Nalanda Mahavihara

Nalanda Mahavihara was a Buddhist monastic university founded in the 5th century CE under the Gupta emperor Kumaragupta I. At its peak between the 7th and 12th centuries, Nalanda housed roughly 10,000 students and 2,000 teachers, making it one of the world's first residential universities. It taught Buddhist philosophy, Hindu Vedas, logic, grammar, medicine, astronomy, and metaphysics, drawing students from across Asia — the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang spent five years studying there in the 7th century, and his detailed accounts are the principal historical source. The university was sacked and burned by Bakhtiyar Khilji's army in 1193 — the library, said to have contained hundreds of thousands of manuscripts, burned for several days. The site was abandoned and forgotten until British archaeologists rediscovered the ruins in 1812; major excavations followed under Cunningham in the 1860s and the ASI in the 1920s. UNESCO inscribed the archaeological site in 2016. The adjacent Nalanda University (re-established 2010) is a modern Indian government attempt to revive the academic mission. Pair with Rajgir (15 km, the Buddha's monsoon retreat) and Pawapuri (the place of Mahavira's nirvana).