Bihar GK Questions 2026

Ikhtiyaruddin Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji, a commander in the service of the Ghurids, overran the middle Ganga plain at the end of the twelfth century, sacking Odantapuri and Vikramshila and laying Nalanda waste soon after.

The library complex of Nalanda was called Dharmaganja, the treasury of truth, and later accounts say it stood in three buildings, Ratnasagara, Ratnodadhi and Ratnaranjaka, of which Ratnodadhi is described as nine storeys high.

Gopala, the first king of the Pala dynasty, founded Odantapuri at the place now called Biharsharif in Nalanda district. The word vihara, meaning a Buddhist monastery, gave the region and then the state its name, and Odantapuri is the monastery most often named in that explanation.

Atisha was the most famous head of Vikramshila and left for Tibet in the eleventh century at the invitation of its western kings.

Vikramshila stood at Antichak village in Bhagalpur district, on raised ground overlooking the Ganga, and excavation has revealed a great cruciform stupa at the centre with monastic cells arranged in a square around it, a plan very different from the rows of monasteries at Nalanda.

The Pala king Dharmapala founded Vikramshila in the late eighth century at Antichak in what is now Bhagalpur district, on a height above the Ganga, as a rival and a complement to Nalanda.

Hiuen Tsang reached Nalanda in the seventh century during the reign of Harshavardhana and spent several years there studying the Yogachara philosophy under Shilabhadra, who was then the abbot.

The Gupta emperor Kumaragupta the first, who appears in the records with the title Shakraditya, founded the monastic university at Nalanda in the fifth century.

Nalanda was a Buddhist monastic university, a mahavihara, where the main course of study was the Mahayana canon along with logic, grammar, medicine and astronomy.

The Mahabodhi Temple Complex at Bodh Gaya was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2002, recognised as the place of the Buddha's enlightenment, with the Bodhi tree, the Vajrasana set by Ashoka and the brick temple of the Gupta centuries standing together at one site.

The Barabar group, which includes the Lomas Rishi and Sudama caves, was cut in granite in the Mauryan age for the monks of the Ajivika sect founded by Makkhali Gosala, and the inscriptions of Ashoka's grandson Dasharatha in the nearby Nagarjuni caves record further gifts to them.

Vikramashila was founded by Dharmapala, the second and most powerful king of the Pala dynasty, in the Bhagalpur region on the Ganga, and it became second only to Nalanda as a seat of Buddhist learning, with Atisha Dipankara among its heads.

Nalanda was founded by Kumaragupta I of the Gupta dynasty in the fifth century and grew into the most famous monastic university in Asia, with students from China, Tibet, Korea and South East Asia.

The second council met at Vaishali about a century after the Buddha's death, under king Kalashoka of the Shishunaga dynasty, with Sabakami presiding.

The third council met at Pataliputra in the reign of Ashoka, with Moggaliputta Tissa presiding.

Mahavira attained nirvana at Pavapuri in the present Nalanda district of Bihar at the age of seventy two, traditionally in 527 BCE, and the Jal Mandir, a marble temple standing in the middle of a tank, marks the place of his cremation.

The first Buddhist council met at Rajgriha, the Rajgir of today, in the Saptaparni cave soon after the Buddha's death, under the patronage of king Ajatashatru and the presidency of Mahakassapa.

Tripitaka is a Pali and Sanskrit word in which pitaka means a basket, so the whole means three baskets, a name that came from the practice of keeping the palm leaf manuscripts of each collection in a separate basket.

Gautama attained enlightenment at Uruvela, the Bodh Gaya of today, under a peepal tree on the bank of the Niranjana river, which is called the Phalgu now.

Fa-Hien travelled to India at the turn of the fifth century CE, in the reign of Chandragupta II, to collect Buddhist texts.