Nalanda Mahavihara
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How it came to be
Nalanda Mahavihara, in Bihar in eastern India, is credited to the Gupta emperor Kumaragupta I around 427. His successors expanded it in the 5th and 6th centuries, and in the 7th century King Harsha of Kannauj granted 100 villages for its upkeep. UNESCO calls it the most ancient university of the Indian subcontinent, which passed on knowledge without a break for 800 years.
The Chinese monk Xuanzang stayed in 637 and 642 and studied Yogachara under the abbot Shilabhadra. From the 8th century the Pala kings were its patrons, and a 9th-century copper plate of Devapala records a monastery built here by a king of Srivijaya. Nalanda scholars helped carry Buddhism to Tibet, among them Padmasambhava, invited by the Tibetan king in 747.
Troops of Bakhtiyar Khalji burned it around 1200, leaving a thick layer of ash. Markham Kittoe identified the ruins as Nalanda in 1847, and the Archaeological Survey of India excavated them from 1915 to 1937. The 23-hectare property holds 11 monasteries and 14 temples and was inscribed in 2016.
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