Yijing mentions Mṛgaśikhāvana (as "Mi-li-kia-si-kia-po-no") while describing the itinerary of the earlier Korean traveler Hwui-lun alias Prajnavarma, stating that in ancient times, king Che-li-ki-to built a temple for Chinese pilgrims near it.
D. C. Ganguly located Mi-li-kia-si-kia-po-no in Murshidabad district of West Bengal state of India, by taking 1 yojana as 5.71 miles.
[9][10] Some scholars, such as B. P. Sinha identify Mṛgaśikhāvana with the deer park of Sarnath, theorizing that Hwui-lun erroneously mentioned its location as east of Nalanda.
The original homeland of the Gupta dynasty is uncertain, and much of the debate on this topic among modern historians hinges around the identification of Mṛgaśikhāvana's location.
Historian A. K. Narain (1983) noted that contemporary scholarship is unaware of Gupta's religious affiliation, due to the lack of surviving evidence.
[14] This latter scenario would have been comparable with the later Gupta monarchs, who were predominantly Vaishnavites, but under whose regimes heterodox religious movements such as Buddhism and Jainism were allowed to flourish.