nalanda viswavidyalaya
The famous Buddhist University of Nalanda, and the patrons of the great institution of learning.
According to famous chinese traveller “Hiuen Tsiang” the Buddhagupta, was the son and successor of Sakraditya. Tathagatagupta was the immediate successor of Buddhagupta.
This a rough list of patrons-
Sakraditya – Kumara Gupta I.
Buddhagupta-raja – Skanda Gupta.
Tathagatagupta-raja – Pura Gupta.
Baladitya-raja – Narasimha Gupta.
Giving twenty-five years of reign on an average to the four kings mentioned by Hiuen Tsiang. Baladitya-raja was contemporary of Mihirakula whose reign began in 502. So the year 427 is the initial year of Sakraditya’s reign. This date comes very near the earliest known date of Kumaragupta I, that is 415-6, of the Bilsad inscription. Accordingly the foundation of Nalanda took place round 427. In fact Fa-hien, who passed through Nalanda in the early years of the fifth century, did not see the university as yet.
The Gupta kings patronized these monasteries, built in old Kushan architectural style. Emperor Ashoka and Harshavardhana were some of its most famous patrons who built temples, monasteries and viharas here. It had eight separate compounds, 10 temples, meditation halls, classrooms, lakes and parks. It had a nine-story library where monks meticulously copied books and documents so that individual scholars could have their own collections.
Around 2,000 teachers and 10,000 students from all over the Buddhist world lived and studied in this first residential international university of the world. This was a true architectural, philosophical and cultural masterpiece. Nalanda was also the most global university of its time, attracting pupils and scholars from Korea, Japan, China, Tibet, Indonesia, Persia and Turkey.
The university died a slow death about the the same time when some of the great European universities, like Oxford, England, and Bologna, Italy, were just getting started. And more than half a millennium before Harvard or Yale were established. Its demise was a result of waning enthusiasm for Buddhism in India, declining financial support from successive Indian monarchs.
But Nalanda represents much of what Asia could use today — a great global university that reaches deep into the region’s underlying cultural heritage. It will give Asia the kind of soft power of influence and attraction that it doesn’t have now. Nalanda was a Buddhist university, but it was remarkably open to many interpretations of that religion. Today it could perform a vital role consistent with its original ethos — to be an institution devoted to religious reconciliation on a global scale.
The real power comes from great ideas and from people who generate them, and truly great universities are some of the strongest assets. How Asia approaches the Nalanda will be a great test.
