How Nalanda, world’s 1st residential university, rose from ashes after 900 years

To go to the new Nalanda University, remodelled after the 1,600-year-old Nalanda Mahavihar, one earlier needed to get off at Bakhtiyarpur railway station.

The railhead is named after Bakhtiyar Khilji, the Turco-Afghan invader, who is blamed for turning the world’s first residential university into a ruin. It is said that the fire that was started by Khilji in the library raged for three months, devouring over nine million manuscripts.

“Nalanda is not just a name, it is an identity and respect. Nalanda is a value and mantra…fire can burn books, but it can’t destroy knowledge,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Wednesday, while inaugurating the new campus of Nalanda University.

Referred to as the medieval Ivy League, the Nalanda Mahavihar came up 500 years before Oxford University and was the seat of knowledge of the known world, where over 11,000 students from across the globe came for studies.

Not many institutions reached the glory that the Mahavihar in Magadh attained. To put it in context, the time when Nalanda attracted students and teachers from the world over, Europe, the home of Oxford and Cambridge, was still in the shadows of the Dark Ages.

Nalanda, which was visited by scholars from the world over, according to archaeologist A Ghosh, “acquired a celebrity spread all over the east as a centre of Buddhist theology and educational activities”.

THE BIRTH OF NALANDA MAHAVIHAR IN GUPTA EMPIRE

Established in the 5th century and flourishing for over 700 years, Nalanda was not just a centre of learning but a hub of intellectual and cultural exchange.

Nalanda’s inception can be traced back to the Gupta Empire, a period often called the Golden Age of India. It was during this period, under the patronage of Kumaragupta I (450 AD), that Nalanda was established. However, the site where the mahavihar came up used to be a stupa site from the Ashokan times, atleast 600 years before Kumaragupta’s reign.

The university’s name was derived from “Nalam” (lotus) and “da” (to give), symbolising the blossoming of knowledge. However, Chinese traveller, Hiuen Tsang, who travelled to India during the reign of King Harsha Vardhan in the 7th century and visited Nalanda, attributed the name to a Naga (snake), who lived in a nearby pond.

Nalanda distinguished itself from the other centres of contemporary learning with a comprehensive curriculum that spanned a broad spectrum of subjects.

While it is known for the Buddhist teachings, the Mahavihar also offered logic, grammar, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy. The interdisciplinary approach attracted scholars from across Asia, including China, Korea, Japan, Tibet, Mongolia, Turkey, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia, making Nalanda a melting pot of cultural and intellectual diversity.

LEGENDARY CAMPUS AND LIBRARY OF NALANDA MAHAVIHAR

Nalanda’s campus was an architectural marvel of its time. Made of red bricks, votive stupas, temples, monasteries (viharas), the most striking feature of the knowledge centre is its extensive libraries. The complex housed thousands of resident scholars and monks, living and learning in an environment designed to foster intellectual growth and spiritual development.

The university’s libraries were collectively known as Dharmaganja. They comprised three main buildings: Ratnasagara (Ocean of Jewels), Ratnodadhi (Sea of Jewels), and Ratnaranjaka (Jewel-adorned). These repositories contained vast collections of manuscripts, texts, and palm-leaf scriptures, some of which were rare and priceless, brought in from various places the students and monks came in from.

Nalanda’s pedagogy was equally remarkable. The university employed a rigorous system of oral and written examinations, seminars, and debates.

Teachers were distinguished scholars, many of whom authored seminal works in their respective fields. One of the most illustrious teachers was Aryabhata, the renowned mathematician and astronomer, who gifted the world ‘zero’.

In fact, the village of Aryabhatta was hardly a few kilometres from Nalanda Mahavihar.

WHO DESTROYED NALANDA?
Despite its glory, Nalanda’s fate was sealed by a series of invasions that swept across the Indian subcontinent.

The first significant blow came in the 12th century when Bakhtiyar Khilji, a Turkish military general of the Mamluk Dynasty, laid waste to the university. Khilji, leading his forces in 1193 CE, targeted Nalanda as part of his campaign to conquer northern India, according to the 19th century historian Minhaju-s Siraj.

Locals often describe how Khilji’s forces set fire to the grand libraries, reducing centuries of accumulated knowledge to ashes. The burning is said to have lasted several months, with the massive collections of manuscripts feeding the flames. Monks and scholars were massacred too.

However, the end of the Nalanda Mahavihar is debated in historical circles, due to the lack and ambiguous nature of archaeological and literary evidence.

With the decline of the Hinayan and Mahayana Buddhism, the Buddhism practised at NaIanda was tantricised by the 11th Century. It lost the lustre it had back in the day.

“It is evident from the account of Hiuen Tsang that Buddhism was slowly decaying when he visited India. Important centres of early Buddhism were deserted, though some new centres, such as Nalanda in the east, Valabhi in the west and Kanchi in the south, had sprung up,” wrote A Ghosh in his 1985 book ‘Nalanda’.

Subsequent invasions and the changing political landscape ensured that Nalanda never regained its former prominence. It was forgotten even by the locals, until the site was excavated by Sir Alexander Cunningham in the 19th century and later by Sir John Marshall.

Nine hundred years after its decline, the Nalanda Mahavihar has been brought back by Nalanda University, modelled around the 1,600-year-old institution. It is as if the mediaeval institution has risen from the ashes of its library. Books can be burnt and libraries can be razed to the ground, but wisdom survives all plunderers.