The University of Nalanda c11.48

c11.48

The time when Dharmapāla was the head of the University may be fixed at the early years of the seventh century, because when Hiuen Tsiang visited Nālandā in A.D. 635, Śīlabhadra was the head of the University, which implies that Dharmapāla was then dead or had retired by that time. And Dharmapāla could not have come to Nālandā earlier than the 7th century. For assuming that he left his native place Kāñcīpura at the age of 20, as he was then of marriageable age,¹ we must assign some twenty to thirty years more, to the interval, during which he became the ‘Pandita’ of Nālandā, when he acquired training for the Bhikkhuship, mastered the Buddhist and other heretical śāstras, so much so that he could win over the pandits and kings of other faiths and then go to Nālandā as a distinguished Buddhist.