The American Institute of Buddhist Studies
at Columbia University in the City of New York

The Seventeen Paṇḍits of Nālandā

Over the course of its existence, from ca. 435 to 1202 CE, the Buddhist University of Nālandā was home to some of the greatest luminaries of first millenium India. Built on the ruins of a seven hundred year old retreat center that had been destroyed by fire in 325 CE, Nālandā traced its roots to the monk Shāriputra, Shākyamuni's formost disciple. It was the home of the great Buddhist scholar-yogi Nāgārjuna, founder of the Madhyamaka School of philosophy, and his intellectual successors, continuing his legacy with an abbot of Nālandā, the Mādhyamika scholar-yogi, Chandrakīrti.

Of the hundreds of known scholars to have walked the grounds of Nālandā over the centuries, H.H. the Dalai Lama has singled out seventeen scholar-pracitioners (paṇḍitas) as his personal mentors of particular note. Exalting these individuals as "supreme sources of amazing and eloquent explanations, exceedingly fine scholars who are the ornaments of the world," His Holiness composed a poem in praise of them, for it is no exaggeration to say that through their lives and writings they came to shape the very meaning of Buddhist philosophy and religious practice, both in India and Tibet.