Saturday, August 18, 2012

Nalanda International University Set to Open

Nalanda International University Set to Open in Fall 2012

Nalanda University, an ancient world University that attracted and educated world scholars to India for 700 years (497C.E-1197 C.E), laid in ruins for almost 800 years is set to reopen and revive the spirit of education and knowledge http://nalandauniv.edu.in/.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/09/opinion/09garten.html?pagewanted=all


Nalanda is a place of great intellectual heritage. Huen Tsang immortalized the university in his memoir of his travels in India and the Tang Empire Chronicled the texts Huen Tsang brought from India, which were later on translated into Chinese. As numerous other well known universities earlier, including the Taxila university, Nalada university of such great intellectual eminence and scholarship is destroyed in raids following the establishment of the Sultanate in Delhi. Alberuni painstakingly described how the unarmed monks were chased through the compound of Nalanda,  hunted down and trampled on by the horses, by the invaders seeking to find wealth. The armies then proceeded to loot and plunder the Gangetic doab.

Hopefully, Nalanda will bring back the age old memories to life and function as an independent knowledge center supporting merit, hard work and sincerity and gain international reputation of yore.

As stated in the University's mission as, "match the excellence of Nalanda of first millennium for the third millennium," may come true, and hopefully, the University will evolve  in to an international center for exchange and cultivation of knowledge of eminence for which it was known for in the past. Nobel Laureate, Amarthya Sen, the Argumentative Indian, Chief Minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, need to be commended for their hard work, dedication and successful completion of this project.