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Centres of learning

How Bharat learned

c. 800 BCE (Baudhayana)	The Sulba-sutras: geometry with a rope: Geometric texts of the Vedic period on building fire altars — the earliest known Indian texts with methods to construct perpendiculars and perpendicular bisectors, using a rope as the compass. Baudhayana’s Sulbasutra (c. 800 BCE) already works with non-unit fractions.
c. 500 BCE	Panini’s Ashtadhyayi: The Ashtadhyayi of Panini, a work on Sanskrit grammar.
c. 100 CE; final shape in the Gupta period	Charaka and Sushruta Samhitas: Works on medicine in Sanskrit. Ayurveda has much older roots, but these texts — which deal with cataloguing and diagnosing diseases, among other topics — were compiled and given their final shape during the Gupta period.
c. 500 CE	Kusumapura, Aryabhata’s centre of learning: Aryabhata lived around 500 CE in Kusumapura, near present-day Patna — a famous centre of learning.

The great ancient centres

Mauryan times	Takshashila, a centre of learning: According to Buddhist texts, Kautilya — author of the Arthashastra, ‘the science of governance and economics’ — was a teacher at the world-renowned Takshashila university.
5th century CE	Nalanda is founded: According to the records of the pilgrim Xuan Zang, a monastery’s foundation was laid at Nalanda by Kumaragupta I in the fifth century CE; later kings built it up into a great university.
3rd century BCE – 13th century CE	Nalanda Mahavihara: The Palas, like Harsha before them, continued to patronise Nalanda; large monasteries like it were, in effect, the universities of the time.
7th century CE	Xuan Zang and Nalanda: The Chinese pilgrim Xuan Zang came in search of Buddhist texts. Most of what we know about Nalanda comes from his records.
late 8th century	Vikramashila university: Founded by the Pala king Dharmapala, it remained a great centre of learning for more than four centuries, with six colleges, a vast library and nearly 3,000 scholars. Each college had a ‘scholar gatekeeper’ who set the admission test.
6th–12th centuries CE	Sharada Peetha in Kashmir: Sharada Peetha in Kashmir, a renowned centre of learning that flourished between the 6th and 12th centuries CE, was a key site in the development of the Sharada script; its legacy earned Kashmir the name Sharada Desh.
c. 1203	Nalanda and Vikramashila destroyed: Bakhtiyar Khilji’s campaign through Bihar and Bengal destroyed the great Buddhist monasteries and universities of Nalanda and Vikramashila. It hastened the decline of Buddhism in India and scattered learned scholars.
2016	Archaeological Site of Nalanda Mahavihara at Nalanda, Bihar: Remains of a monastic and scholastic institution from the 3rd century BCE to the 13th century CE: stupas, shrines and viharas.

Knowledge travels and grows

9th century	Indian numerals reach the Arab world: Sanskrit texts of mathematics, astronomy and medicine were translated into Arabic in Baghdad; the Arabs adopted India’s decimal numeral system with the zero.
11th century	Al-Biruni learns Sanskrit: Al-Biruni learned Sanskrit, read Indian texts and talked with Indian scholars, and compiled what he could gather from the works of Indian mathematicians and astronomers.
14th century	Madhava and the Kerala School: Madhava gave the series expansion for trigonometric functions — a world first — and an exact value of π as an infinite series. He and his followers are known as the Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics.
1500	Nilakantha Somayaji’s planetary model: A scholar of the Kerala School worked out a planetary model in which Mercury and Venus went round the Sun.
17th century	Dara Shikoh and the Upanishads: With learned scholars in Varanasi, Dara Shikoh translated 52 Upanishads from Sanskrit into Persian.

Colonial universities and national ones

Late 18th century	The Asiatic Society of Bengal: William Jones and his colleagues set it up, with the journal Asiatick Researches, to study and translate Sanskrit and Persian works.
1835	The English Education Act: Following Macaulay’s minute — which claimed that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia — the English Education Act of 1835 stopped the promotion of Oriental institutions such as the Calcutta Madrasa and Benaras Sanskrit College.
1854	Wood’s Dispatch: The Company’s Court of Directors sent an educational despatch, issued by Charles Wood, President of the Board of Control. Known as the ‘Magna Carta of English Education in India’, it recommended a scheme of education from the primary school to the university.
1857	The universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras: The universities of Calcutta, Bombay (now Mumbai) and Madras were set up in 1857, followed by Allahabad in 1887. The University of Madras, modelled on London University, was incorporated on 5 September 1857.
1882	The Hunter Commission: The Indian Education Commission recommended that schools encourage native games, gymnastics, drills and other exercises.
19th century	Savitribai Phule: With Jyotirao Phule she opened schools, promoted modern education especially for girls, and challenged caste discrimination and gender inequality.
1877; 1920	Aligarh: from MAO College to university: Sir Syed Ahmad Khan set up the Mohammedan Anglo Oriental (MAO) College in 1877. In 1920 an Act of the Indian Legislative Council raised it to the Aligarh Muslim University.
27 May 1909	Indian Institute of Science founded: The Indian Institute of Science came into existence in Bangalore, after Jamsetji Tata’s vision and a Government of India vesting order.
1916	Banaras Hindu University: Banaras Hindu University was founded by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya in 1916, with the close cooperation of Annie Besant, under the B.H.U. Act of 1915.
1920	Jamia Millia Islamia: Born of the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements, Jamia Millia Islamia was founded at Aligarh in 1920 — its foundation committee met on 29 October 1920 — and moved to Karol Bagh in New Delhi in 1925.
1921	Visva-Bharati: Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European Nobel laureate, founded Visva-Bharati at Santiniketan in 1921. In May 1951 an Act of Parliament made it a central university and an institution of national importance.
2023	Santiniketan: Founded by Rabindranath Tagore in 1901 as a school and centre for art; a ‘world university’ followed in 1921.

Learning in free India

1948	The University Education Commission: Soon after Independence, the University Education Commission was set up in 1948 under Dr S. Radhakrishnan to report on Indian university education and suggest improvements.
1950–51	IIT Kharagpur, the first IIT: The first Indian Institute of Technology was born in May 1950 at Hijli, Kharagpur, and was formally inaugurated by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad on 18 August 1951. It began in the old Hijli Detention Camp, where freedom fighters had been held, with 224 freshers and 42 teachers.
1953; 1956	The University Grants Commission: The University Grants Commission was inaugurated by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, then Minister of Education, on 28 December 1953, and became a statutory body through an Act of Parliament in November 1956.
1988	Jamia becomes a central university: Jamia Millia Islamia, founded at Aligarh in 1920, became a central university by an Act of Parliament in 1988.
2014; 2024	A new Nalanda University: Conceived as a joint project of India and the East Asia Summit countries, the new Nalanda University enrolled its first students in 2014 in a makeshift campus at Rajgir; its new campus, near the ruins of ancient Nalanda, was inaugurated in June 2024.

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Years are from YugMap’s records; dates marked c. are approximate. Printed from yugmap.com.