Takshashila and Nalanda: the great universities
Long before Oxford or Bologna, India had great centres of learning where thousands studied grammar, medicine, logic and philosophy. A Chinese monk walked 10,000 miles to study at Nalanda. What were these places like, and what happened to them?
Takshashila — city of teachers
[Historical scholarship]
Takshashila (Taxila, near today's Islamabad) was a renowned centre of learning from at least the 5th century BCE. It was not a university with a campus but a city of famous teachers to whom students came, often at sixteen, to study for years. Buddhist Jataka stories describe princes and Brahmin youths travelling there to learn the Vedas, archery, medicine and the arts. Tradition associates Panini, the physician Jivaka, Chanakya (Kautilya) and Charaka with Taxila — associations of tradition that historians treat with varying confidence. Taxila's ruins are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Nalanda — a residential university
[Archaeological evidence]
Nalanda in Bihar, founded in the 5th century CE under the Gupta king Kumaragupta I, grew into a vast residential monastery-university with lecture halls, dormitories, temples and a famous library. At its height it is said to have had several thousand students and over a thousand teachers. Entry was difficult: the gatekeepers themselves examined applicants. Its excavated remains were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016. And one of its most famous students left a detailed account of his years there…
The journey continues for members
- Xuanzang's journey
- What was taught
- Other great centres
- The end of Nalanda
- What we can learn
Sources
- Xuanzang — Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (646 CE)
- Yijing — Record of the Buddhist Religion (c. 691 CE)
- UNESCO World Heritage — Taxila (1980); Nalanda Mahavihara (2016)
- Minhaj-i-Siraj — Tabaqat-i-Nasiri