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Nalanda University flourished for more than seven centuries

bbc.com

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Re: Nalanda University flourished for more than seven centuries

#151

[dead]

So i guess that means any university with a religous foundation is not a university? Last i checked there are quite a few christian universities. Also common schooling in christian populations was and often still is done by members of their religious order: does their faith and religious element detract from the intellectual merit of their academic teachings? Ask that to people who still pay boatloads for they and their families to attend.

Re: Nalanda University flourished for more than seven centuries

#152

Wait, so is this the oldest university then? Because a quick Google says "The Jagiellonian University is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and the 13th oldest university in continuous operation in the world. It is regarded as Poland's most prestigious academic institution." Ugh... ChatGPT says "The University of Bologna…

Are we fixated on the word "University"?

Irrespective of the word, it is the knowledge that was taught in those places.

Re: Nalanda University flourished for more than seven centuries

#153
Had it been still there, we would have learnt so much about ancient knowledge.. also amazed to know how big it was at those times. When Afghan invader burnt it, it took 3 months

>> The campus was so vast that the fire set on by the attackersis said to have burned for three months.

Re: Nalanda University flourished for more than seven centuries

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only India, but Persia, countries in The Levant, North Africa and Mediterranean were highly developed before the advent of Islam (which originated amongst desert tribes). It is their knowledge which gave rise to the so called "Golden Age of Islam". Islamic conquest merely acted as a conduit for the spread of these ideas from one geographical region to another (a la the later Mongol Empire).

Central Asia certainly played its role too. I invite you to consider that when Jai Singh II built Jantar Mantar, he used "Islamic" sources (Zij) as well from there.

Central Asia's prominence before Islam was mainly due to trade routes (later named the "Silk Road").

Re: Nalanda University flourished for more than seven centuries

#156

[dead]

If they called it an academy, would that be better?

If "university" is too specific, "academy" is even worse. Academies in the modern sense can be traced back to the renewed interest in humanities in Renaissance Europe. And the word itself comes from an olive grove named after an obscure mythological figure in ancient Athens.

Re: Nalanda University flourished for more than seven centuries

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It depends on how you define a university. I think the institution that invented the term probably gets to define it. And that is the University of Bologna.

Won't that imply that "humans" didn't exist until the term "human" was invented?

That might in fact be true.

If we define humans as having a sufficiently sophisticated language, and using a term to reference one's entire species is characteristic of that, then at a stretch we could define the first human being as the child of proto-humans who first invented this linguistic concept.

Re: Nalanda University flourished for more than seven centuries

#159
post #79
post #55

Bare with me here: Why is it that articles need to start with lines like > "The winter morning was cloaked in thick fog..." and postpone the actual information pertaining to the title? Instead, we have to sift through irrelevant story-like content to get to the meat of the information and facts. Will one promise of tools like ChatGPT and their successors be to summarize-away this fluff?

> Bare with me here: Most people would pay money to ensure I don't. > Instead, we have to sift through irrelevant story-like content to get to the meat of the information and facts. Because journalists are frustrated novelists, and editors think the "human interest" angle sells.

I found it ironic that OP started complaining about the author’s writing style by urging us to bare it all!

Re: Nalanda University flourished for more than seven centuries

#160

[dead]

Propaganda, eh?

Without fail, whenever this topic arises, there are always people who come to vehemently defend the Christian/European university tradition as the only “true” university. Everything else, and especially institutions older than Bologna, are nitpicked to oblivion.

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