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The first universities: Takshashila and Nalanda vs Bologna

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Bologna (1088) calls itself the oldest university. Nalanda was a large residential centre of higher learning more than 600 years earlier.

India first (well documented)Culture, games, language & ideas

Indian claim

India had the world's first universities: Takshashila (Taxila) and, above all, Nalanda, which drew students from across Asia.

Evidence for the Indian claim

  • Excavations date Nalanda's monasteries to the Gupta period, about the 5th century CE (Britannica, citing the Archaeological Survey of India).
  • UNESCO, inscribing Nalanda Mahavihara as a World Heritage Site in 2016, calls it the most ancient university of the Indian subcontinent, engaged in the organised transmission of knowledge for some 800 years.
  • The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang studied at Nalanda in the 7th century and described its scale and learning.
  • Takshashila (Taxila) is remembered in early Buddhist (Jataka) stories and later texts as a famous centre of learning, from around the middle of the 1st millennium BCE.

Commonly credited to

The university as a self-governing corporation of students and teachers granting degrees began in medieval Europe, with Bologna (1088) usually named the oldest that is still running.

Evidence for the other claim

  • Historians note that Taxila had no single institution with lecture halls and residences like Nalanda; individual teachers took pupils.
  • Nalanda was sacked around 1200 CE and did not survive; Bologna has run continuously since 1088 and is the model for the self-governing, degree-granting universities found worldwide today.
  • Other old institutions also compete for the title, such as al-Qarawiyyin in Fez (859 CE).

What historians and scientists say

Nalanda is the earliest known large, organised residential institution of higher learning of the kind we now call a university, centuries before Bologna. Bologna is the oldest university in continuous operation. Takshashila was a famous centre of learning but not a single organised university.

Sources