Chapter Five: Nālandā, Vikramaśīla, and the Late Great Monasteries¶

The first four chapters examined the principal intellectual movements of late Indian Buddhism: pramāṇa theory, the synthesis of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra, and Vajrayāna. These movements did not occur in a vacuum. They required an institutional vehicle—the monastery. This chapter examines the monasteries of the period: what they were, how they operated, how they became intellectual centers during the final centuries of Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism, and why Indian Buddhism could scarcely recover once they were destroyed.

I. The Rise of Nālandā¶

Location and Foundation

Nālandā was located in Magadha, in today’s Bihar, about ninety kilometers from Patna—the ancient Pāṭaliputra—and not far from Bodh Gayā. The location had a double symbolic significance. Magadha was the region in which the historical Buddha taught and the heartland where Buddhism first arose. Nālandā stood close enough to these sacred places to maintain a natural connection between pilgrimage and scholarship.

Nālandā’s rise as a major academic institution coincided with the prosperity of the Gupta dynasty, approximately the fourth through sixth centuries. Kumāragupta I (c. 415–455) is traditionally regarded as its principal founder or an important early patron. Successive kings expanded it, and the monastic complex continually grew.¹

The Period of Flourishing

Nālandā flourished from approximately the fifth through twelfth centuries, a span of some seven hundred years. During that time it was the most important center of Buddhist scholarship in India, perhaps in all Asia. Scholars came from distant regions, and rulers from many kingdoms competed to support it.

Physically, Nālandā was a vast complex with multiple courtyards, multistory buildings, and several tall stūpas. It may have approached the scale of a small city. Modern archaeological excavations, conducted chiefly by the Archaeological Survey of India in the early twentieth century, uncovered several courtyards, but the excavated area represents only a small part of the site.

II. Nālandā’s Academic Institutions and Fields of Learning¶

Scale and Daily Life

Historical sources vary widely in their estimates of the monks residing at Nālandā, from three or four thousand to ten thousand. Whatever figure is most reliable, it was among the world’s largest scholarly communities of its time and bore comparison with contemporary Constantinople and Alexandria.

The monastery provided food and lodging in full. Its revenue came from land attached to nearby villages—taxes assigned to the monastery by rulers—and from royal donations throughout the region. This economic support freed Nālandā’s scholars from concern for subsistence and allowed them to devote all their time to learning. It was the institutional foundation for the monastery’s high-quality scholarship.

Curriculum and Fields of Knowledge

Nālandā’s curriculum was broad and not restricted to Buddhist philosophy:

This intellectual range explains why scholars trained at Nālandā, such as Dharmakīrti and Śāntarakṣita, could debate Brahmanical schools with ease: they studied not only Buddhism but the conceptual frameworks of their opponents.

A Culture of Debate

Nālandā’s academic life was distinguished by debate (vāda) as a central teaching method. A teacher proposed a new thesis, students attacked it from every angle, and the teacher defended it until the problem had been exhausted. Large public debates were held regularly and sometimes included visiting Brahmins or thinkers from other schools. A Buddhist theoretician who won could persuade an opponent to convert and attract new patronage.

This culture of debate resulted from the need to survive and compete in India’s larger intellectual arena, already discussed in 3.6. It institutionally propelled Nālandā toward increasing precision. An argument had to withstand attack from every direction. That is a direct reason Indian Buddhist philosophy reached such extraordinary sophistication in this period.

III. Xuanzang’s Account: A Precious Firsthand Source¶

The most detailed surviving firsthand description of Nālandā comes from the Chinese monk Xuanzang (602–664). He left Chang’an in 629, traveled through formidable dangers, and studied at Nālandā between 631 and 643. Under the abbot Śīlabhadra (c. 529–645), he studied consciousness-only as a direct heir of Dharmapāla’s lineage. After Xuanzang returned to China, his disciple Bianji recorded the Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, the most detailed Chinese account of Nālandā.²

Xuanzang’s record covers several dimensions.

Physical description: he describes magnificent red-brick structures, courtyards linked by corridors, tall buildings overlooking the surrounding land, exquisite architecture, and fine carving. Later archaeological excavation broadly corroborates these descriptions.

Intellectual atmosphere: during more than a decade at Nālandā, Xuanzang ranged through the Tripiṭaka and specialized in consciousness-only. He describes intense debate and an atmosphere in which challenge could arise at any time. According to the record, he also represented the monastery in debate against visiting Brahmins and won.

Testing academic status: Xuanzang says that gate scholars administered entrance examinations. Many prospective students arriving at the gates could not answer their oral philosophical questions and were refused admission; only a minority of visitors passed and remained. The account may contain literary exaggeration, but it at least reflects Nālandā’s self-image as an institution whose threshold was scholarly reputation.

Yijing (635–713) was another important Chinese monk who studied at Nālandā after Xuanzang, during his years in India from 671 to 695. His Record of Buddhist Practices Sent Home from the Southern Sea and Biographies of Eminent Monks Who Sought the Dharma in the Western Regions supplement Xuanzang’s account with observations from the late seventh century.

IV. The Pāla Dynasty and the Later Great Monasteries¶

Nālandā remained central in the seventh and eighth centuries, but from the late eighth century another group of great monasteries arose in eastern India—in Bengal and Bihar—as parallel centers of learning. Their construction was inseparable from the rise of the Pāla dynasty, approximately 750–1174, and its systematic patronage of Buddhism.

The Pālas were the last Indian dynasty renowned for large-scale Buddhist support, ruling from Bengal and Bihar. Beginning with Gopāla (c. 750–770), successive kings built and endowed monasteries. Patronage reached its height under Dharmapāla (c. 770–810) and Devapāla (c. 810–850). Vikramaśīla, Odantapurī, and Somapura Mahāvihāra were Pāla foundations.

The dynasty’s four centuries were the last major period of Buddhism in India. After the Pāla collapse around 1174, Islamic powers from Central Asia increasingly entered eastern India. Indigenous Buddhist patronage rapidly contracted, and the great monasteries lost their economic base.

V. Vikramaśīla¶

Dharmapāla established Vikramaśīla around the year 800, probably near present-day Bhagalpur in Bihar, roughly five hundred kilometers from Nālandā.³

Scale and Structure

Traditional sources describe six great gates, each guarded by a learned “gate scholar” (dvāra-paṇḍita) authorized to represent the monastery in debate against outside challengers. A great hall at the center was its principal teaching space. Vikramaśīla was smaller than Nālandā, but its place in Tibetan historical memory is, if anything, greater. This is chiefly because Atiśa (980–1054), a central figure in Tibetan Buddhist history, worked there for many years before traveling from Vikramaśīla to Tibet in the eleventh century, as Part XI discusses.

Academic Specialization

Because Vikramaśīla was founded later, esotericism occupied a more prominent place than at Nālandā. Pāla kings had a particular enthusiasm for tantra, and from the outset the institution treated esotericism alongside Madhyamaka and pramāṇa as central, rather than serving only as a center of exoteric philosophy.

Atiśa’s role there embodies this dual character. He was a Mādhyamika rigorously trained in exoteric learning—his Lamp for the Path to Awakening (Bodhipathapradīpa) is an important work on the gradual bodhisattva path—and simultaneously a tantric practitioner who had received transmissions from several mahāsiddhas.

VI. Other Important Monasteries¶

Nālandā and Vikramaśīla were not the only scholastic monasteries of the Pāla era:

The Prototype for Samye

According to Tibetan sources, Odantapurī was the model Śāntarakṣita recommended to Trisong Detsen for Tibet’s first monastery and the architectural prototype for Samye. Samye’s maṇḍala-like plan—a central hall surrounded by subsidiary structures—is said to imitate it. The detail illustrates the direct influence of the great Indian monasteries upon Tibetan Buddhist material culture.

VII. An International Scholarly Network¶

The late great monasteries were not merely local Indian institutions but centers in an intellectual network extending across Asia.

Chinese Student-Monks

Xuanzang and Yijing are the best known Chinese visitors but were far from the only ones. In his Biographies of Eminent Monks Who Sought the Dharma in the Western Regions, Yijing records dozens of Chinese monks who traveled to India for teaching. Some returned successfully, some died on the road, and some passed away in India. They carried home not only scriptures but firsthand knowledge of Indian scholarly life.

Tibetan Visitors

From the eighth century, Tibet systematically invited theoreticians and translators from the Indian monasteries. Rinchen Zangpo (958–1055) studied at Nālandā and Vikramaśīla; Atiśa traveled from Vikramaśīla to Tibet in 1042 with a systematic body of exoteric and esoteric teaching; Marpa (1012–1097) journeyed repeatedly to India and received tantric transmissions from Nāropa.

Influence toward Southeast Asia

Borobudur in Java, built around the eighth and ninth centuries, is Southeast Asia’s largest Buddhist monument. Its sculpture and design reflect a Buddhist iconographic tradition closely connected with Nālandā. The royal house of Śrīvijaya in Sumatra actively patronized Buddhist learning; Yijing stopped there to study Sanskrit.

VIII. The Vulnerability of the Monastic System¶

The scale, intellectual precision, and international connections of the great monasteries represent one of the most brilliant pages of Indian Buddhist history. Yet the same institutional structure contained deep vulnerabilities.

Dependence upon state patronage: the monasteries relied entirely upon royal financial support. When a patron dynasty fell or changed religious allegiance, their economic basis could rapidly collapse. The Pāla fall in 1174 had already put the eastern monasteries in difficulty even before military attacks by Islamic powers.

Separation from society: to what degree did the great monasteries remain genuinely connected with Indian society? In a highly specialized scholastic environment, the distance between learned monks and ordinary people may have been far greater than in early Buddhism. The early saṅgha depended upon offerings from lay followers, and mendicant travel kept monks in daily contact with the public. Nālandā’s monks lived on tax revenues and may have had less need to cultivate relations with lay communities. This separation meant that Indian Buddhism lacked a popular foundation outside the academy capable of sustaining itself independently. Hinduism differed: temples were distributed throughout the countryside and rooted in village and popular life.

Concentration of knowledge: the libraries of Nālandā and Vikramaśīla stored literature accumulated over centuries of Indian Buddhist scholarship. Such concentration was an advantage in peace and a fatal weakness in war. Once the manuscripts were destroyed, they could not be reconstructed.

IX. The Historical End: Islamic Invasion and the Destruction of the Great Monasteries¶

Bakhtiyar Khilji’s Attack

Around 1193—the exact year varies among sources—the Delhi Sultanate commander Bakhtiyar Khilji entered Bihar and attacked Nālandā and Vikramaśīla. His forces assaulted the monasteries, killed monks, and burned buildings and libraries. A story recorded centuries later, of limited historical reliability, says that Nālandā’s library burned for months. This may be metaphorical exaggeration of the number of books, though large-scale destruction by fire may indeed have occurred. The principal Nālandā complex was gravely damaged and never recovered its former scale. Vikramaśīla was attacked around 1203 and then completely abandoned.

Why the Destruction Was So Complete

Military attack was the immediate trigger for the monasteries’ end. Yet Buddhism’s decline in India had begun long before the twelfth-century invasions, as Section 8.6 explains. The Pāla weakening from the eleventh century had already destabilized monastic finances. The revival of Hindu traditions eroded Buddhist influence among intellectuals. The increasing esotericization of Buddhism made it outwardly difficult to distinguish from Hinduism. When the armies arrived, they confronted institutions already politically isolated and socially weak. Military violence was the endpoint, not the origin of the causes.

What Was Lost

The fall of Nālandā and Vikramaśīla meant that Indian Buddhism lost its final institutional vehicle. Surviving monks either hid in remote mountains or fled to Nepal and Tibet. This is one historical reason late Indian Buddhist traditions were preserved comparatively intact in Tibet, which in a sense became their final refuge and archive. In India itself, Buddhism nearly disappeared over the following centuries and did not experience even a modest revival until the late nineteenth century, as discussed in Part XII.

References¶