Nalanda MahaviharaA place with a story.

Around 1200 CE, Nalanda was attacked by the Turkic-Afghan military leader Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khalji. The main near-contemporary source for this is the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, a Persian chronicle written by Minhaj-i-Siraj a few decades after Khalji's death; archaeologists have also found a thick layer of ash in the uppermost excavated strata, consistent with a major fire. From this has grown a popular story — repeated in many textbooks — of a library so vast it burned for three months. That specific detail is not well attested: the Tibetan monk Dharmasvamin, visiting in 1235, found the monastery "largely damaged and deserted" but made no mention of a burning library, and historians increasingly note that some teaching continued at Nalanda in reduced form for decades, possibly longer, after the attack. The fairest account is that Nalanda was violently sacked around 1200 CE and never recovered its former scale — while the more dramatic "three months of burning manuscripts" image belongs to later retelling rather than to the primary sources.

The excavated site — a 12-hectare complex of monastery courtyards, stupas and viharas — was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 15 July 2016. The adjoining Nalanda Archaeological Museum holds sculptures, seals, coins and manuscripts recovered from the ruins. Nalanda sits about 90 km southeast of Patna, Bihar's capital, and about 16 km north of Rajgir, itself linked to the Buddha's life and to the nearby ruins of the rival monastic university of Vikramashila.

Written from the sources listed at the end of this page. If we have something wrong, tell us.