UNESCO declares Nalanda Mahavihara World Heritage Site

The archaeological site of Nalanda Mahavihara comprises the archaeological remains of a monastic and scholastic institution dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 13th century CE. The site includes stupas, shrines, Viharas (residential and educational buildings), and important artworks in stucco, stone, and metal. With this, Nalanda University ruins became the second World Heritage site in Bihar after Bodhgaya’s Mahabodhi temple and the 33rd such site in India.

The Nalanda Mahavihara site is in the State of Bihar, in north-eastern India. It comprises the archaeological remains of a monastic and scholastic institution dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 13th century CE. It includes stupas, shrines, viharas (residential and educational buildings), and important artworks in stucco, stone, and metal. Nalanda stands out as the most ancient university in the Indian Subcontinent. It engaged in the organized transmission of knowledge over an uninterrupted period of 800 years. The historical development of the site testifies to the development of Buddhism into a religion and the flourishing of monastic and educational traditions.

The Nalanda archaeological site got included in the Tentative List of World Heritage on January 9, 2009. The nomination dossier was prepared by the Archaeological Survey of India and submitted in January 2015 to the World Heritage Committee for the purpose of its inscription in the year 2016.

Bihar currently has over 70 ASI-protected heritage monuments and sites under the Patna Circle. The Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya in the Gaya district of the state is under the UNESCO World Heritage Site. With its entry into the coveted UNESCO list, Nalanda University has become the 26th ‘cultural site’ of India to get the prestigious status.

Nalanda stands out as the most ancient university in the Indian Subcontinent and engaged in the organized transmission of knowledge over an uninterrupted period of 800 years, UNESCO said.

Nalanda UNESCO World Heritage Site:

Nalanda was an acclaimed Mahavihara, a large Buddhist monastery in the ancient kingdom of Magadha (modern-day Bihar) in India. The site is located about 95 kilometers southeast of Patna near the town of Bihar Sharif and was a center of learning from the fifth century CE to1200 CE. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The highly formalized methods of Vedic learning helped inspire the establishment of large teaching institutions such as Taxila, Nalanda, and Vikramashila which are often characterized as India’s early universities. Nalanda flourished under the patronage of the Gupta Empire in the 5th and 6th centuries and later under Harsha, the emperor of Kannauj. The liberal cultural traditions inherited from the Gupta age resulted in a period of growth and prosperity until the ninth century. The subsequent centuries were a time of gradual decline, a period during which the tantric developments of Buddhism became most pronounced in eastern India under the Pala Empire.

Nalanda stands out as the most ancient university in the Indian Subcontinent and engaged in the organized transmission of knowledge over an uninterrupted period of 800 years, UNESCO said.

Integrity:

Archaeological remains of Nalanda Mahavihara were systematically unearthed and preserved simultaneously. These are the most significant parts of the property that demonstrate development in planning, architecture, and artistic tradition of Nalanda. As evinced by the surviving antiquities, the site is explicit of a scholar’s life recorded in a monastic cum scholastic establishment.

While the original maha vihara was a much larger complex, all surviving remains of Nalanda present in the property area of 23 hectares comprising 11 viharas and 14 temples, besides many smaller shrine and votive structures, demonstrate amply its attributes such as axial planning and layout along the north-south axis, its architectural manifestation, and extant building materials and applied ornamental embellishments. Preserved in-situ are the structural remains of viharas and chaityas whose layers of construction show the evolution of the respective forms. The positioning of these structures over the extent of the site shows the planned layout unique to Nalanda. The property also retains a corpus of moveable and immoveable artifacts and artistic embellishments that show iconographic development reflecting changes in the Buddhist belief system.

Protection and management requirements:

The property is owned, protected, maintained, and managed by the Archaeological Survey of India vide national-level laws – the Ancient Monuments and Sites Remains Act of 1958 (Amendment and Validation, 2010) Decisions pertaining to its conservation and management are governed by National Conservation Policy for Monuments, Archaeological Sites and Remains promulgated by the Archaeological Survey of India.

Conservation and management of the property are ordained by a prospective plan and an annual conservation program. An in-house committee of the Archaeological Survey of India monitors its state of conservation and conducts need-analysis. A conservation plan for the excavated remains of the property should be worked out to safeguard its Outstanding Universal Value and authenticity. This apart, plans for visitors should be developed to strengthen approaches to visitor management and interpretation. Also, the risk preparedness plan should be completed.

Takshashila is declared a world heritage site by UNESCO:

The world’s first University was established in Takshila or Taxila or Takshashila (now in Pakistan) in 700BC. This center of learning was situated about 50 km west of Rawalpindi in Pakistan. It was an important Vedic/Hindu and Buddhist center of learning but wasn’t as well organized as the University of Nalanda.

The Vayu Purana traces the start of Takshila to Taksha, son of Bharata, and is also mentioned in Mahabharata, citing Dhaumya as one of the Acharyas. There are several mentions of this University in the Buddhist Jataka Tales. Chinese travelers like Fa Hian (Faxian) and Huien Tsang (Xuan Zang) also speak of Takshila in their writings.

More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied here. The campus accommodated students who came from as far as Babylonia, Greece, Arabia, and China and offered over sixty different courses in various fields such as science, mathematics, medicine, politics, warfare, astrology, astronomy, and music, religion, and philosophy. Generally, a student entered Takshashila at the age of sixteen. Students would come to Takshila and take up education in their chosen subject with their teacher directly. The entrance exam to Takshila was very difficult and only 3 out of every 10 students passed the admission test. 

Takshashila’s famous researchers and teachers include Panini (the great grammarian of Sanskrit, to whom Prof. Noam Chomsky of MIT attributes the origin of linguistics); Kautilya, also known as Chanakya (king-maker, astute political advisor, and author of ArthaShastra, c. 300 BCE, deemed by social and economic historian Max Weber as one of the greatest political state-craft books of the ancient world); Charaka (the distinguished physician, whose research on the region’s flora and fauna described in his Charaka Samhita strengthened the development of Ayurveda); and Jivaka (the great physician to Gautama Buddha and his followers).

It is an important archaeological site and UNESCO declared it to be a World Heritage Site in 1980. Archaeologist Alexander Cunningham discovered its ruins in the mid-19th century.

Conclusion:

Nalanda was one of the famous universities of ancient India and the historic center of higher learning in Bihar, India. It was founded in AD 427 in northeastern India, close to what is now Nepal’s southern border, and it lasted until AD 1197. It was primarily dedicated to Buddhist studies, but it also provided education in fine arts, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, politics, and the art of battle. Nalanda stands out as the most ancient university in the Indian Subcontinent and engaged in the organized transmission of knowledge over an uninterrupted period of 800 years, UNESCO said.