The Heritage of Nalanda

by C Mani (ed.)

Nalanda as a monastic institution in the time of Buddha emerged into the greatest academic and spiritual centre of Asia in the early medieval times. This alludes to successive stages of development in Buddhism from naive realism of the early monastic order to developed metaphysic of the Prajnaparamita and Yogacara philosophies which revolutionized the capacity of thinking of men.The book, an outcome of the research papers presented in the International Conference on 'The Heritage of Nalanda' held at Nalanda (February 12 to 14, 2006), a landmark in the field of scholarship, in its six parts with its critical delineation, has a veritable coverage as: (i) History, (ii) Art and Archaeology, (iii) Early Medieval Scholasticism: Logic, Philosophy and Esoterism, (iv) Literature, (v) Monastic Education: Ideals of Nalanda Mahavihara, and (vi) Nalanda Experience. The strikingly illustrated book is a significant contribution to the field of Buddhist studies and is valuable for a general interest reader as well as an academician.