Muskan BhatiaNew Delhi, Dec. 1 -- For two weeks this November, the India International Centre (IIC) in Delhi turned its galleries into a quiet homage to one of medieval India's most remarkable intellectuals: Atisha Dipankara Srijnana, the monk who carried the scholastic brilliance of Vikramashila University across Asia. The exhibition, which closed on November 30, reminded audiences that the monk revered across Tibet and Southeast Asia was shaped first and foremost within India's own monastic academies.
If Nalanda was the ancient world's cosmopolitan hub, Vikramashila was its precision instrument, designed for advanced philosophical training, tantric studies and textual discipline. It was here, on the banks of the Ganga in Bihar, that Atis...