Founding of Nalanda Mahavihara

Date

c. 427 CE

Category

Culture, arts & philosophy

Region

South Asia (Magadha, present-day Bihar, India)

Era

Classical Antiquity

Significance

Around 427 CE, the Gupta emperor Kumaragupta I (titled Shakraditya) founded Nalanda Mahavihara in the kingdom of Magadha, in present-day Bihar, India, near Rajgir.

Endowed by successive Gupta rulers and later by Harsha of Kannauj and the Pala dynasty, it grew into a vast monastic complex and is widely described as the world's first great residential university. At its height it housed some 10,000 students and around 1,500 to 2,000 teachers in a structured, residential campus, offering instruction in Buddhist philosophy, logic, grammar, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and the fine arts. Drawing scholars from Tibet, China, Korea, and Central Asia, Nalanda became a leading centre for the preservation and transmission of Sanskrit Buddhist learning across Asia, with numismatic evidence from the site corroborating Kumaragupta I as its founding patron. The institution flourished for roughly seven centuries before being sacked around 1200 CE by the forces of Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khilji, after which it declined and was largely abandoned by about 1400 CE.

Empires active in c. 427 CE

• Sassanid Empire
  224 CE – 651 CE
• Kingdom of Funan
  50 CE – 550 CE
• Roman Empire
  27 BCE – 476 CE
• Byzantine Empire
  330 CE – 1453 CE
• Pyu City-States
  200 BCE – 1050 CE
• Gupta Empire
  320 CE – 550 CE

Related culture, arts & philosophy events

• The Mahayana Ajanta cave paintings under Vakataka patronage
  c. 460–480 CE
• Kanishka's accession and the Kushan Greco-Buddhist synthesis
  c. 127 CE
• First Anthropomorphic Buddha Images (Gandhara and Mathura Schools)
  c. 1st century CE
• Construction of the First Emperor's mausoleum and Terracotta Army
  c. 246–208 BCE
• Panini composes the Ashtadhyayi, the first systematic grammar
  c. 400 BCE
• Zeno of Citium founds Stoicism in Athens
  c. 300 BC

Further reading

The Story of Art

The wider story

The Story of Art

E. H. Gombrich

The best-selling art history ever written, from cave paintings to the modern age.

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