Kumaragupta I and the founding of the Nalanda monastery

The founding is known mainly from later Buddhist writers. Xuanzang, who studied at Nalanda in the 7th century, recorded that the monastery had been built by a king named Shakraditya and enlarged by his successors Budhagupta, Tathagatagupta, Baladitya and Vajra, who added further monasteries and temples; the Korean pilgrim Prajnavarman (Hye-ryun), who came to Nalanda some forty years after Xuanzang and whose account was recorded by Yijing, also names Shakraditya as the founder, and the name Shakraditya also occurs on a seal found at the site. Shakraditya is usually identified with Kumaragupta I, whose title was Mahendraditya — Shakra and Mahendra are both names of the god Indra. The Chinese pilgrim Faxian, who passed through Magadha in the first decade of the 5th century, mentions at the village of Nala, the birthplace of the Buddha’s disciple Shariputra, only a stupa and no monastery, which suggests that the monastery was founded after his visit. The identification is not beyond doubt, since Xuanzang places Budhagupta, a Gupta king of the late 5th century, immediately after Shakraditya; the date of about 427 often given for the founding is a modern estimate.

Kumaragupta I, the son of Chandragupta II, ruled from about 415 to 455 an empire that stretched from Gujarat to Bengal. Little is known of his wars, but he performed the horse sacrifice and issued more types of coins than any other Gupta king, and inscriptions of his reign show Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Buddhism and Jainism flourishing side by side. Under the later Guptas and their successors Nalanda became a great residential monastery where grammar, logic, medicine and the Vedas were studied alongside Buddhist philosophy; Xuanzang and Yijing both spent years there in the 7th century.