Chapter 5 Nālandā, Vikramaśīla, and the Late Great Monasteries¶

The preceding four sections examined late Indian Buddhism's major intellectual movements from a philosophical perspective: epistemology, the Madhyamaka–Yogācāra synthesis, and Vajrayāna. These intellectual movements depended on monasteries as their institutional basis. This section examines what the monasteries were and how they operated. It asks how they became intellectual centers during Indian Mahāyāna's last few centuries and why Indian Buddhism could scarcely recover once they were destroyed.

I. The Rise of Nālandā¶

Location and foundation

Nālandā lies in Magadha, in present-day Bihar, India, about 90 kilometers from Patna, ancient Pāṭaliputra, and not far from Bodh Gaya. Its location had a double symbolic significance. Magadha was where the historical Buddha taught and the heartland of Buddhism's earliest rise. Nālandā's proximity to these sacred places also maintained a natural connection between pilgrimage and scholarship.

Nālandā's rise as a major institution of learning coincided with the prosperity of the Gupta dynasty, roughly the fourth to sixth centuries. Tradition regards Kumāragupta I (c. 415–455) as its principal founder or an important early patron. Successive kings expanded it, and the monastery continued to grow.¹

The period of greatest flourishing

Nālandā's heyday lasted roughly seven hundred years, from the fifth to the twelfth century. Throughout that period, it was the most important center of Buddhist learning in India, and indeed in Asia. Scholars came from afar for its reputation, while kings of different countries competed to support it.

Physically, Nālandā was an immense complex of courtyards, multistory buildings, and tall stūpas, estimated to have been about the size of a small town. Modern archaeological excavations, chiefly conducted by the British archaeological survey in the early twentieth century, have exposed several courtyards, but the excavated area is only a small part of the whole site.

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

Size and daily life

Historical estimates of Nālandā's resident monks vary widely, from three or four thousand to ten thousand. Whichever figure is more reliable, it was one of the world's largest scholarly communities at the time, standing comparison with contemporary Constantinople and Alexandria.

The monastery provided all food and lodging, supported by land revenues from nearby villages—tax income assigned to it by royalty—and offerings from kings elsewhere. This economic support freed Nālandā's scholars from concern about their livelihoods and allowed them to devote all their time to learning. It was the institutional basis that allowed Nālandā to produce scholarship of high quality.

Curriculum and fields of knowledge

Nālandā's curriculum was broad, extending beyond Buddhist philosophy:

This range of learning explains why Nālandā-trained scholars such as Dharmakīrti and Śāntarakṣita could debate the Brahmanical schools with such assurance. They had studied not only Buddhism but also their opponents' intellectual frameworks.

A culture of debate

Nālandā's academic life was marked by a teaching method centered on debate (vāda). A teacher would propose a thesis on a new topic. Students would attack it in turn from different angles while the teacher defended it, until the question was exhausted. Large debates were also held publicly at regular intervals, sometimes with invited Brahmins or scholars of other schools. Buddhist thinkers who won debates could often convert their opponents and attract new patronage.

This culture of debate emerged from the need to survive and compete in India's wider intellectual arena, as 3.6 noted. It also provided the institutional impetus for increasingly precise scholarship at Nālandā. An argument could stand only if it withstood criticism from every angle. This directly explains the exceptional precision achieved by Indian Buddhist philosophy in that era.

III. Xuanzang's Account: A Valuable Firsthand Source¶

The most detailed firsthand description of Nālandā available today comes from the Chinese monk Xuanzang (602–664). He left Chang'an in 629 and, after a perilous journey, studied at Nālandā from 631 to 643. Under its abbot Śīlabhadra (c. 529–645), he studied Yogācāra and became a direct heir to Dharmapāla's tradition. After Xuanzang returned to China, his disciple Bianji compiled his Great Tang Record of the Western Regions, the most detailed Chinese description of Nālandā.²

Xuanzang's account covers several aspects:

Physical description: he describes imposing red-brick buildings, corridors linking courtyards, towers high enough to overlook the surrounding country, elegant architecture, and delicate carving. These descriptions broadly agree with later archaeological findings.

Academic atmosphere: during more than a decade at Nālandā, Xuanzang studied widely across the three baskets and specialized in Yogācāra. He describes intense debates and a scholarly atmosphere in which anyone could be challenged at any time. He himself represented Nālandā in debate with visiting Brahmins and reportedly won.

Testing scholarly standing: according to Xuanzang, scholars stationed at the gates administered admission examinations. Many aspiring students were turned away because they could not answer the gatekeepers' philosophical questions orally. Only a minority of visitors passed and remained at Nālandā. The description may involve literary exaggeration, but it at least reflects Nālandā's understanding of itself as an institution whose threshold was scholarly standing.

Yijing (635–713) was another important Chinese monk who studied at Nālandā after Xuanzang; he was in India from 671 to 695. His Record of Buddhist Practices Sent Home from the Southern Seas and Biographies of Eminent Monks Who Sought the Dharma in the Western Regions during the Great Tang supplement the record of late seventh-century Nālandā.

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 foundation was inseparable from the rise of the Pāla dynasty (c. 750–1174) and its systematic Buddhist patronage.

Based in Bengal and Bihar, the Pālas were the last Indian dynasty renowned for large-scale Buddhist patronage. From Gopāla (c. 750–770) onward, successive kings founded and supported monasteries, reaching a high point under Dharmapāla (c. 770–810) and Devapāla (c. 810–850). Vikramaśīla, Odantapurī, and Somapura Mahāvihāra were all Pāla foundations.

The dynasty's four centuries and more were the last important period of Buddhism in India itself. After its fall around 1174, Islamic powers from Central Asia increasingly penetrated eastern India. Buddhist patronage in India rapidly contracted, and the great monasteries lost their economic support.

V. Vikramaśīla¶

Vikramaśīla's founder, Dharmapāla, ruled at the same time as Tibet's Khri-srong-lde-btsan. Its foundation is therefore placed around the end of the eighth century. Tibetan sources locate it on a hill north of Magadha, on the bank of the Ganges. Its present-day site remains unsettled. Proposed locations all lie around Bhagalpur in present-day Bihar, at either Sultanganj or Patharghata. It stood east of Nālandā on the southern bank of the Ganges: one monastery by the river, the other in Magadha's interior.³

Size and structure

Traditional sources describe six gates at Vikramaśīla, each guarded by a learned thinker, a dvāra-paṇḍita or "gate scholar," who could represent the monastery in debate with outside challengers. A central hall served as its principal teaching space. Vikramaśīla was smaller than Nālandā, yet holds an even higher place in Tibetan Buddhism's historical memory. This is chiefly because Atiśa (980–1054), a crucial figure in Tibetan Buddhist history, spent many years there in the eleventh century before traveling from it to Tibet (see Essay 11).

Vikramaśīla's scholarly character

Founded later, Vikramaśīla gave esoteric Buddhism a more prominent place than Nālandā did. The Pāla kings were especially enthusiastic about Tantra, so from the outset it was a center where esoteric Buddhism, Madhyamaka, and epistemology had equal weight, rather than an institution devoted solely to exoteric philosophy.

Atiśa's role at Vikramaśīla exemplifies this dual character. He was a Madhyamaka thinker with rigorous exoteric training. His Lamp for the Path to Awakening (Bodhipathapradīpa) is an important text on the gradual path. He was also an esoteric practitioner who had received transmissions from several great siddhas.

VI. Other Important Monasteries¶

Nālandā and Vikramaśīla were not the only scholarly monasteries of the Pāla period:

The model for Samye

Odantapurī was in Magadha, India. Tibetan accounts describe it as the architectural model for Samye. In Bu-ston's account, Śāntarakṣita used it as the model for a plan of Samye arranged around Mount Sumeru, the continents, the sun and moon, and the surrounding iron mountains.⁴ This detail shows the direct influence of India's great monasteries on Tibetan Buddhist material culture.

VII. An International Scholarly Network¶

The great monasteries of late India were more than local institutions of learning. They were also the hubs of a knowledge network spanning Asia.

Monks from China

Xuanzang and Yijing were the most famous Chinese visitors, but not the only ones. In his Biographies of Eminent Monks Who Sought the Dharma in the Western Regions during the Great Tang, Yijing recorded the stories of dozens of Chinese monks he knew of who traveled to India in search of the teachings. Some returned successfully, some died on the journey, and some died in India. These monks brought back not only scriptures but firsthand knowledge of Indian scholarly life.

Visitors from Tibet

From the eighth century onward, Tibet systematically invited thinkers and translators from India's great monasteries. Rinchen Zangpo (958–1055) studied at Nālandā and Vikramaśīla. Atiśa traveled from Vikramaśīla to Tibet in 1042, bringing systematic exoteric and esoteric teachings. Marpa (1012–1097) made several journeys to India and received esoteric transmissions from Nāropa.

Influence in Southeast Asia

Borobudur in Java, dating to around the eighth and ninth centuries, is Southeast Asia's largest Buddhist monument. Its carvings and design reflect a Buddhist iconographic tradition closely related to Nālandā's style. The royal house of Śrīvijaya in Sumatra actively sponsored Buddhist learning, and Yijing stayed there to study Sanskrit.

VIII. The Vulnerability of the Monastic System¶

With their enormous scale, precise scholarship, and extensive international connections, these great monasteries represent one of the most brilliant chapters in Indian Buddhist history. Yet the same institutional structure contained deep vulnerabilities.

Dependence on state patronage: the great monasteries depended entirely on royal financial support. A change of dynasty or of the patron's religious allegiance would rapidly collapse their economic foundations. The fall of the Pālas in 1174 had already put eastern India's great monasteries in difficulty, even before the subsequent military assaults by Islamic forces.

Distance from society: how closely were these monasteries actually connected to Indian society? In their highly specialized academic setting, the distance between monastic scholars and ordinary people may have been much greater than in early Buddhism. The early Saṅgha depended on lay offerings, and monks maintained daily contact with people on alms rounds. Nālandā's monks lived on state tax revenues and may have had less need to cultivate relations with lay communities. This distance meant that Indian Buddhism lacked a popular base capable of sustaining itself independently of the academic system. In contrast, contemporary Hindu temples were dispersed across the country, rooted in villages and popular life.

Concentrated knowledge: Nālandā's and Vikramaśīla's libraries housed documents accumulated over centuries of Indian Buddhist scholarship. Concentrated storage was an advantage in peace and a fatal weakness in war. Once the texts were destroyed, they could not be reconstructed.

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

Bakhtiyar Khilji's attacks

Around 1193, though sources differ on the exact year, Bakhtiyar Khilji, a general of the Delhi Sultanate, led an army into Bihar and attacked Nālandā and Vikramaśīla. His troops assaulted the monasteries, killed monks, and burned buildings and libraries. Legend says that Nālandā's library burned for months, but this derives from accounts written centuries later and has limited historical credibility. It may be a figurative exaggeration of the enormous holdings, though large-scale book burning may indeed have occurred. Nālandā's main buildings were badly damaged in the assault, and it never recovered its former scale. Vikramaśīla was also attacked around 1203 and subsequently abandoned altogether.

Why the destruction was so thorough

The Islamic armies' attacks directly triggered the monasteries' end. Yet Indian Buddhism had already been declining long before the twelfth-century assaults, as the following section, 8.6, explains. Pāla decline from the eleventh century had shaken the monasteries' economic foundations, and the Hindu revival had eroded Buddhist influence among intellectuals. The growing prominence of Tantra within Buddhism also made it increasingly hard to distinguish outwardly from Hinduism. When the Islamic armies arrived, they faced institutions already politically isolated and weakly rooted in society. Military attack was the endpoint, not the beginning of the causal process.

What was lost

With the destruction of Nālandā and Vikramaśīla, Indian Buddhism lost its last institutional homes. Dispersed monks withdrew into remote mountains or fled to Nepal and Tibet. This is one historical reason why the Indian Buddhist tradition survived relatively intact in Tibet, which in a sense became the final refuge and repository of late Indian Buddhist learning. In India itself, Buddhism all but disappeared over the following centuries, with only a modest revival beginning in the late nineteenth century (see Essay 12).

References¶