Page 225 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - India

BIHAR & JHARKHAND  223

A View of the
Monasteries VISITORS’ CHECKLIST
Monks’ cells surround
a courtyard in each Practical Information
of the 11 monas­ Nalanda district. 90 km (56 miles)
teries. The ruins SE of Patna.
n Bihar Tourism, Nav Nalanda,
display highly
skilful brickwork. near bus station.
Open daily. &
Museum: Open Sat–Thu. &
Transport
@ from Patna.

Temple 14
Traces of painting
can be seen here
in a niche with a
pedestal, where
a large image of the
Buddha once stood.

. Dado Panels from Temple 2
This 7th­century temple’s basement,
Museum which is all that remains, has an elaborately
sculpted dado with over 200 panels carved
with deities, animals and floral motifs.

Hiuen Tsang in Nalanda
The great Chinese scholar­monk,
Hiuen Tsang, travelled across forbidding
deserts and mountains to come to
Nalanda in the early 7th century AD.
He spent 12 years both studying
and teaching here, and was dazzled
by Nalanda’s “soaring domes and
pinnacles, pearl­red pillars carved
and ornamented, and richly adorned
Brickwork balustrades”. On his return to China
Layers of much earlier he settled down at the Big Goose
construction, some of Pagoda in Xian, where he translated into
it dating back to the 3rd Chinese the Buddhist scriptures he had Chinese print of Hiuen Tsang
century BC, are visible in brought back with him from Nalanda.
the brickwork at Nalanda.

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