India: The Stormy Revival of an International University

New York Review of Books ^ | August 13, 2015 issue | Amartya Sen

[SunkenCiv]

Classes began in early September last year at a small new international university, called Nalanda, in Bihar in northeast India -- one of the most backward parts of the country. Only two faculties -- history, and environment and ecology -- were holding classes for fewer than twenty students. And yet the opening of Nalanda was the subject of headlines in all the major newspapers in India and received attention across the world. "Ritorno a Nalanda" was the headline in Corriere della Sera.

The new venture is meant to be a revival of Nalanda Mahavihara, the oldest university in the world, which began in the early fifth century. By the time the first European university was established in Bologna in 1088, Nalanda had been providing higher education to thousands of students from Asian countries for more than six hundred years...

By the seventh century Nalanda had ten thousand students, receiving instruction not only in Buddhist philosophy and religious practice, but also in a variety of secular subjects, including languages and literatures, astronomy and other sciences, architecture and sculpture, as well as medicine and public health.

As an institution of higher learning, where the entry qualifications were high, Nalanda was supported by a network of other educational organizations that provided information about Nalanda and also helped to prepare students for studying there...

After more than seven hundred years of successful teaching, Nalanda was destroyed in the 1190s by invading armies from West Asia [IOW, muslims], which also demolished the other universities in Bihar... All the teachers and monks in Nalanda were killed and much of the campus was razed to the ground. Special care was taken to demolish the beautiful statues of Buddha and other Buddhist figures that were spread across the campus.

[SunkenCiv]

A rendering of the new campus of Nalanda University, to be built in the town of Rajgir, Bihar, India, a few miles away from the original university, which was founded in the early fifth century and destroyed in the 1190s [Vastu Shilpa Consultants

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks CarrotAndStick.

[MUDDOG]

the first European university was established in Bologna in 1088

Uh, the University of Constantinople was founded in 425.

[Sherman Logan]

The Platonic Academy was founded in 387 BC.

The Museum and Library of Alexandria was founded sometime around 300 BC.

It is pretty much certain that Egyptians, Sumerians and others had something along the lines of universities millenia before this.

[Jyotishi]

“The world’s first university was established at Takshashilla, well known as Taxila (in India’s northwest region), in approximately 700 bce. Another large university was founded at Nalanda in Bihar circa 500 ce. According to Chinese traveler Hiuen Tsang, the Taxila campus housed 10,000 students and 2,000 professors. Students from as far away as China came to obtain a religion-based education.”

Source: Hinduism Today Magazine, March 1998
http://www.hinduismtoday.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=4717

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Jyotishi.

[colorado tanker]

The famous Buddhist monk and pilgrim Xuanzang spent two years in Nalanda studying. He wanted to study Buddhism in its purest form, so in the seventh century he traveled the Silk Road to what is now Afghanistan and from there went to India. IIRC, he visited the Buddhas of Bamiyan, destroyed by the same Religion of Peace that destroyed Nalanda.