The University of Nalanda c2.12

c2.12

Guptas, under Samudragupta, had ensured peace, prosperity and orderly government not only in Magadha but throughout the greater part of India. They brought back, besides these, all the great virtues—Holiness, Nobility and Toleration. It was, however, left to the successors of Samudragupta to utilise this heritage. To a man, they practised these virtues with an impartiality that was unimpeachable. They encouraged and patronised artists, poets and philosophers irrespective of caste and creed, with the result that the country rang with the exploits of these savants in the fields of art, literature and philosophy. Thus it was that Nālandā, though primarily a Buddhist institution, came to be founded by King Śakrāditya (Kumāragupta I), who himself was a devout Hindu.