BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 38 of 142

Correct — D, Nagpur. Three of the four names are among the best-attested monastic universities of early India and the fourth is not on the list at all. Nalanda, in what is now Nalanda district of Bihar, ran from about the fifth century CE to the end of the twelfth and is the mahavihara every source names first; Xuanzang studied there under Shilabhadra in the 630s and Yijing spent roughly a decade there later in the same century. Vikramshila was founded by the Pala emperor Dharmapala, who reigned about 783–820 CE, and its ruins stand at Antichak village near Kahalgaon — the Archaeological Survey of India's own list of centrally protected monuments places the site in BHAGALPUR district, not in the neighbouring Banka, which was carved out of Bhagalpur only in 1991. Tibetan sources rank Vikramshila as the premier university of the Pala era, with more than a hundred teachers and about a thousand students, and it produced Atisha, who carried Buddhist learning to Tibet. Valabhi, in the Saurashtra peninsula of Gujarat near modern Bhavnagar, was the Maitraka capital and the great western counterpart to Nalanda; Xuanzang, who praised the Maitraka king Shiladitya I, records it as a leading seat of the Hinayana tradition, and Valabhi is separately famous in Jain history for the council of 454 CE at which the Svetambara canon was written down. Nagpur has nothing of this kind in its past. Its association with Buddhism is entirely modern and dates to 14 October 1956, when Dr B. R. Ambedkar and several lakh followers took the Buddhist vows at the ground in Nagpur now called Deekshabhoomi. That single, famous, twentieth-century event is what makes the option feel plausible, and it is exactly why the setter chose it — the question tests whether you can tell an ancient monastic university from a modern conversion site.

• (a)Vikramshila — A genuine centre, and the one a Bihar candidate should know best after Nalanda. Founded by the Pala king Dharmapala between the late eighth and early ninth century as a response to a perceived decline in scholarship at Nalanda, it specialised in tantric or Vajrayana studies and was destroyed around 1193. The ruins at Antichak, Bhagalpur district, are a protected monument.
• (b)Nalanda — The most famous Buddhist university in the world and plainly not the answer. It functioned for some seven centuries in Bihar, drew students from China, Korea, Tibet and Southeast Asia, and its excavated mounds were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2016. Anyone reading the stem too quickly and picking the biggest name has inverted the question, which asks for the one that is NOT a centre.
• (c)Valabhi — The least familiar of the three real answers, and therefore the trap for a candidate who eliminates by recognition rather than by knowledge. Valabhi was the Maitraka capital in Saurashtra, Gujarat, and a celebrated seat of Buddhist learning that Chinese pilgrims bracketed with Nalanda. Unfamiliarity is not evidence: the option a student has never heard of is not automatically the odd one out.

Ancient India's higher learning was organised around the mahavihara — a large endowed monastery that combined residence, worship and formal teaching, funded by royal grants of villages whose revenue maintained the establishment. The recognised list is short and worth memorising as a list: Taxila (Takshashila) in the north-west, the oldest; Nalanda in Magadha, the largest and longest-running; Valabhi in Saurashtra; and the Pala-period foundations of eastern India — Vikramshila, Odantapuri, Somapura and Jagaddala. Tibetan tradition treats the Pala group as a coordinated network under state supervision, with scholars moving freely between them, which is why a teacher trained at Nalanda could end his career at Vikramshila. The curriculum went well beyond scripture: logic, grammar, medicine, astronomy and philosophy were all taught, and Buddhist and non-Buddhist students both attended. The destruction of this network at the end of the twelfth century, in the campaigns associated with Bakhtiyar Khalji, ended organised Buddhist scholarship in the Gangetic plain.

The reasoning shortcut on a 'which is NOT' question is to find the odd category rather than to rank the options. Here Vikramshila, Nalanda and Valabhi are all monastic universities from between roughly the fifth and the twelfth centuries; Nagpur is a modern city whose Buddhist fame belongs to 1956. Once you see that three items share a category and one does not, the answer is settled without needing to know which of the three was largest. The trap in the opposite direction is answering Valabhi because it is the unfamiliar name — Valabhi is in Gujarat rather than Bihar, so a candidate who has memorised only the Bihar sites can mistake distance for irrelevance. The Bihar dimension matters for a BPSC paper: two of the four great Pala mahaviharas, Vikramshila and Odantapuri, were in Bihar, and Nalanda was as well, so this is a state-history question wearing a national costume. Note also what the option list does NOT contain — Taxila, Somapura, Odantapuri and Jagaddala are all absent, which is a reminder that a real centre can be missing from the options without that changing the answer.

• Vikramshila was founded by the Pala emperor Dharmapala (reigned c. 783–820 CE); its ruins are at Antichak near Kahalgaon, and the ASI's centrally protected monuments list records the site under BHAGALPUR district, not Banka.
• Tibetan sources name five great Pala-period mahaviharas — Vikramshila, Nalanda, Somapura, Odantapuri and Jagaddala — describing them as a state-supervised network of institutions.
• Valabhi, near modern Bhavnagar in Saurashtra, Gujarat, was the Maitraka capital; the Great Council of Vallabhi of 454 CE, held under Devardhigani Kshamashraman, committed the Jain canon to writing there.
• Vikramshila and Nalanda were both destroyed in the campaigns associated with Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji around 1193, ending the mahavihara network in the Gangetic plain.
• Nagpur's Buddhist significance is modern: on 14 October 1956 Dr B. R. Ambedkar embraced Buddhism there with his followers, at the site now known as Deekshabhoomi.

• Choosing Valabhi because the name is unfamiliar. It is a genuine and celebrated centre, simply in Gujarat rather than in the Gangetic plain.
• Reading the stem as 'which IS a famous centre' and answering Nalanda. Negative stems are where careless marks are lost, and this paper prints its negations without visible emphasis in our text.
• Placing Vikramshila in Banka district. The site at Antichak is recorded by the ASI under Bhagalpur; Banka was separated from Bhagalpur only in 1991, which is why the wrong attribution circulates.

BPSC asks the mahaviharas as home-ground factual recall — name the founder, name the district, name the sect that flourished there — because Nalanda, Vikramshila and Odantapuri are all Bihar sites, and it will happily test a statement about the exact district. UPSC prefers the pairing and statement formats, matching a site to a location or asking which dynasty patronised which tradition, and rarely asks a bare 'which one is not' of this kind.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Vikramshila Mahavihara was founded by which ruler ?

  • (a)Gopala
  • (b)Dharmapala
  • (c)Devapala
  • (d)Harshavardhana

  Answer(b) Dharmapala — the Pala emperor who reigned about 783–820 CE. Gopala founded the Pala dynasty itself but not this monastery, and Harshavardhana belongs to the seventh century and to Kannauj.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Deekshabhoomi, where Dr B. R. Ambedkar embraced Buddhism in 1956, is located in

  • (a)Nagpur
  • (b)Aurangabad
  • (c)Mumbai
  • (d)Pune

  Answer(a) Nagpur — the conversion ceremony took place there on 14 October 1956. This is the modern association that makes Nagpur a plausible-looking distractor in questions about ancient Buddhist centres.