At last Nalanda University gets the UNESCO World Heritage tag

Nalanda University in Bihar finally gets recognition as UNESCO granted it the coveted World Heritage tag. It took seven-years to get this approval after an initial thumbs down on New Delhi's proposal. UNESCO had first included Nalanda in its tentative list of World Heritage site in the year 2009 and subsequent relentless efforts by the Centre as well as the Bihar government led to the approval.
This has been reported in telegraphindia.com dated 16 July 2016.

The approval was granted in the ongoing 40th session of the World Heritage Committee in Istanbul, Turkey. In this session, the Nalanda ruins was included under the "cultural properties" category. It is Bihar's second World Heritage site. The first was the Mahabodhi Mahavihara in Bodhgaya which was accorded the status on June 27, 2002.
"Nalanda was established in the third century BC as a monastery but it developed as a university by 4th-5th century AD. Even though the European universities had flourished in the medieval period (AD 500 to about 1500), Nalanda had grown to a large institution of learning by the fourth century AD.
Ancient Nalanda university flourished as a university 700-800 years after its establishment as a monastery. As per records, in the 7th century AD, there were around 1,500 students and 1,000 teachers in the university. They came from all across India, China, Tibet, Nepal, Korea and several other Southeast Asian countries. The university had big classrooms, hostels, laboratories and libraries among other facilities and, apart from Buddhist studies, other streams including human sciences were taught. There were clearly defined procedure for admission to the university.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org


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