Till Oldham, earlier efforts could not hit the bull’s eye. Cunningham, way back in 1872-73, had wrongly identified the remains at Silao, a small village six miles to the north of Rajgir, as having been the actual site, perhaps, having missed the descriptions about it’s foundation on the banks of the Ganga. Rahul Sankrityayan, who obtained several details during his long wanderings in Tibet was perhaps close when he identified the birthplace of Dipankarajnanasri mentioned in a Tibetan text at Sahore in Bhangal district with modern Sabour in Bhagalpur, but wrongly proposed Sultanganj, in the same district and also containing ancient Buddhist ruins near the Hindu ruins on the 2 hills named as Jahangira, within and near the Ganga, as the site. Such identification was soon discarded following the comments of Nundolal Dey in 1909, since the hill at Sultanganj was located in the middle of the river and insufficient to hold the gathering as mentioned by Taranath and further since it hardly had any Buddhist traces, while prominently displaying sculptures of the Hindu pantheon. Dey closely suggested Patharghata as representing the site since Buddhist sculptures were seen scattered along with ancient Hindu remains and further since sufficient space atop the hill, which presented an elevated plain, matching the descriptions of Taranath, was available for the congregation of men.

He also identified Patharghata as having been the same as described by Hieun Tsang and proposed that the earlier Hindu sacred places were probably appropriated by the Buddhists for the establishment of Vikramshila. Regarding the earlier name of the site of Patharghata, perhaps conjecturing from the work of Franklin, he hypothesized that the ealier name of the site as Sila-Sangama could have been derived from Sila-Sangharama, which in turn represented the abbreviated form of Vikramshila-Sangharama.

To be continued....