High Middle Ages · South Asia · Culture

1108

Sena dynasty patronizes Sanskrit learning in Bengal

1108

Under Ramapala and his Sena successors, the kings of Bengal supported a late and brilliant flowering of Sanskrit scholarship at Vikramashila and Nalanda, producing grammarians, logicians, and court poets of enduring reputation. Yet the Buddhist institutions that had thrived there for seven unbroken centuries were already entering their terminal decline under mounting pressure from Turkish raiders advancing steadily from the west.