Excavations at Antichak From 1960 to 1982 Exposed Vikramashila's 330-Metre Square Monastery, a 15-Metre Cruciform Stupa and 103 Votive Stupas at Its Gate, and the ASI Returned to Dig in February 2024

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) lists the “Ancient site of Vikramasila Monastery” at Antichak, in Bhagalpur district, Bihar, among its centrally protected monuments under the Patna Circle. Two excavation programmes, Patna University’s from 1960-61 and the ASI’s own from 1971-72 until 1982, exposed a square monastery 330 metres on each side, a two-terraced brick stupa about 15 metres high at its centre, a northern gate with stone staircases and, in front of that gate, 103 small votive stupas. The ASI went back to the site on 8 February 2024 after almost 42 years, and on 24 February 2025 the Prime Minister said a central university is being established at Vikramshila.

The name is spelled Vikramashila, Vikramshila and Vikramasila in the sources. This article uses the first, except in titles and quotations.

Patna University’s nine seasons at the mound

The Department of Ancient Indian History and Archaeology at Patna University, under Professor B. P. Sinha and Dr R. C. P. Singh, dug at Antichak in 1960-61. The ASI’s review for that year calls the place “the supposed site” of the Vikramasila establishment, 13 km north of Colgong railway station, and says the mounds in and around the village cover not less than 10 square kilometres. One mound stood 14.5 metres high and was cruciform (cross-shaped) on plan. Trial trenches in another mound found a terracotta votive stupa with an inscription in late Pala script, which the excavators took to suggest a monastic establishment.

The next seasons went into the cruciform mound. The 1962-63 review reports a chamber with a brick pedestal carrying an image of Avalokiteshvara, the lower part of the pedestal still showing traces of red and black paint, along with three terracotta sealings, a copper ring and an arrowhead. It also records a thick deposit of ash and charcoal over several floors, which it reads as evidence that fire destroyed the site. The 1971-72 review counts nine field seasons by the university.

The ASI exposed a monastery 330 metres on a side

In 1971-72 the ASI’s Vikramshila Excavation Project, directed by Dr B. S. Verma with B. N. Prasad and S. C. Saran, began a large-scale dig, a project the ASI’s 2024 statement to PTI dates to 1972 to 1982. The earlier work had exposed a double-terraced brick stupa of the Pala period, and the team laid out 30 trenches to test a ring of long mounds about 150 metres from it on every side. They found a boundary wall 3 metres wide and 17 monastic cells, each roughly 4 metres square, opening on a verandah 3.1 metres wide, all on a plinth 2 metres high. A dozen limestone Buddha images lay dumped in one cell, and an ashy layer inside the cells led the excavators to conclude that a fire destroyed the building.

The 1972-73 season used 70 trenches of 10 by 10 metres and uncovered 52 more cells, the western outer wall (330 metres long and 3.6 metres thick) and what the review calls the most outstanding discovery of the year, the Northern Gate. Its passage is 14.3 metres wide with double flights of stone staircase, and the stairs are flanked by carved stones showing an elephant’s head with a tusk carrying a log. Inside the gate stood a pillared hall with rows of cells on either side. The team also found a half-cruciform western gate and, under one southern cell, a pair of interconnected brick-arched underground chambers.

The 1973-74 review gives the plan: a monastery 330 metres square, with a spacious courtyard and a central shrine, 120 cells counted so far, a stone drain cut for each cell, and rectangular and circular structures projecting from the outer wall and joined to the cells by passages. A copper seal found that year carries the legend Vikramasya. On the finds the review dates the structures to the ninth to twelfth century.

Banglapedia’s entry, which summarises the whole project, puts the total at about 208 cells. That is higher than the 1973-74 count, and the reviews read for this article give no season-by-season sum, so the sources are quoted here as they stand.

The stupa at the centre and the shrine inside it

The ASI describes the main stupa to PTI as a brick structure laid in mud mortar, standing at the centre of the square monastery, two-terraced and cruciform on plan, about 15 metres high, reached by a flight of steps on the north side. Patna University’s seasons exposed it, and the ASI’s 1971-72 review says the stupa was built over the ruins of an earlier brick structure, traceable at its north-western corner.

The ASI’s 1975-76 season cleared the blocked northern chamber of the central shrine and found a large, damaged terracotta Buddha seated in the earth-touching posture, on a pedestal with a lion, an elephant, attendants and a kneeling devotee. Behind it was a terracotta halo with traces of red paint. The review infers that when the image was mutilated the chamber was sealed, and a new brick pedestal and a black basalt Buddha were installed over the filling, and the review says the basalt image was later removed by earlier excavators. The main shrine stands on 69 courses of brick foundation rising 6.35 metres.

A tank, a wall of vents and the manuscript question

South-west of the monastery, the 1978-79 season exposed a rectangular building 41.5 metres long and 18.65 metres wide, joined to the main monastery by a paved passage 1.4 metres wide. Its south wall is 4.75 metres thick and has 13 sloping channels at intervals of 2.65 metres, running through to the level of a brick-paved tank 41 metres by 33 metres. The excavators wrote that the building appears to have been the manuscript section of the Mahavihara, with the channels letting cool air from the tank reach palm-leaf manuscripts. The review adds that when the tank was fully exposed water seeped through its floor, filled it and drained away within a week.

The same entry says nothing worth mentioning was found in the building except one nearly complete sprinkler (a water vessel) and some fragments, and it lists no manuscripts. The ASI now calls the structure a library building, as in its 2024 statement to PTI, and the reading rests on the design of the vents rather than on any recovered text.

103 votive stupas, a rampart and a fire

Along the passage the 1978-79 team found more than 50 votive stupas in rows, from 30 centimetres to 1.6 metres high. The 1979-80 season cleared the complex in front of the main gate and counted 103 of them, nine built of stone, with 20 more traced on plan. A larger brick stupa 2.8 metres high had a chamber 2.9 metres square filled with unbaked clay tablets that had once carried miniature Buddhas. The review reads three phases of repair in it, the last probably in the thirteenth century, and notes potsherds of the Islamic period on its floor.

About half a kilometre north-west of the monastery, at Jangalisthan, the same season exposed a brick rampart with a corner bastion 10.5 metres across, still 5.8 metres high. Its builders had used bricks probably taken from the Mahavihara, and the review dates it to the early fourteenth century, just after the monastery’s destruction.

Sources give different dates for the end. The ASI’s Superintending Archaeologist, Patna Circle, told PTI in 2024 that the university prospered for about four centuries and collapsed at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Bihar’s tourism corporation says forces of Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khilji destroyed it around 1200. A note in the 1970 Chattopadhyaya translation of Taranatha puts the destruction of Odantapuri and Vikramashila around 1203, a date it says is inferred indirectly, and names the same commander as directly responsible. Taranatha himself says that under the Sena kings the ruler partly converted both monasteries into fortresses and posted some soldiers in them. The excavation reports record fire and ash and name no attacker.

What Taranatha and the other Tibetan sources add

Taranatha, the Tibetan historian, wrote his history of Buddhism in India in 1608, according to the translation’s introduction, so about four centuries after the monastery’s end. In the translation Dharmapala built about fifty centres for the teaching, 35 of them for the study of the Prajnaparamita (the “perfection of wisdom” texts), and he also built the Vikramashila vihara. Banglapedia says Sarvajnamitra’s Sanskrit hymn, the Sragdhara-stotra, supports the tradition, because it refers to “Shrimad Vikramashiladeva Mahavihariya”, and that Dharmapala bore Vikramashiladeva as an honorific. The dates of the king vary by source: Banglapedia gives about 775 to 810, and Bihar’s tourism corporation gives 783 to 820. The dynasty has its own article, the Pala dynasty and the monasteries at Nalanda, Vikramashila and Paharpur.

Banglapedia gives the institution’s makeup as 58 sub-institutions with 108 scholars on the campus, six gates each guarded by a scholar and, citing Taranatha, about 1,000 resident monks. The ASI’s own summary, given to PTI in 2024, speaks of more than a hundred teachers and about a thousand students. Taranatha names Ratnakarashanti as the eastern gatekeeper, and a note in the translation records the Blue Annals’ statement that Naropa guarded the northern gate. Banglapedia lists Dipankara Srijnana (Atisha), Jetari, Abhayakaragupta and Shakyashribhadra among the heads, and says the monastery was known for the study of Tantric Buddhism. It also says the monastery’s internal organisation is not known.

Atisha is the best known of them. Banglapedia says the Pala king Mahipala appointed him chancellor of Vikramashila, that he set out for Tibet in 1040 and that he died there in 1053, and it notes that scholars differ on his birth year, c. 980 or 982/983. Other reckonings shift the Tibet dates by a year or two, as the Pala article sets out. Taranatha’s list of the monastery’s teachers ends with Shakyashri, the great pandit of Kashmir, and the next line records the end of Vikramashila.

For another Buddhist monastery dug by the ASI, see Ratnagiri in Odisha. Nalanda, the older Bihar centre, is covered in the university that drew the world.

The ASI returns, and a central university is planned

The ASI restarted excavation at Antichak on 8 February 2024, after a gap PTI put at almost 42 years, under Assistant Superintending Archaeologist Jalaj Kumar Tiwari and the Patna Circle’s Superintending Archaeologist, Goutami Bhattacharya. She said the first task was cleaning the old trenches and removing dumped soil to reach undisturbed layers before systematic digging could begin. She added that the new work may yield more inscriptions on stone slabs, and she described the earlier excavations as having “pinpointed the site” as the actual remains of the Mahavihara. None of the reports read for this article describes new finds from the 2024 season.

On 24 February 2025, at Bhagalpur, the Prime Minister said that during the era of Vikramshila University the town was a global centre of knowledge and that, following Nalanda, a central university is being established at Vikramshila, with the central government to commence work soon, according to the Press Information Bureau. He congratulated the Bihar government on its quick efforts for the project. Patna Press reported on 17 September 2025 that land acquisition for the university had formally begun with a list of landholders, with about 215 acres identified, made up of 92 acres at Antichak, 84 at Malakpur and 28 belonging to the Bihar government. UNI reported on 15 July 2026 that the Bihar Chief Minister announced the transfer of around 220 acres for the proposed university. The acreages differ between the two reports, and as of 6 November 2026 the latest report found still calls the university proposed.

Visiting the site

Bihar Tourism places the ruins at Antichak in Kahalgaon sub-division, 38 km from Bhagalpur, and lists September to April as the best time to visit, with the ASI’s permission needed for electronic gadgets (checked 6 November 2026). The Ganga stretch nearby is a dolphin sanctuary, covered in the Ganges river dolphin article. The state tourism corporation’s own page gives about 50 km east of Bhagalpur and about 13 km north-east of Kahalgaon, reached by an 11-km road off NH-80, so the distances differ by page.