Designed for students from diverse international and cultural backgrounds, this course introduces the intellectual and institutional legacy of ancient Nālandā through a critical engagement with its historical evidence. Rather than treating Nālandā merely as a nostalgic memory of the past, the course approaches it as a historical institution and as a significant expression of the intellectual, philosophical, cultural, and civilisational ethos of Indian knowledge traditions. More importantly, the course aims at recontexualizing this legacy in our contemporary situation.

The course creates an interdisciplinary space in which students from diverse academic disciplines engage with major strands of Indian thought, their historical development, wider intellectual and international connections, and contemporary relevance. Its scope therefore extends beyond the historical study of ancient Nālandā to an examination of the intellectual values, methods, and traditions associated with it and their relevance to the present.

The curriculum is organised around four principal objectives:

Objective I: To critically examine archaeological and textual evidence relating to Nālandā, distinguishing historically substantiated evidence from later tradition, legend, and hagiography.

Objective II: To examine the classical Nālandā curriculum, including the pañca-vidyā and sixty-four kalās, as an integrated framework of human formation, and to situate it within the wider network of Indian and transregional centres of learning.

Objective III: To revive śāstrārtha as a method of intellectual training, requiring students to present the pūrvapakṣa in its strongest form, formulate and defend their own siddhānta, and engage rigorously with critical questioning.

Objective IV: To relate selected intellectual, ethical, economic, and artistic dimensions of Nālandā to contemporary questions, developing students’ capacity for reasoned written argument and oral defence.