The Long Walk to Wisdom: What Nalanda Still Teaches Us About Education

Upasana Kaura

Imagine walking for eight years—across burning deserts and the icy passes of the Hindu Kush—just for a chance to apply to college. No guarantee of admission. No shortcuts. Just the pursuit of knowledge.

In 629 CE, a Chinese monk named Xuanzang did exactly that. Defying an imperial travel ban, he journeyed to India and, by 637 CE, arrived at the gates of Nalanda University. But the journey, grueling as it was, turned out to be the easy part.

Admission to Nalanda wasn’t based on lineage, wealth, or recommendation letters. It was earned—through intellect. At the entrance stood the Dvarapalas, scholar-gatekeepers who rigorously questioned applicants on logic, philosophy, and debate. If you faltered, you were turned away. Historical accounts, including Xuanzang’s own Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, suggest that as many as 70–80% of applicants never made it past the gate.

A University Ahead of Its Time

Founded around 427 CE under Kumaragupta I, Nalanda was not just an institution—it was an idea far ahead of its time. While Europe was still centuries away from establishing universities like University of Oxford or University of Bologna, Nalanda was already thriving as the world’s first great residential university.

At its peak, the campus housed nearly 10,000 students and 2,000 teachers—a remarkable 5:1 student-teacher ratio that even modern elite institutions struggle to achieve. But what truly set Nalanda apart wasn’t just scale. It was accessibility.

Education Without Debt

Nalanda operated on a model that feels almost radical today: free education. Funded through the agrahara system, the university was sustained by the revenue of 100 to 200 villages. This meant students—from China, Korea, Tibet, Persia, and beyond—could dedicate themselves entirely to learning, unburdened by financial constraints.

In an age where education is often commodified, Nalanda’s model poses an uncomfortable question: what if we truly treated knowledge as a public good?

A Curriculum Without Boundaries

Though rooted in Buddhist philosophy, Nalanda’s curriculum was strikingly interdisciplinary. It embraced both the “art of war” and the “art of peace,” reflecting a worldview that resisted intellectual silos.

Students studied medicine, mathematics, astronomy, politics, grammar, metallurgy, and logic. Among its most distinguished scholars was Aryabhata, who is believed to have led the institution and famously proposed that the Earth rotates on its axis—centuries before such ideas gained traction elsewhere.

Nalanda wasn’t just preserving knowledge; it was producing it.

The Library That Burned for Months

At the heart of Nalanda stood its legendary library, Dharmaganja—the “Treasury of Truth.” Spread across three grand buildings, one rising nine stories high, it housed an estimated nine million manuscripts. Each was painstakingly copied by hand onto palm leaves.

Then, in 1193 CE, came the end.

An invading force led by Bakhtiyar Khilji sacked the university. Invaders killed the monks and set the library ablaze. Accounts suggest the fire burned for three months—an almost unimaginable destruction of accumulated human knowledge in medicine, science, and philosophy.

It wasn’t just a university that was lost. It was a civilization’s intellectual memory.

Rediscovery and Revival

For over six centuries, Nalanda lay forgotten—until 1812, when Francis Buchanan-Hamilton stumbled upon its ruins. It took decades more for scholars to connect the site to Xuanzang’s writings and recognize its historical significance.

The original Nalanda functioned for over 760 years—nearly twice the lifespan of Harvard University as it stands today. Its endurance is a testament to the strength of its vision.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the new 455-acre Nalanda University campus in June 2024, unveiling a net-zero, sustainable institution. It aims not merely to replicate the past, but to revive its spirit: a place where knowledge transcends borders, disciplines, and divisions.

A Lesson for Our Times

Nalanda’s story is not just about a lost university. It is about what education once meant—and what it could mean again.

In a world where students chase degrees for employability and institutions compete for rankings, Nalanda reminds us of a different ideal: a time when people crossed continents not for prestige, but for learning itself.

Upasana Kaura is an Educator