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Nalanda University: History of Ancient India's Great Mahavihara

By Dhiraj Sharma · Published March 20, 2025 · Updated October 29, 2026

Nalanda was a renowned Buddhist mahavihara, or great monastery, in ancient Magadha, now the Indian state of Bihar. It is widely considered one of the greatest centres of learning in the ancient world and is often called "the world's first residential university".^[1] It was founded around 427 CE under the Gupta emperor Kumaragupta I and ran for almost a thousand years, until around 1400 CE.^[1] Students and scholars came from Korea, Japan, China, Tibet, Indonesia, Persia and Turkey.^[1] Today its ruins are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a modern Nalanda University has been established nearby at Rajgir.^[1]^[2]

This Finepedia guide, updated in October 2026, covers the history of Nalanda from its founding to its destruction, what was taught there, the famous library, the pilgrims who described it, the excavated ruins and the new university. Every claim is cited.

Key Facts

Topic	Detail
Type	Buddhist mahavihara (great monastery) and centre of learning
Location	Near Rajgir, Bihar, about 90 km southeast of Patna
Founded	About 427 CE
Founder	Kumaragupta I of the Gupta Empire
Active	About 427 to around 1400 CE
Major patrons	Guptas, Harsha, Pala Empire
Famous visitors	Xuanzang, Yijing
Sacked	About 1200 CE by Bakhtiyar Khalji's troops
Excavated ruins	About 488 m by 244 m, roughly 12 hectares
UNESCO listing	2016
Modern successor	Nalanda University, Rajgir, founded 2010

Sources: the articles on Nalanda mahavihara and Nalanda University.^[1]^[2]

Location and Name

Nalanda lies about 16 kilometres north of Rajgir and about 90 kilometres southeast of Patna. It is about 80 kilometres northeast of Bodh Gaya, another important Buddhist site in Bihar.^[1] The ruins lie northwest of Bargaon village, among the old man-made lakes Gidhi, Panashokar and Indrapuskarani.^[1]

Mahavihara is the Sanskrit and Pali term for a great vihara, a Buddhist monastery and centre of learning.^[1] According to the seventh-century Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, local tradition said the name Nalanda came from a naga, or serpent deity, called Nalanda.^[1] The archaeologist Hiranand Sastri, who led excavations at the site, linked the name instead to the many nalas, or lotus stalks, in the area, so that Nalanda would mean "the giver of lotus stalks".^[1]

Was It a University?

Scholars have questioned whether Nalanda should be called a "university" in the modern sense. They agree it was a major centre of learning but say that a direct comparison with a modern university is historically imprecise.^[1]

Early History of the Area

Settlement in the area is very old. Black ware and other finds from the Juafardih site, about three kilometres away, have been carbon-dated to about 1200 BCE.^[1] Early Buddhist texts say the Buddha visited a town called Nalanda near Rajagriha and lectured in a nearby mango grove named Pavarika.^[1] His chief disciple Shariputra was born in the area and died there.^[1] The Jain text Sutrakritanga calls Nalanda a suburb of Rajagriha where Mahavira spent fourteen monsoon retreats.^[1]

The Chinese pilgrim Faxian travelled in India in the early fifth century looking for Buddhist texts, but he made no mention of a monastery at Nalanda.^[1] Together with the lack of archaeological finds from before 400 CE, this suggests that the monastery did not yet exist around 400 CE.^[1]

Founding Under the Guptas

Nalanda's datable history begins in the fifth century. A seal found at the site names a king called Shakraditya, who reigned from about 415 to 455 CE, as the founder of a monastery there.^[1] Scholars identify Shakraditya with Kumaragupta I, and coins found at Nalanda support the view that he was its founding patron.^[1] Kumaragupta I, also known as Mahendraditya, ruled the Gupta Empire from about 415 until his death in about 455 CE. He was the son of Chandragupta II.^[3]

Kumaragupta's successors, Budhagupta, Tathagatagupta, Baladitya and Vajra, enlarged Nalanda with more monasteries and temples, and it flourished through the fifth and sixth centuries.^[1] Its patrons were religiously diverse. The Guptas themselves followed Hinduism, and the scholar Hartmut Scharfe noted that "many donors were not Buddhists; the emblems on their seals show Lakshmi, Ganesha, Shivalinga and Durga".^[1] Rulers in northeast India gave villages to fund the monastery, the king of Sumatra gave villages for its endowment, and a special fund supported scholars from China.^[1]

Harsha and the Seventh Century

After the Gupta Empire declined, Nalanda's most notable patron was Harsha, the seventh-century emperor who ruled from Kannauj.^[1] Harshavardhana lived from 590 to 647 and ruled Kannauj from April 606 until his death.^[4] Harsha granted Nalanda 100 villages and directed 200 households from each to supply the monks with rice, butter and milk.^[1] Xuanzang wrote that this supported more than 1,500 teachers and 10,000 student monks. Scholars think these numbers may be exaggerated, since the pilgrim Yijing gave a much lower figure of over 3,000 a few decades later, and the excavated rooms could not hold 10,000 people.^[1]

The Pilgrims Who Described Nalanda

Xuanzang

Xuanzang, who lived from 602 to 664, was a Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveller and translator. He is known for the travelogue of his journey to the Indian subcontinent in 629–645 and for bringing at least 657 Indian texts to China.^[5] He visited Nalanda in 637 and 642 and spent about two years there in total.^[1] There he received the Indian name Mokshadeva and studied Yogachara philosophy under Shilabhadra, the head of the monastery.^[1] He also took courses in grammar, logic and Sanskrit, and later lectured at Nalanda himself.^[1]

Xuanzang left a vivid description of the buildings. He wrote that the whole establishment was surrounded by a brick wall, with "richly adorned towers, and the fairy-like turrets, like pointed hill-tops", and that "the upper rooms tower above the clouds".^[1] He returned to China with 657 Sanskrit texts and 150 relics, carried by 20 horses in 520 cases.^[1]

Yijing

Yijing, who lived from 635 to 713, was a Tang-era Chinese Buddhist monk and travel writer.^[6] Unlike Xuanzang, he took the sea route through Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. He arrived in 673 and spent fourteen years in India, ten of them at Nalanda.^[1] When he returned to China in 695 he carried 400 Sanskrit texts and 300 grains of the Buddha's relics.^[1] His account focuses on the daily rules of monastic life. He recorded that by his time the revenues of 200 villages supported Nalanda and that the monastery had ten great pools for bathing.^[1]

Korean and Tibetan Monks

Monks from Korea also came. The Silla monk Hyon-jo spent three years at Nalanda in the mid-seventh century, and Korean monks kept visiting India into the ninth century, regarding Nalanda as the most revered monastery.^[1] From the seventh century, Tibetan monks such as Thonmi Sambhota studied at Nalanda. Sambhota is credited with remodelling the Tibetan language and script on the principles of Sanskrit grammar.^[1]

The Pala Era

The Pala Empire was founded in the late eighth century, when the chiefs of Gauda elected Gopala as king. Its heartland was Bengal and Bihar.^[7] The Palas were a Buddhist dynasty, and their kings Dharmapala and Devapala were active patrons of Nalanda.^[1] By then, however, the Mahayana tradition that had drawn Xuanzang was giving way to the new Vajrayana tradition.^[1] The Palas also built rival monasteries such as Vikramashila and Odantapura, the latter only 9.7 kilometres from Nalanda, and these likely drew learned monks away.^[1]

Vikramashila, founded by King Dharmapala between the late eighth and early ninth centuries, was one of the three most important Buddhist mahaviharas in India at the time, alongside Nalanda and Odantapuri.^[8] A copper-plate inscription found at Nalanda records that Balaputradeva, the Shailendra king of Sumatra, built a monastery there. He asked Devapala to grant the revenue of five villages for its upkeep, and the request was granted.^[1]

What Was Taught at Nalanda

The Curriculum

Xuanzang's biographer Hwui-Li wrote that all students at Nalanda studied the Mahayana as well as the works of the eighteen early Buddhist schools.^[1] They also studied the Vedas, logic, grammar and philology, medicine, the Atharvaveda and Samkhya philosophy.^[1] Other subjects believed to have been taught include law, astronomy and city planning.^[1] Debate was central, so students had to know the logic of every school of thought in order to defend Buddhist positions.^[1]

Tibetan tradition holds that four main philosophical systems were taught at Nalanda:^[1]

Sarvastivada Vaibhashika
Sarvastivada Sautrantika
Madhyamaka, the Mahayana philosophy of Nagarjuna
Chittamatra, the Mahayana philosophy of Asanga and Vasubandhu

Teachers

In the seventh century, Xuanzang counted about 1,510 teachers. Of these, about 1,000 could explain 20 collections of sutras and treatises, 500 could explain 30, and only 10 could explain 50.^[1] At that time only the abbot, Shilabhadra, had studied all the major collections.^[1]

Administration

Yijing wrote that decisions at Nalanda were taken by assembly and consensus. An officer called the viharapala would take a proposal to each resident monk, and if a single monk objected, it would not pass.^[1]

The Library

Yijing brought home so many texts after ten years at Nalanda that the monastery must have had a well-equipped library.^[1] Tibetan sources name a great library called Dharmaganja, or "Piety Mart", made up of three large multi-storey buildings: the Ratnasagara, the Ratnodadhi and the Ratnaranjaka.^[1] The Ratnodadhi was nine storeys high and held the most sacred manuscripts.^[1] The exact number of volumes is unknown, but it is estimated to have been in the hundreds of thousands. Besides religious works, the library held texts on grammar, logic, literature, astrology, astronomy and medicine.^[1]

Notable Scholars

Nalanda's faculty included some of the most revered scholars of Mahayana Buddhism. The historian William Dalrymple wrote that "at its apex, it was the undisputed scholarly centre of the Mahayana Buddhist world".^[1] Figures associated with Nalanda include Dharmapala, Dharmakirti, Asanga, Vasubandhu, Chandrakirti, Xuanzang, Shilabhadra, Vajrabodhi and Dharmasvamin.^[1]

Nagarjuna, who lived from about 150 to 250 CE, is considered the founder of the Madhyamaka school and is widely regarded as the most important Buddhist philosopher after the Buddha.^[10] He lived before Nalanda was founded, but his philosophy was central to its teaching, and the Dalai Lama has said that the master Nagarjuna "hailed from this institution".^[1] Shantarakshita, who lived from 725 to 788, studied at Nalanda and founded Samye, the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet.^[11] Padmasambhava, also invited from Nalanda by the Tibetan king in 747 CE, is credited as a founder of Tibetan Buddhism.^[1]

Destruction and Decline

Earlier Attacks

Nalanda was attacked by Huns under Mihirakula in the fifth century and badly damaged by an invasion by the Gauda king of Bengal in the eighth century.^[1] It was destroyed three times but rebuilt only twice.^[1]

The Sack of About 1200

Bakhtiyar Khalji was a Turko-Afghan general of the Ghurid ruler Muhammad of Ghor who led the Muslim conquest of Bengal and parts of Bihar.^[9] Excavations in 1920–1921 found a thick layer of ash across many buildings, evidence of a catastrophic fire. This is blamed on Khalji's troops, who plundered the region around 1200 CE.^[1] Tibetan records say that monks from Nalanda and Vikramashila who "survived the slaughter, fled to Tibet".^[1]

Survival After the Sack

Nalanda did not end at once. The Tibetan pilgrim Dharmasvamin visited around 1235 and found it "largely damaged and deserted". A small community of about seventy monks still studied there under the ninety-year-old teacher Rahula Shribhadra.^[1] The monk Dhyanabhadra, born in 1289, is recorded as attending Nalanda from the age of eight, so teaching continued into the late thirteenth century.^[1] The last throne-holder of Nalanda, Shakyashri Bhadra of Kashmir, fled to Tibet in 1204 and took several Indian masters with him.^[1]

Legacy in Tibet

Tibetan Buddhism is regarded as a continuation of the Nalanda tradition.^[1] The Dalai Lama has said that Tibetan Buddhism "derives from the pure lineage of the tradition of the Nalanda Monastery". He describes himself as a follower of the lineage of the seventeen Nalanda masters.^[1] In 1351 Tibetans resolved to found a monastery named Nalanda in its honour, and it was established north of Lhasa in 1436.^[1]

Rediscovery and Excavation

After its decline Nalanda was largely forgotten. Francis Buchanan-Hamilton surveyed the site in 1811–1812 but did not connect the mounds with the famous monastery. Major Markham Kittoe made that link in 1847.^[1] Alexander Cunningham and the newly formed Archaeological Survey of India carried out an official survey in 1861–1862.^[1] Cunningham used Xuanzang's account to identify several ancient places, including Nalanda.^[12] Systematic excavation by the Archaeological Survey began in 1915 and ended in 1937, and a second round of excavation and restoration took place from 1974 to 1982.^[1]

The Ruins Today

The excavated remains extend about 488 metres north to south and 244 metres east to west, roughly 12 hectares.^[1] They include eleven monasteries and six major brick temples in an ordered layout, separated by a passage 30 metres wide.^[1] Monastery 1 is considered the oldest and most important and shows as many as nine levels of construction.^[1] Temple 3, also called the Sariputta Stupa, is the most iconic structure, with flights of stairs to the top and at least seven phases of construction.^[1] Temple 2 has 211 sculpted panels showing religious and secular scenes.^[1] Many finds are displayed in the nearby Nalanda Archaeological Museum.^[1] UNESCO recognised the Nalanda Mahavihara as a World Heritage Site in 2016.^[1]

The Modern Nalanda University

Nalanda University is a central research university in Rajgir, Bihar. It was founded in 2010 by an Act of the Indian Parliament as a successor to the ancient mahavihara.^[2] It is supported by 18 member countries of the East Asia Summit. Former President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam first proposed it, and its first chancellor was the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen.^[2] Its first academic year began on 1 September 2014 with 15 students.^[1]

The university offers only master's and PhD degrees, with schools of historical studies, ecology and environment, Buddhist studies, philosophy and comparative religions, languages and literature, and management.^[2] Its campus covers 485 acres and cost an initial 210 million US dollars. It is the first campus in India to follow a "Net Zero" strategy.^[2] Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the new campus on 19 June 2024.^[2]