146 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY
mirable. They cannot be described." It explains the tendency of Buddhistic monasteries to become universities. It explains the synthetic tendencies of the faith, which in the time of Kanishka could already include eighteen schools of doctrine declared to be mutually compatible, and not defiant. It also explains, turning to another subject altogether, why the first written version of the old Puranas should always so evidently be an edited version of an ancient original. It visualises for us the change from Pali to Sanskrit, and it justifies the sparseness of written archives in matters of Indian history. These were evidently memorised. On this point indeed Fa-Hian constantly tells us that kings granting lands to the Buddhistic orders engrave their deeds on iron, and we can only feel that as long as this was so, their non-survival is not to be wondered at. It must have been at a comparatively later period that brass and copper came to be used for a similar purpose, with the desired effect of permanence. Curiously enough, in Tamralipti there is no mention of difficulty regarding manuscripts. Nor again in Ceylon. In the last-named kingdom we know that the writing down had begun at least two or three centuries before the visit of Fa-Hian, and he would seem to have benefited by this fact. We gather then that as Magadha and Kosala were the source of Buddhistic doctrine in its different phases, and the source of successive waves of Buddhistic symbolism, so also they were the first region to feel the impulse of a
