Ancient Indian Education: An Inquiry into its Origin, Development, and Ideals c4.178

c4.178

Nadiā, or Navadvīpa (‘New Island’), was a town founded in 1063 A.D. by one of the Sen kings of Bengal.¹ In 1203 it was captured by the Muhammadans. From the earliest days the patronage of its Hindu rulers and its political importance, as well as also the sanctity of the site, attracted a large number of scholars who taught the Brāhmaṇic learning to thousands of students, and this continued even when Nadiā lost its political importance. Among erudite teachers who taught in Nadiā are Abdihodha Yogi, a pandit who is said to have founded there the first school of logic; a subject for which Nadiā has since been specially famous. Bāsudev Sarbabhauma, another of its famous savants, is said, while a pupil of Pakshādhar Misra, the first logician of Mithilā, to have learnt by heart the whole of the treatise on logic. Among his distinguished pupils were Raghunāth Siromani, the author of the *Didhiti*, and the commentary on the *Gautama Sūtra*; Raghunandana Smarta Bhatacharya, the most renowned teacher of law in Bengal, whose school is followed even to this day throughout the whole province; Krishnananda Agambagis, whose work on *Tantra* philosophy is the standard book on the subject; and Gauranga, or Chaitanya, the leader of a great Vaishṇava sect in the sixteenth century.