The University of Nalanda c17.3

c17.3

Once a smiling city, shining with the light of hundreds of jewels, grand with its *chaityas*, towering turrets and *vihāras*, the abode of scholars and priests, Nālandā to-day is but a faint shadow of its past glory and splendour. Its present site is amidst long stretches of fields, interspersed here and there with mango-trees and huge mounds, at some places, each standing in splendid isolation from the other, and at others, several of them are found in such close proximity of each other as to suggest one continuous hill.