For 700 years, it was the greatest centre of learning the world had ever seen. Students came from China, Korea, Japan, Tibet, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Persia, and Greece to study there. It had a library of nine million books. And in 1193 CE, it was burned to the ground. The smoke from the burning manuscripts was said to have lasted for three months.
In 399 CE, a Chinese Buddhist monk named Faxian left China on foot. He walked across the Gobi Desert, crossed the Himalayas, and made his way to India — a journey of several years — to find the original texts of Buddhism.
A century and a half later, another Chinese monk — Xuanzang — made the same journey. He spent 17 years in India, studying at the greatest university the world had yet produced.
He studied at Nalanda.
What Was Nalanda?
Nalanda was the world's first residential university, operating on a scale that no institution in the ancient world approached.
At its peak, Nalanda had 10,000 students in residence from across Asia, 2,000 faculty members, a library of 9 million books housed in three multi-storey buildings, and curriculum covering Buddhist philosophy, Vedic studies, logic, grammar, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy.
The entrance examination was conducted in Sanskrit, and most applicants failed. The Chinese scholar Yijing wrote: "The fame of Nalanda has spread throughout the world. There are masters here whose wisdom is as deep as the ocean and as high as the sky."
The Subjects They Studied
Buddhist philosophy was the heart — demanding extraordinary rigour. The study of Madhyamaka — the philosophy of emptiness by Nagarjuna — rivals anything in Western philosophy. Yogacara — the philosophy of consciousness — anticipates questions modern cognitive science still struggles with.
Logic and epistemology were as important as meditation. Nalanda produced Dignaga and Dharmakirti — whose works influenced Indian, Tibetan, and East Asian philosophy for centuries.
Debate was sacred practice. Public debates at Nalanda were major events — attended by thousands, sometimes lasting for days. To defeat a Nalanda scholar was one of the highest intellectual achievements of the era.
The Great Scholars of Nalanda
Nagarjuna (150-250 CE) — arguably the greatest philosopher India ever produced — was associated with Nalanda. His Mulamadhyamakakarika has been studied continuously for 1,800 years.
Xuanzang himself became one of Nalanda's most celebrated scholars. When he returned to China, he carried 657 Sanskrit texts — and spent the rest of his life translating them. Those translations became the foundation of Chinese Buddhist scholarship, giving birth to schools still alive in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam today.
Atisha (980-1054 CE) — the great Bengali scholar who carried Nalanda's tradition to Tibet — made Tibetan Buddhism what it is today.
Nalanda and the Silk Road
The Silk Road was equally a knowledge route. Along the same paths that carried silk and spices, it carried manuscripts, teachers, and ideas.
Buddhism was the medium through which India's intellectual tradition — its philosophy, mathematics, medicine, and art — spread across Asia.
The decimal number system — invented in India — reached Europe through Arab scholars who encountered it in Indian texts. What we call "Arabic numerals" are Indian numerals. When you look at Angkor Wat, the golden stupas of Thailand, the Buddhist caves of China — you are looking at the reach of what Nalanda represented.
The Destruction — and What Was Lost
In 1193 CE, the army of Bakhtiyar Khilji reached Nalanda. The soldiers burned the libraries. They killed the monks who tried to save the manuscripts.
Nine million books. Seven centuries of accumulated knowledge. The smoke lasted three months.
We will never know what was in those books. Most is simply gone forever.
The Tradition That Survived
Nalanda was not entirely destroyed. The tradition survived in Tibet, in China, Japan, Korea — in every school and monastery planted by the scholar-monks who had studied there. It survived in India itself, in lineages of teachers and students who kept the flame alive through the medieval and colonial periods.
The New Nalanda
In 2010, the Indian Parliament passed the Nalanda University Act — reestablishing Nalanda University on its original site in Bihar. It opened in 2014.
It is not just building a university. It is remembering what a university is for — not training workers for an economy, but cultivating human beings who can think clearly, feel deeply, and act wisely.
That is what Nalanda was. That is what education has always been for, at its best.
Saraswati Namastubhyam. 🙏
Salutations to Saraswati, goddess of learning.
— Divya India | Spiritual Lifestyle | Wear the Sacred
#SecretsOfTheSacred — Vol. 41