seems to have been common in India in the seventh century, fits in with the classification of the scholars at Nālanda given by Hiuen Tsang: first, those who were proficient in ten philosophical works, who were naturally the most numerous; second, those who had graduated in thirty; third, a select number, including the Master of the Law himself, who knew fifty works; and lastly the learned Abbot, Sīlabhadra, who was reputed master of every work which had any bearing on knowledge of the Right Law.
A sixth-century sculptured monastery of a similar type is shown in Pl. XXXII, a. It is at Undavalli, on the right bank of the Krishnā river, not far from Guntur. Structural edifices of the same kind are found in Ceylon and Cambodia. Fergusson suggests a connection between them and the seven-storied temples of Assyria, a conjecture to which much weight has been added by the recently discovered evidences of Aryan rule in the Euphrates valley.
Akbar, the Great Mogul, who revived many Indo-Aryan court traditions in the sixteenth century, built a five-storied pavilion, the Panch Mahall, at Fatehpur Sikri, which is still intact. It was probably intended as a meeting-place for the Dīn Ilāhī, the imperial Order he instituted, which, like the Buddhist Sangha, had four grades or degrees. Akbar, as Grand Master of the Order, would have taken his seat in the "upper room" under the canopy.
Of Nālanda's lofty walled enclosure, 1,600 feet long, divided into eight courts, one may find the modern counterpart in the walls and gopurams and quadrangles of South Indian temples. The dragon-pillared pavilions, "painted red and richly chiselled," where the scholars exercised their wits in philosophical disputations, one can see in many temple mandapams, the durbar-halls
