Chief minister Nitish Kumar, who recently accompanied first visitor and former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to the construction site, said: "We are trying to see if academics learn more from the villages around the ruins regarding the country and Nalanda."

Patna-based KP Jaiswal Research Institute has already began the process of identifying villages to see which of these existed from the times of the ancient university.

Once the identification process gets over, experts would chart out how educational and multi-fold researches may be conducted in the 200-odd villages around the heritage site to add to the existing knowledge bank regarding India's history.

Talking to The Telegraph, the director of KP Jaiswal Institute, Bijay Kumar Choudhary, said: "We started identifying the villages six months ago. We have so far identified 60." The identification, he said, is being based on pure historical and archaeological data. "Seals found from Nalanda university ruins revealed names of some villages, which we believe still exist, either by the same name or with minor alterations," said Choudhury.

The institute director added that they managed to locate the villages by comparing archaeological data found from excavation sites of mounds and Buddhist remains.