Vikramashila

Foundation

Vikramashila was established by the Pala king Dharmapala in the late eighth or early ninth century, at a time when the dynasty was supporting Buddhist institutions across eastern India. It grew into one of the two principal monastic universities alongside Nalanda, and the two maintained a close relationship, with scholars moving between them.

Organisation

The excavated remains show a very large square monastery of over two hundred cells around a courtyard, with a cruciform stupa at the centre and a library building. The scale indicates a resident population in the hundreds or more.

Teaching covered logic, metaphysics, grammar and ritual, with a particular concentration on tantra. The institution maintained a formal system of gate scholars, senior teachers stationed at the entrances who examined those seeking admission, and it certified graduates — an unusually institutional arrangement.

Transmission to Tibet

Vikramashila's most consequential role was in the transmission of Buddhism to Tibet. Atisha Dipankara Shrijnana, one of its senior figures, travelled to Tibet in 1042 at the invitation of a western Tibetan king, and his teaching there began the phase of Tibetan Buddhism known as the later diffusion.

A large proportion of the Indian texts translated into Tibetan came through Vikramashila's scholars, and much of that literature survives only in Tibetan, the Sanskrit originals having been lost when the institution was destroyed.

Destruction

Vikramashila was sacked around 1200 by forces under Bakhtiyar Khalji during the campaigns in Bihar and Bengal that also destroyed Nalanda and Odantapuri. The site was lost until identified and excavated in the twentieth century at Antichak in Bhagalpur district.

The destruction of these institutions within a few years removed the libraries, the teaching lineages and the endowments on which Indian Buddhism depended, and the tradition did not survive in the region.