Vikramashila, Bihar’s other great monastery
Founded by the Pala king Dharmapala, Vikramashila near Kahalgaon was for four centuries one of the most important Buddhist centres of learning in India.
When people think of ancient learning in Bihar, they think of Nalanda. Yet centuries later another great monastery rose in the east of the region, and for around four hundred years it was one of the most important centres of Buddhist learning in India.
Vikramashila was founded by the Pala king Dharmapala in the late 8th or early 9th century. Its site is now Antichak village, near Kahalgaon in Bhagalpur district. With Nalanda and Odantapuri, it was one of the three most important Buddhist mahaviharas of its time, and one of the largest, with more than a hundred teachers and about a thousand students.
Teachers who travelled
Scholars from Vikramashila were often invited to other countries to teach. The best known is Atisha Dipankara, a founding figure of the Sarma traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. Philosophy, grammar, metaphysics and logic were among the subjects studied here.
Destruction and rediscovery
The monastery was destroyed around 1193 by the forces of Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji, along with other major Buddhist centres in the region. Excavations in the 1960s, and then by the Archaeological Survey of India between 1972 and 1982, revealed a huge square monastery with a cruciform stupa at its centre, a library building and clusters of votive stupas. The ASI maintains a museum at the site.
