Vikramashila

• 1. Introduction

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  Vikramashila, a Buddhist monastic university in what is now Bihar in India, once housed more than one hundred teachers and roughly one thousand students under a single roof. King Dharmapala founded it between the late eighth and early ninth century, and for roughly four centuries it ranked among the three most important Buddhist institutions of its era in the entire subcontinent. Then, around 1193, the forces of Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji reduced it to rubble. What survived was silence, and the memories carried northward by monks fleeing into Nepal and Tibet.

  What made Vikramashila distinctive? Why did foreign kingdoms send invitations to its scholars? And what does a two-terraced stupa, still standing fifteen metres high in a Bihar field, tell us about the civilization that built it?

• 2. The Pala Network

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  Dharmapala, who ruled from 783 to 820 CE, did not build Vikramashila in isolation. Five great institutions rose during the Pala period across medieval Bengal and Magadha: Vikramashila, Nalanda, Somapura, Odantapuri, and Jagaddala. Tibetan sources describe all five as operating under state supervision, with a system of coordination that allowed eminent scholars to move freely between them.

  Vikramashila was regarded as the premier university of the era, while Nalanda, though past its prime, remained illustrious. The network functioned as an interlinked group rather than a set of rivals. A scholar trained at one mahavihara might hold a senior post at another without any sense of rupture. Dharmapala reportedly established Vikramashila in direct response to a perceived decline in scholarship at Nalanda, suggesting that even within the network, institutional reputation was a matter of active concern.

  The same king who built Vikramashila also founded Somapura Mahavihara in what is now Bangladesh. Excavation has revealed that the two sites share a striking architectural kinship: both feature cruciform stupas at their centres, both use terracotta plaques with similar iconography, and both were built to a comparable scale. The key difference is that Somapura is centred on a temple rather than a stupa.

• 3. Hierarchy and Learning

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  Scholar Sukumar Dutt observed that Vikramashila possessed a more clearly articulated internal hierarchy than other mahaviharas of its time. At the apex sat the abbot, the Adhyaksha. Beneath the abbot were six gate scholars, the Dvarapalas, one assigned to each of the institution's six named gates: Eastern, Western, First Central, Second Central, Northern, and Southern. Below them sat the Mahapanditas, then roughly 108 Panditas, then approximately 160 professors, and finally around one thousand resident monks.

  The subjects taught at Vikramashila included philosophy, grammar, metaphysics, and Indian logic, but the most important branch of learning was Buddhist tantra. This shaped the institution's identity in ways that distinguished it from a purely scholarly monastery. It was simultaneously a place of rigorous academic debate and a centre for Vajrayana practice.

  At its peak, during the reign of King Chanaka from 955 to 983 CE, the six gate scholar positions were held by figures whose names have carried through centuries of Tibetan transmission: Ratnākaraśānti at the Eastern Gate, Vāgīśvarakīrti at the Western, Ratnavajra at the First Central, Jñanasrimitra at the Second Central, Naropa at the Northern, and Prajñākaramati at the Southern Gate.

• 4. Scholars and Their Reach

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  Atisha Dipankara is perhaps the single most consequential figure associated with Vikramashila. A founder of the Sarma traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, Atisha carried learning from the university northward in ways that shaped Tibetan religious culture for centuries. He is one among a long list of scholars who either studied or taught at the institution, a list that includes Naropa, Ratnākaraśānti, Jñanasrimitra, Haribhadra, Maitripada, and Śākyaśrībhadra, who served as the last abbot during the late twelfth and early thirteenth century.

  The Tantric lineage at Vikramashila began with Buddhajñānapāda, who was followed in sequence by Dīpaṁkarabhadra, then Jayabhadra. Jayabhadra was a monk from Sri Lanka and the first prominent commentator on the Cakrasamvara tantra. His successor Bhavabhatta may have been the mahasiddha Bhadrapada. Durjayachandra, one of three Cakrasamvara commentators who followed, collaborated with the renowned Tibetan translator Rinchen Zangpo, and his commentary became particularly important for the Sakya school.

  Much of what we know about Vikramashila reaches us through a single source: the writings of Tāranātha, a Tibetan monk historian active in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The institution's story was preserved not in India but in the manuscripts and chronicles of Tibet, precisely because so many of its scholars fled there.

• 5. Architecture and Excavation

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  B. P. Sinha of Patna University began systematic excavation of the site between 1960 and 1969. The Archaeological Survey of India continued the work from 1972 to 1982, and the process has not fully concluded. What those decades of digging revealed was a vast square monastery with sides measuring 330 metres each, enclosing 208 cells arranged in groups of 52 along each of the four sides, all opening onto a common verandah. Beneath some cells, brick-arched underground chambers were found, thought to have been used for confined meditation.

  The library building sits about 32 metres south of the monastery's southwest corner, connected by a narrow corridor. Its design included a passive cooling system: vents in the rear wall drew cooled water from an adjacent reservoir through the structure. The intention was the preservation of fragile palm-leaf manuscripts, which the climate of the Indo-Gangetic plains is particularly hostile to.

  The main stupa at the centre stands two terraces high, reaching roughly 15 metres from ground level. The lower terrace rises about 2.25 metres, and the upper terrace adds a similar height. Each terrace carries a circumambulatory path. On each of the four cardinal directions, a protruding chamber with a pillared antechamber holds a colossal stucco image of the seated Buddha; three of the four were found in their original positions. The walls and floors were plastered with lime, and traces of painting in red and black pigments survive on the pedestals. The terracotta plaques decorating both terrace walls depict Buddhist deities including Avalokiteshvara, Manjusri, Maitreya, Jambala, Marichi, and Tara, alongside hunting scenes, social scenes, and figures of yogis, drummers, warriors, and archers.

• 6. Lost Manuscripts, Surviving Traces

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  The library that once cooled its manuscripts against the Bihar heat did not survive. The raids by Bakhtiyar Khalji around 1193 destroyed the physical collection, and natural decay took whatever the raids left behind. Yet some manuscripts escaped. Monks who fled to Nepal and Tibet carried texts with them, and five manuscripts have so far been identified that contain direct references to Vikramashila.

  One of those five is now held at the British Library. It references the institution by a formal Sanskrit title: the 'Glorious Great Monastery of the King Vikramashila', rendered in the source as shrīmadvikramashīladevamahāvihāra. The manuscript contains the text of the Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita, one of the foundational texts of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. The survival of this single manuscript in London, copied at Vikramashila and now thousands of miles from its origin, is a compressed history of displacement and preservation.

  Since 2009, the Archaeological Survey of India has undertaken maintenance and beautification work at the site. In 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a package of five hundred crore rupees for revival, contingent on the state government providing roughly 500 acres of land, a condition that had not been met as of the most recent reporting. President Pranab Mukherjee visited the ruins in 2017 and addressed a public gathering, pledging to raise the question of revival with the Prime Minister.