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268 THE GUPTA EMPIRE musicians, and notes that similar processions were common in other parts of the country. The towns of Magadha were the largest in the Gan- ges plain, which Fa-hien calls by the name of Central India or the Middle Kingdom; the people were rich and prosperous, and seemed to him to emulate each other in the practice of virtue. Charitable institutions were numerous, rest-houses for travellers were pro- vided on the highways, and the capital possessed an excellent free hospital endowed by benevolent and edu- cated citizens. " Hither come," we are told, " all poor or helpless patients suffering from all kinds of infirmities. They are well taken care of, and a doctor attends them, food and medicine being supplied according to their wants. Thus they are made quite comfortable, and, when they are well, they may go away." No such foundation was to be seen elsewhere in the world at that date, and its existence, anticipating the deeds of modern Christian charity, speaks well both for the character of the citizens who endowed it, and for the genius of the great Asoka, whose teaching still bore such wholesome fruit many centuries after his decease. The earliest hospital in Europe is said to have been opened in the tenth century. In the course of a journey of some five hundred miles from the Indus to Mathura on the Jumna, Fa-hien passed a succession of Buddhist monasteries tenanted by thousands of monks, and in the neighbourhood of Mathura found twenty of these buildings occupied by