The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c9.s2.5

c9.s2.5

Similarly Hindu public life can count in its manifold experience the founding and maintenance of *pariṣats* (academies) for the prosecution of research in the arts and sciences, as well as of educational institutions of ambitious scope and encyclopaedic character. It was in the hands of scholars who graduated from such centres of learning that the administration of government was entrusted.⁴ One such institution was the University at Nâlandâ in Eastern India (Bihar), founded by Emperor Narasimha-gupta Bâlâditya (*c.* 469—473). Itsing, the Chinese scholar, was an alumus of this university for ten years (675—685) in the departments of medicine and logic. The number of residents at Nâlandâ exceeded 3000, was between 3500 and 5000, at that time. The lands possessed by the University comprised more than 200 villages, the gifts of kings for several generations.¹ Itsing mentions eight halls and three hundred apartments among the buildings of the institution.²