Nalanda

Founding and Patronage

Nalanda's monastic establishment is traditionally dated to the reign of the Gupta emperor Kumaragupta I (r. c. 415–455 CE), though later tradition also associates the site with earlier visits by the Buddha and Mahavira and a shrine attributed to Ashoka, claims for which firm archaeological confirmation is limited. The institution expanded substantially under continued royal patronage, notably from the 7th-century emperor Harshavardhana of Kannauj, and most extensively under the Pala dynasty of Bengal and Bihar (8th–12th centuries), whose rulers, especially Dharmapala, were major benefactors of Nalanda and of a wider network of Pala-era monastic universities that also included Vikramashila, Odantapuri, Somapura, and Jagaddala.

Curriculum and Intellectual Life

Nalanda functioned as a residential monastic university, or mahavihara, combining Buddhist religious training with a broad scholarly curriculum encompassing Abhidharma literature, the Yogachara and Madhyamaka schools of Mahayana philosophy, logic (hetuvidya), Sanskrit grammar, medicine, and astronomy, supported by an extensive library complex. Contemporary Chinese pilgrim accounts describe an institution supporting thousands of resident monks and teachers at its height, drawn from China, Korea, Japan, Tibet, and Southeast Asia, though modern historians treat the specific figures transmitted in these accounts — sometimes cited as up to 10,000 students — as approximate rather than precise counts.

Notable Scholars

Figures associated with Nalanda include Nagarjuna, founder of the Madhyamaka school of Mahayana philosophy, though his precise dates and direct institutional link to Nalanda as later constituted remain debated, since he likely predates the university's clearest attested peak. The 6th-century abbot and Yogachara philosopher Dharmapala and his successor Silabhadra taught there; Silabhadra instructed the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang in the 630s–640s CE. Shantarakshita and Padmasambhava, 8th-century scholars linked to Nalanda, were instrumental in transmitting Buddhism to Tibet. The mathematician-astronomer Aryabhata is sometimes popularly linked to Nalanda, though the documented evidence more firmly places him at the Kusumapura (Pataliputra) school.

Architecture and Archaeological Site

The excavated site comprises a row of stupas, votive shrines, and multiple monastery complexes (viharas) arranged around courtyards, built predominantly of red brick. Systematic excavation by the Archaeological Survey of India from the early 20th century, following the site's initial identification by Alexander Cunningham in the 1860s, uncovered eleven monasteries and several major temple structures, along with monastic cells, meditation chambers, and a large stepped water tank.

Decline and Destruction

Nalanda's decline is generally attributed to two overlapping developments: a broader waning of institutional Buddhism in eastern India during the late Pala and Sena periods, as royal patronage shifted and Buddhism's popular base diminished relative to Brahmanical Hindu traditions, and the disruption of the Turkic conquest of Bihar and Bengal at the close of the 12th century. The medieval Persian chronicler Minhaj-i-Siraj Juzjani, in his Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, records a raid on a fortified Bihar monastery, generally identified by historians with Nalanda, led by the Turkic commander Bakhtiyar Khilji around 1193, in which monks were killed and the institution devastated. Later popular retellings describe the monastic library burning for months, a detail absent from the earliest chronicle account and treated with caution by modern historians regarding its literal scale, even while the raid's serious and lasting damage to the institution is not in dispute.

Historiography: Chinese Pilgrim Accounts

The two principal firsthand sources for Nalanda's functioning at its height are Chinese Buddhist pilgrims. Xuanzang, who studied there under Silabhadra, left a detailed account in his Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (Da Tang Xiyu Ji), describing its curriculum, architecture, and daily monastic life. Yijing, who studied at Nalanda for roughly a decade slightly later in the 7th century, recorded his observations in A Record of Buddhist Practices Sent Home from the Southern Sea. The later Tibetan historian Taranatha (16th–17th century) also preserves traditions concerning Nalanda's scholars in his History of Buddhism in India, compiled centuries after the events it describes and valued more for preserving otherwise-lost oral tradition than for contemporary precision.

Modern Revival

A new Nalanda University was established near the ancient site by an Act of the Indian Parliament in 2010, conceived as an international, publicly funded institution for postgraduate study with early institutional backing from a consortium of East Asian governments. The ruins of the original site were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016.