Page:The Buddhist Antiquities Of Nagarjunakonda MASI 54 Longhurst A. H..djvu/19

6 their co-religionists in Ceylon. The two buildings stand close together on the highest part of the hill and face Nagarjunakonda. At the lower end of the hill is a second monastery and two smaller apsidal temples inside the monastic courtyard, but no inscriptions were recovered from this site. There can be little doubt that the monastery built by Bodhisiri is the ruined one standing alongside of the apsidal temple containing the inscription enumerating her pious works (F. of Dr. Vogel's list).

The existence of such friendly relations between the two communities can be readily accounted for from the sea-borne trade which was carried on between the ports of Ceylon and Kantakasola, the great emporium of the Krishna delta.

This trade, as Dr. Vogel mentions, was no doubt, mainly responsible for the flourishing state of Buddhism in the Krishna valley. The Buddhists were largely recruited from the commercial classes, and it was their wealth which enabled not only the merchants’ themselves, but also their royal masters, to raise monuments of such magnificence as those at Nagarjunakonda and Amaravati. These monuments attest to the piety and the wealth of the Buddhist community in these parts during the second and third centuries of our era, In the seventh century when Hiuen Tsang visited the district, the monasteries were mostly deserted and already in ruins. The decline of Buddhism on the lower Krishna may have had other causes besides the general wane of that religion all over India, there may have been economic agents at work, such as the decline of the sea-borne trade with the West, which had caused vast quantities of Roman gold Gupta Emperor Samudragupta and the rise of powerful dynasties devoted to Brahmanism like the Pallava in the South and the Chalukya in the West.

The ruthless manner in which all the buildings at Nagirjunakonda have been destroyed is simply appalling and cannot represent the work of treasure-seekers alone as so many of the pillars, statues and sculptures have been wantonly smashed to pieces. Had there been a town close at hand as at Amarivati, one can understand the site being used as a quarry by modern builders as was so often done in India, But this never occurred at Nagirjunakonda as there are no towns and no cart roads in or out of the valley. Local tradition relates that the great Hindu philosopher and teacher Sankaricharya of medieval times came to Nagarjunakonda with a host of followers and destroyed the Buddhist monuments, Be this as it may, the fact remains that the cultivated lands in the valley on which the ruined buildings stand represent a religious grant made to Sankaracharya, and it was only with the sanction of the present Religious Head of the followers of this great teacher that I was able to conduct the excavations. This same Brahman Pontiff, who resides at Pushpagiri in the Guntur District, also owns the Srisailam temple in the Nallamalais, which no doubt was acquired in the same manner, as it seems to have been a Buddhist site originally.

The inscriptions recovered from Nagarjunakonda show that in the second and third centuries A.D., the ancient city of Vijayapuri must have been one of the largest and most important Buddhist settlements in Southern India and a