University of Nalanda

The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century BCE was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education. Buddha visited Nalanda several times during his lifetime. The Chinese scholar and traveler Hiuen Tsang stayed here in the 7th century, and has left an elaborate description of the excellence, and purity of monastic life practized here. About 2,000 teachers and 10,000 students from all over the Buddhist world, lived and studied in this international university. In this first residential international university of the world, 2,000 teachers and 10,000 students from all over the Buddhist world lived and studied here. The Gupta kings patronized these monasteries, built in old Kushan architectural style, in a row of cells around a courtyard. Ashoka and Harshavardhana were some of its most celebrated patrons who built temples and monasteries here. Recent excavations have unearthed elaborate structures here. Hiuen Tsang had left ecstatic accounts of both the ambiance and architecture of this unique university of ancient times.

The Nalanda university counted on its staff such great thinkers as Nagarjuna, Aryadeva, Vasubhandu, Asanga, Sthiramati, Dharmapala, Silaphadra, Santideva and Padmasambhava. The ancient universities were the sanctuaries of the inner life of the nation.

Nalanda, Vikramshila, Odantapura, and Jagddala as the universities destroyed by Mohammed Bakhtiar Khilji around 1200 A.D.

These universities were sacked, plundered, looted by the Islamic onslaught.

The Moghuls neglected practical and secular learning, especially the sciences. Throughout their long rule, no institutions was established comparable to modern university, although early India had world-famous centers of learning such as Taxila, Nalanda and Kanchi. Neither the nobles nor the mullas were stirred into learning.

Akbar was illiterate. So were most of the Muslim rulers. They did not build one good college in eight centuries, complains Nehru. Naturally, the Muslim invaders saw no good in the two great universities of India—Taxila and Nalanda. They destroyed them. Peter Mansfield, historian of the Middle East, writes: “The great movements of ideas in western Europe from the Reformation through the Renaissance and counter-Reformation left the Ottoman world almost untouched.” The French and Russian revolutions were not different. They made little impact on the thinking of the Muslim world.

(source: Knowledge is suspected in Islam - By M. S. N. Menon)

Nalanda is more famous than takshahila right? Also there is also a 3rd university that is supposedly rivaled nalanda and takshashila i can't remember its name. i will try to find it out.

Yup, Nalanda is more famous than Takshashila. In fact, most people haven't even heard of Takshashila, even though it came before Nalanda.

Yeah, there was a third university, but I can't remember its name either.......