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Long before Oxford, Harvard or MIT ever made their mark on the global academic stage, Nalanda University in Bihar, (north-east India) attracted students from across Asia. Founded in 427 in northeastern India, not far from what is today the southern border of Nepal, and surviving until 1197, Nalanda, meaning Giver of knowledge in Sanskrit was one of the first great universities in recorded history. It was devoted to Buddhist studies, but it also trained students in fine arts, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, politics and the art of war.

The university was an architectural and environmental masterpiece. It had eight separate compounds, 10 temples, meditation halls, classrooms, lakes and parks. It had a nine-story library where monks meticulously copied books and documents so that individual scholars could have their own collections. It had dormitories for students, perhaps a first for an educational institution, housing 10,000 students in the university’s heyday and providing accommodations for 2,000 professors. Nalanda was also the most global university of its time, attracting pupils and scholars from Korea, Japan, China, Tibet, Indonesia, Persia and Turkey.

While the university died a slow death about the time that some of the great European universities, including those in Oxford, England, and Bologna, Italy, were just getting started, and more than half a millennium before Harvard or Yale were established. The University is being given a second lease on life with US$1 billion funds being poured in by Japan, Singapore, China and India to develop a new International University on the same site as well as build infrastructure to make the institution work.

The planned university will be completely residential, like the ancient seat of learning at Nalanda. In the first phase of the project, seven schools with 46 foreign faculty members and over 400 Indian academics would come up. The university will impart courses in science, philosophy and spiritualism along with other subjects. A renowned international scholar will be its chancellor.

While the university aims to restore to its former glory, Nalanda International University, true to its Asian heritage built a hall in memory of 7th century Chinese traveller Xuan Zang last year.

Xuan Zang is famous for his 17-year-long trip to India, during which he studied with many noted Buddhist masters, especially at Nalanda. He was a student at Nalanda for five years and taught for a year.
While returning to China, he carried 657 Sanskrit manuscripts with him and translated them in Chinese, laying a strong foundation of Buddhism not only in China, but also in Korea and Japan.