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INTRODUCTION
V
name is not mentioned by the latter. I-Tsing13, who was at Nālandā in 675-85 A.C. praises the scholarship of Dharamkirti who was dead long before. Thus Dr. Vidyabhūṣaṇa fixes 635-50 A.C. as the time of Dharmakirti, but there are several difficulties in accepting this theory from the mere silence of Hiuen-Tsang(1) Dharmakirti was a disciple of Dharmapala, the chief abbot of Nālandā whose successor was Silabhadra (at the time his age was 106 years)15 when Hiuen-Tsang came to Nālandā in 635 A.C. Now the entrance examination of Nālandā was not an easy job. From the Chinese traveller's account we know that for this examination pupils had to work hard and the percentage of the successful candidates was not large. Dharmakirti was from South India, and from Tibetan authorities we know that he was well-versed in Brahmanic lore before he was converted into Buddhism. If we accept it, then at the time he entered the Nālandā University, his age would be not less than 25 years, Dharmkirti must have completed his study under Dharmapāla, since the later successor Silabhadra is not mentioned as a teacher of Dharmakirti and if HiuenTsang entered Nālandā in the same year when Silabhadra took charge of it, the age of Dharmakirti would be 35 years at least. Even if we take Dharmakirti as of 20 years, at the time of his becoming the disciple of Dharmapala, still he would not be very young at the time of Hiuen-Tsang's arrival, as Dharmakirti was
13 V. A. Smith's the Early History of India, p. 373
14 Hist. of Ind. Log., p. 305
15 Dr. H. Ui in Indian Studies in honour of C. R. Lanman., p. 98.
