Nālandā (Hindi/Sanskrit/Pali: नालंदा) is the name of an ancient center of higher learning in Bihar, India. The site of Nalanda is located in the Indian state of Bihar, about 55 miles south east of Patna, and was a Buddhist center of learning from 427 to 1197 CE. It has been called "one of the first great universities in recorded history". Some buildings were constructed by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka the Great (273–232 BCE) which is an indication of an early establishment of the Buddhist learning center Nalanda. The Gupta Empire also patronized some monasteries. According to historians, Nalanda flourished between the reign of the Gupta king Śakrāditya (also known as Kumāragupta, reigned 415-55) and 1197 CE, supported by patronage from Buddhist emperors like Harsha as well as later emperors from the Pala Empire. The complex was built with red bricks and its ruins occupy an area of 14 hectares. At its peak, the university attracted scholars and students from as far away as China, Greece, and Persia.Nalanda was sacked by Turkic Muslim invaders under Bakhtiyar Khalji in 1193, a milestone in the decline of Buddhism in India. The great library of Nalanda University was so vast that it is reported to have burned for three months after the Mughals set fire to it, sacked and destroyed the monasteries, and drove the monks from the site. In 2006, Singapore, China, India, Japan, and other nations, announced a proposed plan to restore and revive the ancient site as Nalanda International University
Details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda
Pusphagiri (Also Puspagiri Mahavihara) was one of the earliest buddhist mahavihara spread across Cuttack and Jajpur district, Odisha (ancient Kalinga) in 3rd century AD [1] [2] and flourished until the 11th century in India.[3][4] Today, its ruins lie atop the Langudi hills, low hills about 90 km from the Mahanadi delta, in the Jajpur and Cuttack district in Odisha.[5] The actual mahavihara campus, spread across three hilltops, contained several stupas, monasteries, temples, and sculptures in the architectural style of the Gupta period.[6] The Kelua river, a tributary of the Brahmani river of Odisha flows to the north east of Langudi hills, and must have provided a picturesque background for the mahavihara. The entire mahavihara is distributed across three campuses on top of the three adjoining hills, Lalitgiri, Ratnagiri, and Udayagiri.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puspagiri
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka
Ratnagiri: Part of Puphagiri Mahavihara
Puphagiri ranks along with Nalanda, Vikramshila and Takshila universities as one of the primary institutions of higher learning in ancient India. The three universities were mentioned in the travelogues of the famous Chinese traveller Xuanzang (Huien Tsang), who visited it in 639 CE, as Puphagiri Mahavihara,[7][8] as well as in medieval Tibetan texts.
_______
Nalanda University (Skt. Nālandā, Tib. ནཱ་ལེནྡྲ་) was the largest and most famous of the ancient Indian monastic universities, and is associated with some of the greatest figures in Mahayana Buddhism. In its heyday, it was home to some ten thousand students who gained admission only after successfully answering a serious of philosophical questions put to them by scholar-gatekeepers. It is located in what is now the state of Bihar, India.
Nalanda is mentioned in the sutras as a place where the Buddha often taught. Although some viharas may have been built on the site in the centuries after the Buddha's parinirvana, it is now generally agreed that the founding of the great university dates back to the reign of the Gupta king Kumaragupta I, who ruled from 415 to 455 and is referred to as Shakraditya (Śakrāditya) in many sources.[1] Several monasteries were constructed on the site during the Gupta period, and at some point, possibly during the sixth century, they were enclosed within a wall with a single gate. By the time the Chinese pilgrim Hsüan-tsang visited in the seventh century, entrance to the university could only be gained by those who passed the admission test put to them by learned gatekeepers. Hsüan-tsang stayed for a period of about six years, during which he studied Yogachara philosophy. I-tsing (635-713), another Chinese pilgrim, who visited after Hsüan-tsang and stayed for about ten years, reports that there were about 3500 monks in residence at that time.
The biography of Chak Lotsawa explains how he visited the site, then largely in ruins, in 1235 AD. While there, he studied with the master Rahula Shribhadra, a specialist in Sanskrit grammar who was in his nineties and was teaching a class of about seventy students. The biography includes a moving account of how, on one occasion, the lotsawa was forced to carry his aged teacher on his back in order to flee a band of 300 Muslim soldiers after everyone else had fled the monastery.
Buildings
The lecture halls cover many acres of land lined up along a long road that divides the teaching area from the adjoining temples. Along the edge of each lecture hall were rooms for the monks and their teachers. What remains is for the most part no more than several meters high, but the plan of the monasteries is still clearly in evidence.
Stupa of Shariputra
One of the most prominent features of the Nalanda University ruins is the stupa built in honor of Shariputra, who, by tradition, was born and also died in the area. Jetsun Taranatha explains that Nalanda is the place where Shariputra was born and attained arhathood. According to a prophecy the Mahayana teachings would spread greatly if they were taught at the place of Shariputra, but if taught at the place of Maudgalyayana although the Buddhists would be very powerful, the teachings would not spread as widely.
Library
The great library of Nalanda University was so vast that it is reported to have burned for three months after the Muslim invaders set fire to it, sacked and destroyed the monasteries, and drove the monks from the site.
Curriculum
The curriculum at Nalanda consisted not only of Hinayana and Mahayana philosophy but also medicine, logic, astrology, and many other subjects as well.
Legacy
Buddha Shakyamuni and the Seventeen Nalanda Masters
Nalendra Monastery, founded by Rongtön Sheja Kunrig in 1436, was named after Nalanda, reflecting a common Tibetan spelling of the word. His Holiness the Dalai Lama rarely starts a teaching without mentioning that it is in the "great tradition of Nalanda University"
_____________
Oldest university on earth is reborn after 800 years
Nalanda, an ancient seat of learning destroyed in 1193, will rise again thanks to a Nobel-winning economist
BY ANDREW BUNCOMBE Wednesday 04 August 2010
During the six centuries of its storied existence, there was nothing else quite like Nalanda University. Probably the first-ever large educational establishment, the college – in what is now eastern India – even counted the Buddha among its visitors and alumni. At its height, it had 10,000 students, 2,000 staff and strove for both understanding and academic excellence. Today, this much-celebrated centre of Buddhist learning is in ruins.
After a period during which the influence and importance of Buddhism in India declined, the university was sacked in 1193 by a Turkic general, apparently incensed that its library may not have contained a copy of the Koran. The fire is said to have burned and smouldered for several months.
Now this famed establishment of philosophy, mathematics, language and even public health is poised to be revived. A beguiling and ambitious plan to establish an international university with the same overarching vision as Nalanda – and located alongside its physical ruins – has been spearheaded by a team of international experts and leaders, among them the Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen. This week, legislation that will enable the building of the university to proceed is to be placed before the Indian parliament.
"At its peak it offered an enormous number of subjects in the Buddhist tradition, in a similar way that Oxford [offered] in the Christian tradition – Sanskrit, medicine, public health and economics," Mr Sen said yesterday in Delhi.
"It was destroyed in a war. It was [at] just the same time that Oxford was being established. It has a fairly extraordinary history – Cambridge had not yet been born." He added, with confidence: "Building will start as soon as the bill passes."
The plan to resurrect Nalanda – in the state of Bihar – and establish a facility prestigious enough to attract the best students from across Asia and beyond, was apparently first voiced in the 1990s. But the idea received more widespread attention in 2006 when the then Indian president, APJ Abdul Kalam set about establishing an international "mentoring panel". Members of the panel, chaired by Mr Sen, include Singapore's foreign minister, George Yeo, historian Sugata Bose, Lord Desai and Chinese academic Wang Banwei.
A key challenge for the group is to raise sufficient funds for the university. It has been estimated that $500m will be required to build the new facility, with a further $500m needed to sufficiently improve the surrounding infrastructure. The group is looking for donations from governments, private individuals and religious groups. The governments of both Singapore and India have apparently already given some financial commitments.
Mr Sen said the new Nalanda project, whose ancestor easily predated both the University of Al Karaouine in Fez, Morocco – founded in 859 AD and considered the world's oldest, continually-operating university, and Cairo's Al Azhar University (975 AD), had already attracted widespread attention from prestigious institutions. The universities of Oxford, Harvard, Yale, Paris and Bologna had all been enthusiastic about possible collaboration.
Some commentators believe a crucial impact of the establishment of a new international university in India would be the boost it gave to higher education across Asia. A recent survey of universities by the US News and World Report magazine listed just three Asian institutions – University of Tokyo, University of Hong Kong and Kyoto University – among the world's top 25.
Writing when plans for Nalanda were first announced, Jeffery Garten, a professor in international business and trade at the Yale School of Management, said in the New York Times: "The new Nalanda should try to recapture the global connectedness of the old one. All of today's great institutions of higher learning are straining to become more international... but Asian universities are way behind." He added: "A new Nalanda could set a benchmark for mixing nationalities and culture, for injecting energy into global subject. Nalanda was a Buddhist university but it was remarkably open to many interpretations of that religion. Today, it could... be an institution devoted to global religious reconciliation."
As Mr Garten pointed out, the new university will have much to live up to. The original, located close to the border with what is now Nepal, was said to have been an architectural masterpiece, featuring 10 temples, a nine-storey library where monks copied books by hand, lakes, parks and student accommodation. Its students came from Korea, Japan, China, Persia, Tibet and Turkey, as well as from across India. The 7th Century Chinese pilgrim, Xuanzang, visited Nalanda and wrote detailed accounts of what he saw, describing how towers, pavilions and temples appeared to "soar above the mists in the sky [so that monks in their rooms] might witness the birth of the winds and clouds".
Yet the project is not without controversy. Mr Sen was yesterday asked about reports that claimed the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader who has lived for more than 50 years in the Indian town of Dharamsala, had been deliberately omitted from the project to avoid antagonising potential Chinese investors and officials. He replied: "He is heading a religion. Being religiously active may not be the same as [being] appropriate for religious studies."
The Indian authorities believe the establishment of the college would act as a global reminder of the nation's history as a centre of learning and culture. Politician Nand Kishore Singh, who sits on the country's influential federal planning commission and who is also a member of Nalanda's steering group, said legislation would be placed before the parliament this week. He added: "I think there is strong bi-partisan support."
BEING FROM NALANDA; THE SITE OF NALANDA UNIVERSITY I AM REALLY AMUSED TO SEE VARIOUS INCOMPLETE INFORMATION OF THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE. FIRSTLY HE RIGHTLY STATES THAT BUDDHA HAS VISITED THIS UNIVERSITY. BUT BUDDHA WAS AROUND 500 B.C. TAKING THAT INTO ACCOUNT THE UNIVERSITY IS ATLEAST 2500 YEARS OLD AND NOT 2000 YEARS OLD. IT CONTINUED FOR 1500 YEARS ATLEAST. ALSO, NALANDA IS FAR FROM NEPAL. BUT IF YOU ARE SAYING LIKE AMERICA IS FAR FROM NALANDA THEN YEAH NEPAL IS NEAR. ALSO IT WAS NOT PURELY BUDDHIST AS IT EXISTED WELL BEFORE BUDDHA. BUT YEAH BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHERS WERE ONCE A DOMINANT FORCE HERE. ALSO IT WAS NOT FAMOUS FOR MAINLY BUDDHIST THEORIES BUT FOR ASTRONOMY, SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS. BUT THEN THE ARROGANCE AND DELIBERATE DOWNPLAY OF EASTERN THINGS BY WESTERN PEOPLE NEED NO INTRODUCTION. AM I RIGHT, ASIAN FRIENDS?
Mr. Sen, The Dalai Lama is the biggest advocate of the Nalanda traditions. When Nalanda was threatened and ultimately closed, it was the then Indian scholars of Nalanda who found refuge and patronage from the Tibetan Kings. The entire Nalanda administration and curriculum was preserved in Tibet.
Since 1959, Tibetans brought that Indian tradition back to India. Today, Nalanda traditions flourishes in India bigger than how it was in Tibet and in India back in the 10th and 11th century. There are over 10,000 students in the Tibetan monastic universities of Ganden, Sera and Drepung-- carrying the traditions and curriculum of Nalanda University -- all in the state of Karnataka.
It will be remiss and terrible shame if the care and cultivation of that tradition and development of that tradition by the Tibetans are ignored.
We cannot allow the politics and bullying of China interfere in the academic revival of Nalanda University.
he oldest university is generally considered to be Taxila, dating back some 2500 years but probably not as large Nalanda. Taxila was certainly a place of learning during the time of Alexandra and a place where Chanakya taught. Chanakya was the key strategist to overthrow the Greek army and laying the foundation of the Chandragupta Empire.
Who knows what knowledge was lost in the destruction on Nalanda as it was the centre of learning. Not only the books, but most teachers and students perished by uneducated savages. It is good to see Nalanda coming back to life to bring history back.
Details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda
Pusphagiri (Also Puspagiri Mahavihara) was one of the earliest buddhist mahavihara spread across Cuttack and Jajpur district, Odisha (ancient Kalinga) in 3rd century AD [1] [2] and flourished until the 11th century in India.[3][4] Today, its ruins lie atop the Langudi hills, low hills about 90 km from the Mahanadi delta, in the Jajpur and Cuttack district in Odisha.[5] The actual mahavihara campus, spread across three hilltops, contained several stupas, monasteries, temples, and sculptures in the architectural style of the Gupta period.[6] The Kelua river, a tributary of the Brahmani river of Odisha flows to the north east of Langudi hills, and must have provided a picturesque background for the mahavihara. The entire mahavihara is distributed across three campuses on top of the three adjoining hills, Lalitgiri, Ratnagiri, and Udayagiri.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puspagiri
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka
Ratnagiri: Part of Puphagiri Mahavihara
Puphagiri ranks along with Nalanda, Vikramshila and Takshila universities as one of the primary institutions of higher learning in ancient India. The three universities were mentioned in the travelogues of the famous Chinese traveller Xuanzang (Huien Tsang), who visited it in 639 CE, as Puphagiri Mahavihara,[7][8] as well as in medieval Tibetan texts.
_______
Nalanda University (Skt. Nālandā, Tib. ནཱ་ལེནྡྲ་) was the largest and most famous of the ancient Indian monastic universities, and is associated with some of the greatest figures in Mahayana Buddhism. In its heyday, it was home to some ten thousand students who gained admission only after successfully answering a serious of philosophical questions put to them by scholar-gatekeepers. It is located in what is now the state of Bihar, India.
Nalanda is mentioned in the sutras as a place where the Buddha often taught. Although some viharas may have been built on the site in the centuries after the Buddha's parinirvana, it is now generally agreed that the founding of the great university dates back to the reign of the Gupta king Kumaragupta I, who ruled from 415 to 455 and is referred to as Shakraditya (Śakrāditya) in many sources.[1] Several monasteries were constructed on the site during the Gupta period, and at some point, possibly during the sixth century, they were enclosed within a wall with a single gate. By the time the Chinese pilgrim Hsüan-tsang visited in the seventh century, entrance to the university could only be gained by those who passed the admission test put to them by learned gatekeepers. Hsüan-tsang stayed for a period of about six years, during which he studied Yogachara philosophy. I-tsing (635-713), another Chinese pilgrim, who visited after Hsüan-tsang and stayed for about ten years, reports that there were about 3500 monks in residence at that time.
The biography of Chak Lotsawa explains how he visited the site, then largely in ruins, in 1235 AD. While there, he studied with the master Rahula Shribhadra, a specialist in Sanskrit grammar who was in his nineties and was teaching a class of about seventy students. The biography includes a moving account of how, on one occasion, the lotsawa was forced to carry his aged teacher on his back in order to flee a band of 300 Muslim soldiers after everyone else had fled the monastery.
Buildings
The lecture halls cover many acres of land lined up along a long road that divides the teaching area from the adjoining temples. Along the edge of each lecture hall were rooms for the monks and their teachers. What remains is for the most part no more than several meters high, but the plan of the monasteries is still clearly in evidence.
Stupa of Shariputra
One of the most prominent features of the Nalanda University ruins is the stupa built in honor of Shariputra, who, by tradition, was born and also died in the area. Jetsun Taranatha explains that Nalanda is the place where Shariputra was born and attained arhathood. According to a prophecy the Mahayana teachings would spread greatly if they were taught at the place of Shariputra, but if taught at the place of Maudgalyayana although the Buddhists would be very powerful, the teachings would not spread as widely.
Library
The great library of Nalanda University was so vast that it is reported to have burned for three months after the Muslim invaders set fire to it, sacked and destroyed the monasteries, and drove the monks from the site.
Curriculum
The curriculum at Nalanda consisted not only of Hinayana and Mahayana philosophy but also medicine, logic, astrology, and many other subjects as well.
Legacy
Buddha Shakyamuni and the Seventeen Nalanda Masters
Nalendra Monastery, founded by Rongtön Sheja Kunrig in 1436, was named after Nalanda, reflecting a common Tibetan spelling of the word. His Holiness the Dalai Lama rarely starts a teaching without mentioning that it is in the "great tradition of Nalanda University"
_____________
Oldest university on earth is reborn after 800 years
Nalanda, an ancient seat of learning destroyed in 1193, will rise again thanks to a Nobel-winning economist
BY ANDREW BUNCOMBE Wednesday 04 August 2010
During the six centuries of its storied existence, there was nothing else quite like Nalanda University. Probably the first-ever large educational establishment, the college – in what is now eastern India – even counted the Buddha among its visitors and alumni. At its height, it had 10,000 students, 2,000 staff and strove for both understanding and academic excellence. Today, this much-celebrated centre of Buddhist learning is in ruins.
After a period during which the influence and importance of Buddhism in India declined, the university was sacked in 1193 by a Turkic general, apparently incensed that its library may not have contained a copy of the Koran. The fire is said to have burned and smouldered for several months.
Now this famed establishment of philosophy, mathematics, language and even public health is poised to be revived. A beguiling and ambitious plan to establish an international university with the same overarching vision as Nalanda – and located alongside its physical ruins – has been spearheaded by a team of international experts and leaders, among them the Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen. This week, legislation that will enable the building of the university to proceed is to be placed before the Indian parliament.
"At its peak it offered an enormous number of subjects in the Buddhist tradition, in a similar way that Oxford [offered] in the Christian tradition – Sanskrit, medicine, public health and economics," Mr Sen said yesterday in Delhi.
"It was destroyed in a war. It was [at] just the same time that Oxford was being established. It has a fairly extraordinary history – Cambridge had not yet been born." He added, with confidence: "Building will start as soon as the bill passes."
The plan to resurrect Nalanda – in the state of Bihar – and establish a facility prestigious enough to attract the best students from across Asia and beyond, was apparently first voiced in the 1990s. But the idea received more widespread attention in 2006 when the then Indian president, APJ Abdul Kalam set about establishing an international "mentoring panel". Members of the panel, chaired by Mr Sen, include Singapore's foreign minister, George Yeo, historian Sugata Bose, Lord Desai and Chinese academic Wang Banwei.
A key challenge for the group is to raise sufficient funds for the university. It has been estimated that $500m will be required to build the new facility, with a further $500m needed to sufficiently improve the surrounding infrastructure. The group is looking for donations from governments, private individuals and religious groups. The governments of both Singapore and India have apparently already given some financial commitments.
Mr Sen said the new Nalanda project, whose ancestor easily predated both the University of Al Karaouine in Fez, Morocco – founded in 859 AD and considered the world's oldest, continually-operating university, and Cairo's Al Azhar University (975 AD), had already attracted widespread attention from prestigious institutions. The universities of Oxford, Harvard, Yale, Paris and Bologna had all been enthusiastic about possible collaboration.
Some commentators believe a crucial impact of the establishment of a new international university in India would be the boost it gave to higher education across Asia. A recent survey of universities by the US News and World Report magazine listed just three Asian institutions – University of Tokyo, University of Hong Kong and Kyoto University – among the world's top 25.
Writing when plans for Nalanda were first announced, Jeffery Garten, a professor in international business and trade at the Yale School of Management, said in the New York Times: "The new Nalanda should try to recapture the global connectedness of the old one. All of today's great institutions of higher learning are straining to become more international... but Asian universities are way behind." He added: "A new Nalanda could set a benchmark for mixing nationalities and culture, for injecting energy into global subject. Nalanda was a Buddhist university but it was remarkably open to many interpretations of that religion. Today, it could... be an institution devoted to global religious reconciliation."
As Mr Garten pointed out, the new university will have much to live up to. The original, located close to the border with what is now Nepal, was said to have been an architectural masterpiece, featuring 10 temples, a nine-storey library where monks copied books by hand, lakes, parks and student accommodation. Its students came from Korea, Japan, China, Persia, Tibet and Turkey, as well as from across India. The 7th Century Chinese pilgrim, Xuanzang, visited Nalanda and wrote detailed accounts of what he saw, describing how towers, pavilions and temples appeared to "soar above the mists in the sky [so that monks in their rooms] might witness the birth of the winds and clouds".
Yet the project is not without controversy. Mr Sen was yesterday asked about reports that claimed the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader who has lived for more than 50 years in the Indian town of Dharamsala, had been deliberately omitted from the project to avoid antagonising potential Chinese investors and officials. He replied: "He is heading a religion. Being religiously active may not be the same as [being] appropriate for religious studies."
The Indian authorities believe the establishment of the college would act as a global reminder of the nation's history as a centre of learning and culture. Politician Nand Kishore Singh, who sits on the country's influential federal planning commission and who is also a member of Nalanda's steering group, said legislation would be placed before the parliament this week. He added: "I think there is strong bi-partisan support."
BEING FROM NALANDA; THE SITE OF NALANDA UNIVERSITY I AM REALLY AMUSED TO SEE VARIOUS INCOMPLETE INFORMATION OF THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE. FIRSTLY HE RIGHTLY STATES THAT BUDDHA HAS VISITED THIS UNIVERSITY. BUT BUDDHA WAS AROUND 500 B.C. TAKING THAT INTO ACCOUNT THE UNIVERSITY IS ATLEAST 2500 YEARS OLD AND NOT 2000 YEARS OLD. IT CONTINUED FOR 1500 YEARS ATLEAST. ALSO, NALANDA IS FAR FROM NEPAL. BUT IF YOU ARE SAYING LIKE AMERICA IS FAR FROM NALANDA THEN YEAH NEPAL IS NEAR. ALSO IT WAS NOT PURELY BUDDHIST AS IT EXISTED WELL BEFORE BUDDHA. BUT YEAH BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHERS WERE ONCE A DOMINANT FORCE HERE. ALSO IT WAS NOT FAMOUS FOR MAINLY BUDDHIST THEORIES BUT FOR ASTRONOMY, SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS. BUT THEN THE ARROGANCE AND DELIBERATE DOWNPLAY OF EASTERN THINGS BY WESTERN PEOPLE NEED NO INTRODUCTION. AM I RIGHT, ASIAN FRIENDS?
Mr. Sen, The Dalai Lama is the biggest advocate of the Nalanda traditions. When Nalanda was threatened and ultimately closed, it was the then Indian scholars of Nalanda who found refuge and patronage from the Tibetan Kings. The entire Nalanda administration and curriculum was preserved in Tibet.
Since 1959, Tibetans brought that Indian tradition back to India. Today, Nalanda traditions flourishes in India bigger than how it was in Tibet and in India back in the 10th and 11th century. There are over 10,000 students in the Tibetan monastic universities of Ganden, Sera and Drepung-- carrying the traditions and curriculum of Nalanda University -- all in the state of Karnataka.
It will be remiss and terrible shame if the care and cultivation of that tradition and development of that tradition by the Tibetans are ignored.
We cannot allow the politics and bullying of China interfere in the academic revival of Nalanda University.
he oldest university is generally considered to be Taxila, dating back some 2500 years but probably not as large Nalanda. Taxila was certainly a place of learning during the time of Alexandra and a place where Chanakya taught. Chanakya was the key strategist to overthrow the Greek army and laying the foundation of the Chandragupta Empire.
Who knows what knowledge was lost in the destruction on Nalanda as it was the centre of learning. Not only the books, but most teachers and students perished by uneducated savages. It is good to see Nalanda coming back to life to bring history back.