Nalanda monastic university
Universidad monástica de Nalanda
- Date
- c. 427 · confidence medium
- Place
- Nalanda, Bihar, India
- Credited to
- Gupta dynasty (Kumaragupta I)
- Field
- Communication
What it is
Residential centre of learning with thousands of monks and students, a library, curricula and entrance examinations, where logic, grammar, medicine and astronomy were taught. It attracted scholars from China, Korea and Tibet for seven centuries.
Taxila was an earlier but less institutionalised centre of learning. Nalanda was destroyed around 1193; the University of Bologna (1088) is the first university in the European corporate sense.
What it led to
- spread of Buddhism and Indian science to China and Tibet (Xuanzang, Yijing)
- model of monastery-universities (Vikramashila, Odantapuri)