The education imparted at Nalanda University was both religious and ______.

Concept. Historians describe an ancient curriculum along two strands. The religious strand is sacred learning — scripture, doctrine, ritual and the commentaries on them. The secular strand (from Latin saeculum, "the world, the present age") is worldly learning — disciplines such as logic, grammar, medicine, mathematics and astronomy, studied as general knowledge rather than as sacred text. Describing a syllabus as "both religious and secular" is the standard way of saying that sacred study sat alongside these worldly sciences.

Application to Nalanda. The Nalanda Mahavihara (c. 5th–12th century CE, in present-day Bihar) taught along exactly these two strands, as recorded by the Chinese pilgrim-scholars who studied there:

• Sacred learning — Mahayana Buddhist doctrine, the Abhidharma and the Vinaya, together with the scriptures of rival schools and the Vedas, which were read so that debates could be answered.

• Worldly learning — Xuanzang (Hiuen Tsang, 7th century CE) and Yijing (I-tsing) record instruction in hetu-vidya (logic), sabda-vidya (grammar and philology) and cikitsa-vidya (medicine), along with mathematics, astronomy and the Samkhya system.

Because worldly sciences were taught beside sacred texts, the second strand is the worldly one, and the blank is filled by secular.

Cross-check against the other values.

• Irreligious negates religion; one syllabus cannot be described as religious and irreligious at the same time, so it cannot name a second strand.

• Entertaining rates the manner in which teaching is delivered, not the body of knowledge taught, so it does not pair with "religious" as a second field of study.

• Business-oriented points to training for commerce and trade; the non-sacred subjects attested at Nalanda — logic, grammar, medicine, astronomy — are academic disciplines, not commercial instruction.

Result. The education imparted at Nalanda University was both religious and secular.