of them was the Vāśibhã Monastery (Po Shi Po), where he found over 700 Mahayana monks from all over East India. He also visited Somapura Mahavihara at Paharpur in the district of Naogaon, in modern-day Bangladesh."
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Malcolm
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Re: Resources Request: Development of Buddhism at Nalanda (5th-7th century)

Post by Malcolm »

Padmist wrote: Wed Jan 06, 2021 2:21 pm I would like to learn how Nalanda's form of Buddhism developed. I haven't come across historical academic materials or videos on the development of Buddhism in the area from the time of the councils to the 5-6th century. Can you name any Buddhologists that talked about this period?
Davidson. The rise of Indian esoteric Buddhism

Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism 1 & 2

Etc
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