“Nalanda is not just a name, it is an identity. Nalanda is the root, it is the mantra. Nalanda is the proclamation of the truth that knowledge cannot be destroyed even though books burn in a fire.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s words at the inauguration of the new Nalanda University campus at Rajgir recently and his “golden age” references made us go back to the history books.
Established by emperor Kumaragupta-I of the Gupta dynasty around 427 AD, Nalanda, a centre for learning, carved out its own niche with the support of the Pala kings, and later the monks of Nalanda, who were patronised by the Pithipatis of Bodh Gaya. Nalanda was way ahead of its times, a sacred spot for the spiritually inclined.
Aryabhata on the rolls
At one time, Nalanda’s faculty included some of the most highly regarded names in Hinayana as well as Mahayana Buddhism; the latter sect started much after Hinayana but flourished for long, touching with its spirit Tibet, China, Japan and much of southeast Asia. The names of those associated with Nalanda read like a roll call of brilliance, even genius. Included in the list were Aryabhata, Harsha, Dharmapala, Nagarjuna, Dharmakirti, Asanga, Vasubandhu, Chandrakirti and Silabhadra. Hiuen Tsang, of course, spent five years here during the reign of Harshavardhan in the 7th century, and wrote in detail about Nalanda’s meticulous approach in enrolling students, including rigorous admission tests.
Its glory got an affirmative nod in the History of Bangladesh: Early Bengal in Regional Perspectives, edited by Abdul Momin Chowdhury and Ranabir Chakravarti with a foreword by Romila Thapar. They write: “It is well known Nalanda gained the celebrated status of a Buddhist site after Alexander Cunningham identified it with Bargon, based on the travel notes of Xuan Zang (Hiuen Tsang) followed by epigraphic records recovered from the site. This Chinese pilgrim left a detailed account of the monastic organisation.” Prof. Thapar herself wrote of its global repute in A History of India, widely regarded as a must-read for students of ancient and early medieval India, “It is on record that a king of Sumatra requested a Pala king’s permission to endow a monastery at Nalanda. The ties between the Buddhists in eastern India and southeast Asia were strengthened at this time.”
Khalji raids, and a denial
Yet Nalanda has not been without its share of controversies. Several historians have recorded that Nalanda was ransacked by Bakhtiyar Khalji around 1200 AD and its treasure of books reduced to ashes. In History of Medieval India, Satish Chandra writes: “A Khalji officer, Bakhtiyar Khalji, whose uncle had fought the battle of Tarain, had been appointed in charge of some of the areas beyond Banaras. He had taken advantage of this to make frequent raids into Bihar….During these raids, he had attacked and destroyed some of the famous Buddhist monasteries of Bihar, Nalanda and Vikramshila, which had no protector left.”
Noted historian Mohammad Habib, while not referring to Nalanda’s possible destruction directly, wrote in Studies in Medieval Indian Polity and Culture: The Delhi Sultanate and Its Times, about Bakhtiyar’s raids in Bihar. Elucidating about the fall of Indian kingdoms one after the other to the Ghurid army, Habib wrote, “Bakhtiyar, an adventurer from Khilj, who had been twice declared unfit for enrolment in the army as a common soldier, harassed and conquered Bihar and about one-half of Bengal.”
Such assertions were probably based on the writings of Minhaj-i-Siraj who wrote in Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, “He (Bakhtiyar Khalji) used to carry his depradations into those parts and that country until he organised an attack upon the fortified city of Bihar….He advanced to the gateway of the fortress of Bihar with two hundred horsemen in defensive armour, and suddenly attacked the place.”
Rediscovering Nalanda
Illustrious historian D.N. Jha, however, contested such claims. He argued in Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History, one of his last works, “The fortified monastery which Bakhtiyar captured was known as Audand-Bihar or Odandapura-vihara.” It was not Nalanda, claimed Jha. He felt that Minhaj did not refer to Nalanda at all in his writings.
Minhaj spoke instead of the ransacking of the fort of Bihar or Hisar-i-Bihar, he argued. “Bakhtiyar did not go to Nalanda. It escaped the main fury of the Muslim conquest because it lay not on the main route from Delhi to Bengal but needed a separate expedition.” Bakhtiyar instead probably proceeded from Biharsharif to Nadia in Bengal.
Fellow historian Namit Arora reasoned in Indians: A Brief History of Civilization, “By the time of the Turko-Persian invasions, most Buddhist sites had already been abandoned, destroyed, or converted into Brahminical sites across much of India. Buddhist artifacts and texts were wiped out and Buddhism vanished from India’s public memory…. Only in the 19th century did Indians rediscover Nalanda.”
With the opening of the Rajgir campus, scholars hope Nalanda will regain its glory.
For the discerning, Nalanda continues to be an open book. You read, you interpret, you conclude. As Oscar Wilde said: The word is nothing; interpretation is everything.