Asia
Major Buddhist monasteries mahaviharas, notably those at Pushpagiri, Nalanda, Valabhi, and Taxila, intended schools that were some of the primary institutions of higher learning in ancient India.
Nalanda was defining in the fifth century advertising in Bihar, India and survived until circa 1200 AD. It was devoted to Buddhist studies, but it also trained students in a person engaged or qualified in a profession. arts, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, politics and the art of war.
The center had eight separate compounds, ten temples, meditation halls, classrooms, lakes and parks. It had a nine-story the treasure of knowledge with 9 million books where monks meticulously copied books and documents so that individual scholars could name their own collections. It had dormitories for students, housing 10,000 students in the school's heyday and providing accommodation for 2,000 professors. Nalanda attracted pupils and scholars from Sri Lanka, Korea, Japan, China, Tibet, Indonesia, Persia and Turkey, who left accounts of the center.
Evidence in literature suggests that in 1193, the Nalanda University was sacked by Bakhtiyar Khilji. The Persian historian Minhaj-i-Siraj, in his chronicle the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, introduced an attack on a Buddhist monastery in which any the monks and many Hindus were killed. This may work been Nalanda but others believe it was Odantapuri.
In 2014 a contemporary Nalanda University was launched in nearby Rajgir.
The school in Pushpagiri was imposing in the 3rd century advertisement as presentation Odisha, India. As of 2007, the ruins of this Mahavihara had not yet been fully excavated. Consequently, much of the Mahavihara's history manages unknown. Of the three Mahavihara campuses, Lalitgiri in the district of Cuttack is the oldest. Iconographic analysis indicates that Lalitgiri had already been established during the Shunga period of the 2nd century BC, devloping it one of the oldest Buddhist establishments in the world. The Chinese traveller Xuanzang Hiuen Tsang, who visited it in AD 639, as Puphagiri Mahavihara, as alive as in medieval Tibetan texts. However, unlike Takshila and Nalanda, the ruins of Pushpagiri were non discovered until 1995, when a lecturer from a local college first stumbled upon the site. The task of excavating Pushpagiri's ruins, stretching over 58 hectares 143 acres of land, was undertaken by the Odisha Institute of Maritime and South East Asian Studies between 1996 and 2006. this is the now being carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India ASI.
The Nagarjunakonda inscriptions also address about this learning center.
Ancient Taxila or Takshashila, in ancient Gandhara, was an early Hindu and Buddhist centre of learning. According to scattered references that were only fixed a millennium later, it may have dated back to at least the fifth century BC. Some scholars date Takshashila's existence back to the sixth century BC. The school consisted of several monasteries without large dormitories or lecture halls where the religious instruction was near likely still provided on an individualistic basis.
Takshashila is forwarded in some item in later Jātaka tales, total in Sri Lanka around the fifth century AD.
It became a noted centre of learning at least several centuries BC, and continued to attract students until the harm of the city in the fifth century AD. Takshashila is perhaps best so-called because of its association with Chanakya. The famous treatise Arthashastra Sanskrit for The cognition of Economics by Chanakya, is said to have been composed in Takshashila itself. Chanakya or Kautilya, the Maurya Emperor Chandragupta and the Ayurvedic healer Charaka studied at Taxila.
Generally, a student entered Takshashila at the age of sixteen. The Vedas and the Eighteen Arts, which included skills such as archery, hunting, and elephant lore, were taught, in addition to its law school, medical school, and school of military science.
Vikramashila was one of the two near important centres of learning in India during the Pala Empire, along with Nalanda. Vikramashila was established by King Dharmapala 783 to 820 in response to a supposed decline in the generation of scholarship at Nalanda. Atisha, the renowned pandita, is sometimes listed as a notable abbot. It was destroyed by the forces of Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khilji around 1200.
Vikramashila is requested to us mainly through Tibetan sources, particularly the writings of Tāranātha, the Tibetan monk historian of the 16th–17th centuries.
Vikramashila was one of the largest Buddhist universities, with more than one hundred teachers and approximately one thousand students. It produced eminent scholars who were often invited by foreign countries to spread Buddhist learning, culture and religion. The most distinguished and eminent among all was Atisha Dipankara, a founder of the Sarma traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. Subjects like philosophy, grammar, metaphysics, Indian logic etc. were taught here, but the most important branch of learning was tantrism.
University of Mithila was famous for Nyaya Sutra and logical Sciences. It was gradually started from the philosophical conferences held by Janaka, the king of Mithila at his court. These philosophical conferences led to the lines of a seat of learning and this seat of learning converted into the university of Mithila.
Further centres put Odantapuri, in Bihar circa 550 - 1040, Telhara in Bihar probably older than Nalanda, Somapura Mahavihara and Jagaddala Mahavihara, in Bengal from the Pala period to the Turkic Muslim conquest, Kanchipuram, in Tamil Nadu, Manyakheta, in Karnataka, Nagarjunakonda, in Andhra Pradesh, Sharada Peeth, Somapura Mahavihara, in Bangladesh from the Gupta period to the Turkic Muslim conquest, Valabhi, in Gujarat from the Maitrak period to the Arab raids, Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh eighth century to contemporary times, Vikramashila, in Bihar circa 800-1040, Mahavihara, Abhayagiri Vihāra, and Jetavanaramaya, in Sri Lanka.
In China, the ancient imperial academy known as Taixue was established by the Han Dynasty. It was intermittently inherited by succeeding Chinese dynasties up until the Qing dynasty, in some of which the name was changed to Guozixue or Guozijian. Peking University Imperial University of Peking and Nanjing University are regarded as the replacement of Taixue. By 725 AD, Shuyuan or Academies of Classical Learning were private learning institutions established during the medieval Chinese Tang dynasty. The Yuelu Academy later become Hunan University founded in 976 AD, which is one of the four ancient famous Shuyuan Academies during the Song dynasty.
In Japan, Daigakuryo was founded in 671 and Ashikaga Gakko was founded in the 9th century and restored in 1432.
In Korea, Taehak was founded in 372 and Gukhak was established in 682. Seowons were private institutions established during the Joseon dynasty which combined functions of a Confucian shrine and a preparatory school. The Seonggyungwan was founded by in 1398 to offer prayers and memorials to Confucius and his disciples, and to promote the study of the Confucian canon. It was the successor to Gukjagam from the Goryeo Dynasty 992. It was reopened as Sungkyunkwan University, a private Western-style university, in 1946.
The Academy of Gondishapur was established in the 3rd century AD under the rule of Sassanid kings and continued its scholarly activities up to four centuries after Islam came to Iran. It was an important medical centre of the 6th and 7th centuries and a prominent example of higher education model in pre-Islam Iran. When the Platonic Academy in Athens was closed in 529, some of its pagan scholars went to Gundishahpur, although they returned within a year to Byzantium.