Nava Vihara

Nau Bahar

Persian: نوبهار‎‎
Shown within Afghanistan
Coordinates	36°43′47″N 66°53′6.8″E / 36.72972°N 66.885222°E / 36.72972; 66.885222
Type	ruin

The Nava Vihāra (Sanskrit: नवविहार "New Monastery", modern Nawbahār, Persian: نوبهار‎‎) were two Buddhist monasteries close to the ancient city of Balkh in northern Afghanistan. The temples and monasteries of Nava Vihara are spread over a very large area about 20 kilometres (12 mi) south of Balkh above Chesme-ye Safā (Persian: چشمه صفا‎‎ "Clear Spring"), not far from the Koh e Alburz.

Today they are called Takht i Rustam and Tapa e Rustam.

Johann Martin Honigberger (for two years he studied archeology in Afghanistan 1932), Sir Charles Yate, 1st Baronet (1886) and Oskar von Niedermayer (1915) visited the two monasteries in Balkh and they mentioned in their travelogues. Charles Edward Yate was the first British officer who referred the ruins of Tope-i-Rustam and Takht-i-Rustam (e-book Eustam) as two "strange structures". The British officer calculated the two Buddhist monasteries pretty much according yards. His drawing is pretty accurate. Persian Tape or Pashto Topi means hill, but also hat, because in such a temple a hat like small cubes were built that Kabba i Zordust or Ka'ba-ye Zartosht, or cubes of puja. Some call Naghara Khanah (drum house) or Kaftar Khanah (Dovecote). According to measurement of Yate, the construction and structure of top i Rustam is the following:

Historical accounts report it as flourishing as an important centre of Buddhism between the seventh and eleventh centuries CE. It may have been founded considerably earlier, perhaps in or after the reign of Kaniṣka, in the second century CE.

Nava Vihāra, the main monastery at Balkh, became the center of higher study for Central Asian Buddhism. The monk Ghoṣaka was one of the compilers of the Vaibhāṣika commentaries on Abhidharma and established the Western Vaibhāṣika (Bālhīka "of Balkh") School. Vaibhāṣika was a sub-division of the Sarvāstivāda school. Monks at Nava Vihāra emphasized the study of the Vaibhāṣika abhidharma, admitting only monks who had already composed texts of the topic.