Nalanda Mahavihara

01Founding and patrons

Xuanzang heard that a king named Shakraditya founded the first vihara here; seals found on the site and the Gupta records identify him with Kumaragupta I, in the 5th century. Later kings added monasteries one after another. Harsha gave the revenue of a hundred villages. The Pala kings were its greatest patrons, and a copper plate of Devapala records that he granted five villages, around 860, for a monastery built at Nalanda by Balaputradeva, the Shailendra king of Suvarnadvipa.

02What was taught

Xuanzang studied here around 637 under the aged abbot Shilabhadra and wrote of the gatekeepers who tested every applicant, and of the debates that ran from morning to night. Yijing, who stayed for about ten years from 675, describes the daily routine and counts more than three thousand monks. Besides Buddhist philosophy they studied grammar, logic, medicine and the Vedas. Tibetan tradition names three library buildings, Ratnasagara, Ratnodadhi and Ratnaranjaka, together called Dharmaganja.

03The end and the dig

Around 1193–1200 Bakhtiyar Khalji’s raids swept Magadha. The Tabaqat-i-Nasiri of Minhaj-us-Siraj describes his sack of a fortified vihara in Bihar, usually identified as nearby Odantapuri, where the shaven-headed inmates were killed and books no one could read were found. Nalanda fell in the same years. When Dharmasvamin came in 1235 he found the old teacher Rahula Shribhadra, past ninety, still teaching about seventy students among the ruins. The Archaeological Survey excavated the site from 1915 to 1937. UNESCO listed it in 2016, and a new Nalanda University opened nearby in 2014.

The life of this place