The Buddhist dynasty of Bengal and Bihar that, as Buddhism faded across the rest of India, became its last great imperial patron — sustaining Nalanda, founding Vikramashila, and serving as the launch point from which Vajrayana Buddhism passed to Tibet.
By the time the Palas rose in eastern India around 750, Buddhism had been in slow retreat through much of the subcontinent, though great monasteries still stood. The Palas reversed that decline in their corner of it. They poured wealth into vast monastic universities, and from one of them a monk named Atisha carried Buddhist teaching north into Tibet. When the Pala state fell, Indian Buddhism lost its last great imperial shelter; the destruction of its monasteries around 1200 hastened a collapse long under way. But in Tibet, what the Palas had sent survived.