[Buddha-l] Nalanda ancient Buddhist seat of learning to rise again?

[Richard Hayes]

On Aug 6, 2010, at 11:15 AM, Joanna Kirkpatrick quoted somebody who said:

> Probably the
> first-ever large educational establishment, the college - in what
> is now eastern India - even counted the Buddha among its visitors
> and alumni.

I wonder how the Buddha managed to visit Nalanda University. By time machine? Most accounts say the university was not founded until the fifth century C.E. It's true that the Pali canon says that the Buddha visited the town of Nālandā, but to say he was an alumnus of the university that was founded there a thousand years later is like saying Hadrian was an alumnus of Oxford or that Francisco Vásquez de Coronado y Luján was a graduate of University of New Mexico.

Richard