Calcutta, Dec. 24: Karingamannu Kuzhiyil Muhammed, retired regional director (north) of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), feels if any other site in Bihar deserves World Heritage status, it is the Vikramshila University, around 44km east of Bhagalpur.

"If you compare the stupas of Nalanda and Vikramshila, the latter has a stupa at the centre. That signifies an assembly of students and faculty at the same place unlike in Nalanda where students assembled separately. This goes with the universal nature of a university. Nalanda has its own significance, but Vikramshila deserves no lesser," Muhammed said.

While the antiquity of Nalanda University can be traced back to 5th century during the Gupta period Vikramshila University was founded by the Pala king Dharma Pala (783-820) in the early 9th century. The layout of early monasteries in Sarnath, Kushinagar, Vaishali and Nalanda were elongated and temples and stupas were placed in a row in front of the monasteries. But Vikramshila and Paharpur in Bangladesh provide a refreshing departure from the earlier elongated style by providing a unified square structural complex with a stupa in the middle of it.

Vikramshila was one of the two most important centres of Buddhist learning in India along with Nalanda.

On how he brokered a deal with the dacoits of Chambal to save the Bateshwar group of temples, Muhammed said: "It was all faith. The presence of dacoits in the Chambal Valley, where the temples were found, was a boon in disguise. The ruins could be seen, but no one dared to touch them because of the dacoits. This way, the ruins remained intact and were never smuggled. But when the ASI wanted to restructure the temples, the dacoits had a problem. This is when we got intermediaries (mostly locals) to explain how the dacoits can save the temples from depleting into history."

He added that the dacoits had tremendous faith in Shiva and when they were told that a few were Shiva temples they agreed to cooperate.

"But how can dacoits and ASI workers work in tandem? Not a single worker was ready to work in Chambal. We then spoke to the dreaded Man Singh, who had 1,200 robberies under his name and over 100 cases lodged in different police stations. He agreed with ifs and buts. Man Singh said they go out for dacoity everyday after seeking blessings of Hanumanji in a nearby temple, so, they can't vacate the area. After much cajoling the dacoits agreed to let the ASI workers in when they were out on a hunt," he said.

By the time they returned with the booty after sunset, the ASI workers had to leave the place. "This continued for months. But am glad we found what turned out to be a true temple island of Gwalior," Muhammed said.