Monday, July 20, 2009

Ashokan Stupa to mark site of Mahasanghika

All the priests who were not admitted in the council organized by Mahakashyap got together in a neighboring village. They made another collection of the Sutras, including Vinaya, Abhidhrama, Pitaka and of miscellaneous pitaka and the Dharani pitaka, five pitaka in all.
This congregation was called Mahasanghika.

Xuanzang has given a description of the site where Ashoka built a stupa to mark the site of Mahasanghika. The site as mentioned by Xuanzang is 20Li west of site of 1st council. We take two buffers from site identified by Beglar and site suggested by Marshall. There are two villages which fall in the area of interest.
Both the village has rich archaeological remains, big stupa like mounds and the potshards suggesting the site to be a vibrant place at the time of Buddha.





Simraur-25º00' 59"N 85º 20' 85"E


Ratna kharjamma-25º01' 09" N 85º 19' 38" E

7 comments:

नारायण प्रसाद said...

Please correct the lat/long supplied below the pictures.

Deepak Anand said...

whats the correction to be made

नारायण प्रसाद said...

Error is similar to the earlier post. First degree, then second and then minute units are to be used. Please see what you have used.

नारायण प्रसाद said...

Sorry, please read my comment as "Error is similar to the earlier post. First degree, then minute and then second units are to be used. Please see what you have used."

Kaushal Kishore , Kharbhaia , Patna : कौशल किशोर ; खरभैया , तोप , पटना said...

can we find out tentively , the number of monastries existing in the Magadha area ( broadly in the triangle b/w Rajgriha , Patliputra and Gaya and )
the nuber of buddhist sites/monastries -SANGHARAMAS during Lord Buddhas time, Ashok , Gupta period, as mentioned by Fahien and Huen Tsang , I Tsing ,Pal Period and lastly on the evee of Turkish invasion of 1200-04 AD.the chinese travellers make mention of hundred of monastries in Magadha. Telhada being famous one.
prsenting that in tabular form will provide easy comarison.therafter these sites may be located on the ground.
Any input on the identification of famous monastry mentioned by Huen Tsang named KUKUTARAMA near Teladhika ( telhada)
regards

Deepak Anand said...

dear sir.

its very hard to tell exact no of monasteries.xuanzang say about 50 monasteries with 10K students. bit has given details of about a dozen of them. we can roughly make an estimate on the basis of archaeological remains at site if it was a monastic site or a just a ahbitation. but i still feel its very hard to reach any conclusion.

नारायण प्रसाद said...

Deepak Anand ji,
When you talk of any facts and figures based on ceratain references, I would suggest that you please quote, the complete references to make them appear truly research oriented. For example, if you say "xuanzang say about 50 monasteries with 10K students", from where did you bring this information ? Let us say it is from Thomas Watters in the "List of Travelogues & Translations" (http://nalanda-insatiableinoffering.blogspot.com/2009/06/list-of-travelogues-translation.html), Vol.I, p.167, you may quote it as [Watters (1904:I.167)]. This will save a lot of time for other researchers in verifying the facts and figures.