Modern India has seen the rise of excellent educational and research institutions. Indian scientists have worked on the frontiers of knowledge and technology. But this development has historical foundation. Ancient Indian civilization had world's finest universities and centres of excellence. Indians can take proud in the fact that the world's first university was established in India. Our Rishis and scientists and intellectual make the picture complete in their contribution in the expansion of knowledge and wisdom. In this section we extensively quote Dr. Jayant V. Narlikar's book " The Scientific Edge" has an exposition on the subject of ancient Indian Universities. The Vedic era was known for rishis(sages) who individually propagated learning by opening schools around their homes. The students lived there as a part of the extended family of their guru. They would do menial work in the house in exchange for instruction. This family-based teaching system, commonly known as gurukul(family of the guru), evolved towards institutionalisation over time. Very likely the different sages elected to live in communities by the side of the river, and these communities later became what we today call universities. We know of many European universities like Oxford, Cambridge and the Sorbonne as very old educational foundations. Indian universities predate them but did not survive because invading hordes destroyed them.

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Takshashila, in the north-west corner of the subcontinent (now near Rawalpindi, Pakistan), appears to have been the earliest of these. Situated in the fertile valley of the Jhelum and Sindhu rivers, it was a major town in the state of Gandhar, founded, according to references in the Ramayana, by King Bharata in the name of his son, Taksha. Records show that by 800 B.C., the university was functioning well. When Alexander's armies came to the Punjab in the fourth century B.C., Takshashila had already developed a reputation as a seat of learning for Hinduism. Thus on his return Alexander took many scholars from there with him to Greece. Although Takshashila attracted students from all over the country and beyond, it was not yet a university in the currently accepted sense. Rather each teacher was an institution upto himself. Chanakya, Dhaumya Muni, Nagarjuna and Atreya were teachers under this system.The student's learning was gauged by the reputation of his guru. It was under this system that Chanakya taught Chandragupta, who went on to found the Mauryan Empire. There were no financial, social or other barriers for entry to Takshashila. Students of all castes studied side by side. Takshashila was a university in the sense that it provided education in a wide variety of of subjects,including arts,literature, music, philosophy, religion (both Hindu and Buddhist) , law, chemistry, biology, medicine, astronomy, architecture, sculpture, history and geography. It provided instruction in vocational subjects like archery, elephant riding, agriculture, accounting and astrology. There were courses even on sorcery and witchcraft, handling snakes and dealing with omens. Because of its international reputation, Takshshila used to host conferences in medicine and other fields that attracted scholars from Babylon, Syria, Arabia, Phoenicia, China and Persia. However, being near the north-west frontier of India, Takshashila had to face the brunt of attacks and invasions from the north and the west. Thus the Persians, Greeks, Parthians, Shakas and Kushanas laid their destructive marks on this institution. The final blow, however, came from the Huns who, A.D. c.450, razed the institution. When the Chinese traveller Huen T'sang (A.D. 603-64) visited Takshashila, the town had lost all its former grandeur and international character.

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Huen T'sang, devoted a considerable part of his writings to Nalanda, a university in today's Bihar, and it is basically to those writings that we owe our present perception of what Nalanda might have been like in its heyday. He has described this university city as a confluence of Hindu, Jain and Buddhist religions. Chanakya, the teacher of Chandragupta, founder of the Mauryan dynasty and author of the classic volume Arthashastra, a Sanskrit text outlining theories and principles of governing a state, was born here and scholars like Nagarjuna, Buddhaghosha, Aryadeva and Jyotipala taught their various disciplines to a long line of pupils. Vardhamana Mahavira spent fourteen years of his life propagating the Jain religion here. Buddha himself had spent time here, and Nalanda is known as the place of Buddha's triumphs in religious disputations over two scholars, Upali Grihapati and Deegh Tapasi, who subsequently joined the Buddhist faith. It was not until the times of Emperor Ashoka that Nalanda began to regain its lost reputation. Ashoka built a vihara to commemorate the birth of Buddha's favourite disciple Sariputta, who had been at Nalanda. One may consider it as the beginning of Nalanda as a university. The destruction of Takshashila in the fifth century A.D. created a void that Nalanda very ably filled, and it thereby acquired a premier status amongst the centres of education in India. The Chinese descriptions are indeed glowing in terms of the physical well-being and the intellectual heights attained here. The campus had had a very pleasing appearance, with gardens and palatial buildings , baths and playing fields , ponds and streams for boating , and lotuses in abundance. Huen T'sang talks of towers rising to be engulfed in morning fog , monks living in four storied hostels with observatories on the roofs of tall buildings and good workmanship on terraces. Although the Gupta kings followed the Vedic Hindu religion, they treated Buddhism with respect and patronised Nalanda. Later Emperor Harshavardhana donated much land to the university. There are records of people in nearby towns and villages providing food and commons to the university.

Unlike Takshashila, which ran more or less on the individual initiatives of its teachers, Nalanda was organised more along the lines of a modern university. It had a management council and an academic council with respective responsibilities towards the overall administration and academic planning. The university had a wide range of courses in both religious and secular fields. The former included the Hindu and Jain religions as well as more prominent Buddhism. Amongst secular studies, the humanities, sciences, mathematics and medicine were taught side by side with fine arts and vocational subjects. There were no fees for board, lodging and education of the selected students, although the selection process was a tough one. The dwarapanditas (scholars at the door) conducted the entrance test, only 20 to 30 percent of the entrants passed. Despite that, when Huen T'sang spent time here, there were ten thousand pupils at Nalanda , which he describes as an educational institution that had no equal. This speaks for the urge for higher education in India at that time. The number of teachers was close to 1500, thus having a 7:1 student-teacher ratio, which can termed as the best in the world even with today's standard. the students were accommodated in single or double rooms in hostels. the walls of the students' rooms had alcoves for lamps and shelves for books and other personal effects. Women were also allowed to study here, but there were strict controls prohibiting men and women from meeting in private rooms. Nalanda successfully maintained its primacy for several centuries largely because it had an unbroken stream of excellent teacher-leaders at the helm, like Aryadeva, Kamalasheela, Karnapati, Chandrapala, Dantabhadra, Dhyanachandra, Bhadrasena and Sumatisena. Because of its reputation for a concentration of experts , many visitors came from far and near to nalanda to satisfy their unsolved queries. Nalanda library was called Dharmaganja, and it was housed in three buildings named Ratnabodhi (Ocean of pearls), Ratnasagar ( sea of pearls) and Ratnaranjak( pearls of recreation).The first buildings was nine storeys high and the two others were of six storeys each . The library also undertook to publish new volumes and reserve valuable manuscripts.This superb institution did not die a natural death through deterioration. Like Takshshila it fell victim to the invading hordes of Bakhtiyar Khilji in the thirteenth century. The buildings, books and manuscripts, as well as the scholars, all were mercilessly annihilated.Source. " the Scientific edge " by jayant V. Narlikar published by Penguin Books India ,New Delhi,page-32-39.

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