The University of Nalanda c7.32

c7.32

So before a great University like Nālandā comes into being, there must be in existence a great and vast literature which the University may take upon itself to teach and to expound. This does not mean that the University confines itself to the work already done, and that it creates nothing new.¹ We shall see in the following chapters how Nālandā professors turned their activities into new channels like *Nyāya*, *Tantra*, etc., and wrote stupendous volumes on these subjects. The Nālandā University, in this respect, was very fortunate. Unlike the Mediæval European Universities of Salerno, Bologna and Paris,² the period that preceded the rise of the Nālandā University was characterised by an intellectual fervour unknown to the history of any country. India had not known anything like “Dark Ages” in her intellectual history, before the invasion of the Moslems in the 12th century A.D. This is true, notwithstanding the fact that India was overrun more than once by foreigners,—once by the Greeks under Alexander and then by the various hordes of the Huns, and (in spite of the fact) that India was at no period of her history completely free from internal wars of aggrandisement between her different political chiefs. Nālandā had, therefore, a very rich heritage to fall back upon.