Though India is no longer a Buddhist country, Buddhism held its place among Indian faiths for nearly seventeen centuries (500 B.C.--A.D. 1200). During this long stretch of time the Buddhist monks were organized in Sanghas in most parts of the country and their activities and achievements have profoundly influenced India`s traditional culture. There are monumental remains of Buddhist monastic life scattered all over India: in the south there are about a thousand cave-monasteries, among them Ajanta, world-famous for its exquisite mural paintings; in the north, less spectacular, the ruins of monastic edifices from Taxila in the west to Paharpur in the east. A connected history of the Buddhist monks of ancient India, their activities, their monastic establishments and their contributions to Indian culture, is available for the first time in this work, which is remarkable also for its pervading human interest. In reconstructing the history of the emperors and kings who were patrons of Buddhism, the early missionaries and the illustrious monk-scholars of later times, the author has used sources in four languages--Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan. Contents The primitive sangha, The asoka-satavahana age 250 BC-AD 100 and its legacy, In the Gupta age (AD 300-550) and after, Eminent monk-Scholars of India, Monastic Universities, (AD 500-1200), Bib., Index.

The rich Indian medical tradition is usually traced back to Sanskrit sources, the earliest of which cannot much antedate the common era. In this book Kenneth Zysk shows that Buddhist scriptures some centuries older than this contain abundant information about medical practice, and are our earliest evidence for a rational approach to medicine in India. He argues that Buddhism and the medical tradition were mutually supportive: that Buddhist monks and people associated with them contributed to the development of medicine, while their skills as physical as well as spiritual healers enhanced their reputation and popular support. Drawing on a wide range of textual, archaeological, and secondary sources, Zysk first presents an overview of the history of Indian Medicine in its religious context. He then examines primary literature from the Pali Buddhist Canon and from the Sanskrit treatises of Bhela, Caraka, and susruta. By close comparison of these two bodies of literature Zysk convincingly shows how the theories delineated in the medical classics actually became practice.

On Buddhist monastic life in ancient India.

The Book presents a brief account of the great higher learning Buddhist Institutions of Ancient India. Some of those flourished several centuries before the higher learning institutions of the then western world. The reader may have comprehensive ideas of the education imparted in those institutions during the long period of about 2,000 years beginning with the 5th century BC and ending with the 12th century AD. The Universities of ancient India do not connote all the features possessed by the modern Universities of the East and the West of present day. But those Universities of ancient India had also impressive teaching and research program. Many of the teachers of those universities were scholars of very high eminence and repute. In addition, there existed very ideal teacher-student relationship, which has no parallel in the long history of educational thought and practice. This book will enable the reader to compare the present institutions with those of ancient India and realize that the centers of high learning in ancient India were unique in their organization and scholarship during those distant times when elsewhere in the world very few had thought of organized education at the university level.