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Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the new campus of Nalanda University, an international university, close to the site of the ancient ruins of Nalanda at Rajgir in Bihar.
Parliament established Nalanda University through the Nalanda University Act, 2010.
The Act formed the basis for implementing the decisions arrived at the second East Asia Summit in the Philippines in 2007 for the establishment of the university as an “international institution for pursuit of intellectual, philosophical, historical and spiritual studies” and at the fourth summit in Thailand in 2009.
It started functioning in 2014 from a makeshift location with 14 students and the construction work started in 2017.
Nalanda University (Old)
It was founded by Kumar gupta of the Gupta dynasty in Bihar in the early 5th century, and it flourished for 600 years until the 12th century.
During the era of Harshavardhan and the Pala monarchs, it rose to popularity.
It was a center of learning, culture, and intellectual exchange that had a profound impact on the development of Indian civilization and beyond.
Nalanda was a monastic establishment in the sense that it was primarily a place where monks and nuns lived and studied.
It used to teach all the major philosophies of Buddhism.
It had students from far-flung regions such as China, Korea, Japan, Tibet, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia
It continued to be a centre of intellectual activity up until it was destroyed in the 12th century AD, in 1193, by Turkish ruler Qutb Ud Din Aibak's general Bakhtiyar Khilji.
After six centuries, the university was rediscovered in 1812 by Scottish surveyor Francis Buchanan-Hamilton and later identified as the ancient university by Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1861.
The Chinese monk Xuan Zang has offered invaluable insights into the academic and architectural grandeur of ancient Nalanda.
It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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