Nalanda

Nalanda was a renowned Buddhist monastery which is believed to have been active for 800 years from around 4th/5th to 12th centuries AD. We know about the site from the accounts of 7th century Chinese traveler (Xuanzang) and later from 19th century British surveyors (Buchanan, Cunningham and Broadley). There are many studies on this site, recent one among them is a geospatial analysis which has revealed a larger extent (~7.25 sq. km) of the site compared to what is protected at present as World Heritage (WH) inscribed by UNESCO (0.23 sq. km. as core zones and 0.58 sq. km. as buffer zone) and has identified several unprotected archaeological mounds in the vicinity. Since we have a range of period when the site was active, it is possible that the dates of structures in each unexcavated mound are decades or centuries apart. To understand the time sequence in which the site existed one could use absolute dating method. This paper reports result of preliminary dating analysis using the Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) technique on bricks collected from unprotected mounds in the environs of Nalanda. This paper also reports methods and issues in sample collection, preparation and discusses challenges to overcome in future efforts.

Nalanda was a renowned Buddhist monastery which is believed to have been active for 800 years from around 4 th /5 th to 12 th centuries AD. We know about the site from the accounts of 7 th century Chinese traveler (Xuanzang) and later from 19 th century British surveyors (Buchanan, Cunningham and Broadley). There are many studies on this site, recent one among them is a geospatial analysis which has revealed a larger extent (~7.25 sq. km) of the site compared to what is protected at present as World Heritage (WH) inscribed by UNESCO (0.23 sq. km. as core zones and 0.58 sq. km. as buffer zone) and has identified several unprotected archaeological mounds in the vicinity. Since we have a range of period when the site was active, it is possible that the dates of structures in each unexcavated mound are decades or centuries apart. To understand the time sequence in which the site existed one could use absolute dating method. This paper reports result of preliminary dating analysis using the Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) technique on bricks collected from unprotected mounds in the environs of Nalanda. This paper also reports methods and issues in sample collection, preparation and discusses challenges to overcome in future efforts.

This article discusses the nature of the academic life, what a university is or should be. But universities today are under siege, threatening to compromise the ideals that scholars have upheld for generations if not millennia. Recently the direction of universities is constantly being contested, so only some representative arguments can be presented here. This article will also turn to other authors to characterize the classical idea of the university that is always worth reconsidering.

The history of Ancient India is summarised with reference to its Value-based approach. The curriculum planning, syllabus, methods of teaching and uniform for each Gurukula are also studied. The ancient Universities and famous people who studied there , continued the tradition as Vice chancellors, Guru and administrators are listed. Published by D C Books in 2012 on Amazon. Here uploaded for Educationists and Academicians for their Research. Also for future generation of Educational Institutions.

Nalanda is known for its ancient ruins of the Buddhist Monasteries boasting the greatest International University. The capital of Magadha was Rajagriha in Modern Nalanda District. Whenever the archaeology of Magadha is studied the limit comes to an end with Buddhist Archaeology. The chronological sequence of the district and its surrounding is yet to be confirmed. Prehistoric evidences are reported from Rajgir hilly tract but still the certainty and conformity are to be done. The BRW pot sherds are also reported. During excavation at Juafardih in excavation session 2006-07 and excavations at Ghorakatora in excavation sessions 2007-09 several sites have been investigated and documented. Later on we revisited them adding some other sites too. The paper tries to present archaeological information of some larger sites which have not been studied in detail earlier, although the ceramics are not detailed here but a brief information is given. The paper also try to identify the sites having potential for excavation on basis for their rich collection and their location. The Jethian, Sarsoogarh and Tapovana-Chandelagarh are lying under the jurisdiction of Gaya district and rest sites are under Nalanda district. The below mentioned sites are not properly explored or documented by researchers in detail either due to ignorance, unreachability or fear of Naxalism.

some eighteen rears ago, in r970, Frederick Ir4. Asher pubrished an important article concerning "The former Broadley Collection, Bihar sharif ,,.r He identified the provenance of forty-six sculptures preserved mainly in the Indian Museum but also at trre patna Museum. And we can only regret that the authorities of these institutions have not yet taken into account the proposed provenances for correcting or precising the lables of the images. using a serie s of photographs which were made either_,by Joseph n{tar or by a certain Dr' Simpscn,2 and uncler which Alexander lVleylick Bioactef--l.rimsetf '*rot" toog captions which precised the provenance of some of the illustrated sculptures, Asher precised the origin of some tirirty-six sculptures.3 Asher mentioned that the photographic album includes eighteen platesa while in the album which r-,,e have usecl, nineteen plates are contained.s IJe published nine plates6 while -tantes Burgess already in 1897, reproduced a crroice of seven photographs.T T.hese pholographs are, moreover, listed by Theodor Bloch and are given, each of them, a number (fronr 191 to 209).8 The plrotographs listed under the nun.,b.r, 1g2, lg4. 196, lg9 b 2a7 have been published by Burgess or/and by Asher; of the re'aining ones, the photograph 19r is in sorne way a brow-up of the photograph 200, corner

More than 800 years ago—at approximately the same time as the founding of the first European universities—the renowned monastic institution known as the Nālandā Mahāvihāra disappeared from historical records. Since 2006, a transnational Asian initiative to revive ancient Nalanda as ‘Nalanda University’ in Bihar, India, has been embraced at the highest government and philanthropic levels by a consortium of South, Southeast, and East Asian nations. Nalanda, described as an ‘icon of Asian renaissance’, and the issues surrounding its revival raise important questions about how a new interest in ‘pan-Indo-Asianism’ and a newly imagined vision of ‘Asian’ education are seen as converging to promote Asian interests. First, I consider the ambivalent relationship of the revival and its pre-modern namesake against the Nālandā Mahāvihāra's known history. Then I characterize two kinds of discourse on the contemporary project: one that is ‘pan-Indo-Asian’ and frames the revival as serving transnational Asian goals; and another that is Indic and imagines Nalanda as advancing Indian national concerns. While, for the various stakeholders, serious fissures are evident in the symbolic values of Nalanda—as an exemplar of Asia and of India—both types of discourse, taken together, reveal important insights into the development of an alternative model of education that is both modern and ‘Asian’.

This book is a result of an exhibition at the Asian Civilisations Museum in
Singapore, On the Nalanda trail, which was accompanied by a conference focused
on ‘Interaction and Practice’. The essays in this book attempt to offer some new
insights into the patterns of exchange and text–image correlations between the
Nalanda tradition and the arts and artefacts of Southeast Asia. This volume has ten
essays. Each essay is well argued in its particular sociopolitical, art historical or archi-
tectural context; nonetheless, the intellectual tradition of Nalanda itself and its ancient
connections with Southeast Asia are not adequately dealt with. . Nevertheless, looking at the paucity of the materials available on Buddhist arts in this region, this volume is going to be a significant addition to the resources available on Southeast Asian art history.


Samdarshi, Pranshu. “Asia. Nalanda Srivijaya and beyond: Re-Exploring Buddhist Art in Asia Edited by Gauri Parimoo Krishnan Singapore: Asian Civilisations Museum, 2017. Pp. 296. Maps, Plates, Notes, Bibliography, Index.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 49, no. 2 (2018): 323–25. doi:10.1017/S0022463418000024.

NALANDA was a renowned Buddhist monastic university in ancient Magadha (modern-day Bihar), India. Considered by historians to be the world's very first residential university, and among the greatest centers of learning in the ancient world, it was located near the city of Rajagriha (now Rajgir) and about 90 kilometres (56 mi) southeast of Pataliputra (now Patna), operating from 427 to 1197 CE. Nalanda was established during the Gupta Empire era, and was supported by numerous Indian and Javanese patrons-both Buddhists and non-Buddhists. Over some 750 years, its faculty included some of the most revered scholars of Mahayana Buddhism. Nalanda Mahavihara taught six major Buddhist schools and philosophies such as Yogacara and Sarvastivada as well as subjects such as grammar, medicine, logic and mathematics. The university was also a major source of the 657 Sanskrit texts carried by pilgrim Xuanzang and the 400 Sanskrit texts carried by Yijing to China in the 7th-century, which influenced East Asian Buddhism. Many of the texts composed at Nalanda played an important role in the development of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism including the Mahavairocana Tantra and the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra of Shantideva. It was sacked and destroyed by the troops of Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji, partly restored thereafter, and continued to exist till about 1400 CE. Today, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A maiden looks in a mirror. What she sees, however is not herself, but a thief, who is not there. This impossible occurrence is given in the 11 th century tantric text of the Sekoddeśa as the analogy to the way in which a yogī can catch a glimpse of Emptiness (śūnyatā) at the beginning of his six-fold practice (ṣaḍaṅgayoga). The Sekoddeśa is one of the oldest extant texts from the Kālacakra corpus and is essential in the tradition's discussion of the path to Ultimate Gnosis (jñāna). In the first limb of the six-fold yoga (pratyāhāra), consisting of the arrestation of the five sense organs and the mind, the success of the process is indicated by the apparition of ten signs: smoke, glow, celestial light, etc. Nāropā explains in his Paramārthasaṃgraha commentary that these Empty Forms (śūnyatābimba) are not a product of the mind (akalpita), but a reflection of Emptiness. The nature of the images (bimba) that emerge is likened to the magical image (pratisenā), empty of substance (vastuśūnya) that a maiden can see conjured in a mirror. In the same way, a yogī can catch glimpses of non-dual True Reality (tattva) via a specific meditation practice. This paper presents an English translation and a discussion of the respective passages of the Sekoddeśa (24-38) and its commentaries in relation to the cosmology of the Kālacakra tantric system.

My paper is about the narrative of destruction at the site of Nālandā Mahāvihāra, an ancient seat of Buddhist learning, situated in Bihar (India). It is widely understood that the site was plundered by a Turkic commander Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khilji during his twelfth-century expedition. It is also said that his army set the libraries of Nalanda on fire, destroying all the manuscripts kept there. In my paper, I talk about the sources for these two parts that form the larger narrative of destruction of Nalanda. Investigation of this narrative is important not only to understand its afterlives as it exists in the public memory but also to reflect on its association with even wider event of the decline of Buddhism from India. In another development recently, it has been noticed that the narrative has seeped in through to the other sites around Bihar. It has become a convenient explanation for destruction of more and more structural remains. It is the afterlife of this narrative that haunts not only Nalanda but also the political-academic divide over the factors leading to the disappearance of Buddhism from Bihar. For this paper, I have looked at the four main sources which are often referred to explain the destruction in the major works on Nalanda. One is a Persian text composed in the thirteenth-century CE while the other three are Tibetan accounts written between thirteenth to eighteenth centuries CE.

This is the first article I made about the javanese temples (candi). A new study and new datations of these mysterious constructions.
In this vol. 1, I speak about the western javanese temples I had visited. At Batujaya, Cibuaya and also candi Cangkuang, near Bandung.
It seems that the Batujaya and Cibuaya temple sites are the oldest in Java. The first brahmins arrived from India so, I take the timeless to reveal some exclusive informations about India, about the Pallava and also about Palembang and Srivijaya.

Considering that contemporary society becomes increasingly pluralistic from the religious viewpoint, non-Christian religions’ view on bio ethical issues as abortion should concern not only historians of religions or theologians, but especially physicians. This paper present abortion as seen by Buddhism, an oriental religion which is widely spread in India and its neighboring countries such as Thailand, Japan, Myanmar, Indonesia, Taiwan etc. The Buddhist’s traditional embryology and the principle of non-violence, seen by Buddhists as a way of life, determine a similar attitude concerning abortion. More than that, if a Buddhist monk even incites to abortion he is “defeated” and scourged with the total exclusion from the monastic order, the severest punishment a monk can experience. Despite all these, in India, Thailand, Japan or Taiwan the rate of abortions is very high, a situation caused mainly by the progressive secularization of these societies.

The paper discusses about the sealings found from Rukministhan in Nalanda district of Bihar. Based on the palaeography of the inscription on the sealings, they are dated between 5th to 7th century A.D. The script used are Brahmi of 5th century A.D. and Early Nagari of 6th-7th century A.D. Based on the content of the inscription the sealings are categorized under three groups (1) Personal sealings (2) Monastic sealings and (3) Votive tablets.

Nalanda University has been established with a vision of being a foremost international institution in India. It begun its academic activities from 2014. The University is posed to be a unique meeting ground for various branches of knowledge from across the globe. The article is an attempt at highlighting some of the primary ideas keeping which in mind the University was conceived, and which the academic community in Nalanda University is committed to pursuing as part of its teaching-learning programme.