Diplomat and poet Abhay K reimagines Nalanda's legacy for future learning

NALANDA: How it Changed the World

Author: Abhay K

Publisher: Vintage

Pages: 288

Price: Rs 699

  For most Indians, stories about Nalanda appear quite early, in primary school history textbooks. But most of us fail to follow through to understand the extent of its prominence and influence. In Nalanda: How It Changed the World, diplomat, poet and writer Abhay K attempts to unravel what this institution meant to the world of knowledge and introduce its magnificence to its readers.

 

As the history books tell us, Nalanda came into existence in 427 AD around the reign of Kumaragupta I (415-455 AD). It was built by Buddhist monks and eventually flourished as a centre of learning not just for people from the subcontinent but attracted travellers from countries such as Turkey, Persia, Japan, and Indonesia to study, among other subjects, astronomy, mathematics, and philosophy. It is equally important to mention that even after Kumaragupta I, the process of developing Nalanda involved greater participation from other imperial Guptas such as Samudragupta (350-375 AD), Purugupta (467-473 AD), Narasimhagupta Baladitya (495-530 AD) and even kings from the Pala dynasty in subsequent centuries.

 

The book has eight chapters, the number that holds significance in Buddhist lore. The Dharmacakra, the wheel of Dharma, has eight spikes. Much of what we know about this illustrious institution is from accounts of Xuanzang (popularly known as Hsuen Tsang) and Yijing, two travellers and scholars from China who came to Nalanda and returned to transmit the immense knowledge that they imbibed. From his long stay in India (630-643 AD), Xuanzang stayed at Nalanda for five years and studied Sanskrit, logic and Yogacara philosophy. He carried more than 600 Buddhist texts back to China and left detailed notes about the campus. He even got the Tang emperor to erect the Great Wild Goose Pagoda to protect the manuscripts that he had brought with him and suggests that such a structure existed in Nalanda. Yijing is a later visitor (673 AD) and spent most of his time at Nalanda Mahavihara during his 14-year stay in India. He carried about 400 Sanskrit manuscripts with him which were translated into Mandarin.

 

These foreign travellers depict Nalanda as a grand institution surrounded by a brick wall with several halls, detailed towers and observatories. They marvelled at the fact one could study from upper rooms in the towers how the clouds changed their forms according to environmental conditions.

 

After Nalanda’s decline, the institution faded from the elite discourse between the 15th and 18th centuries. We owe it to 19th-century European Orientalist scholars for the revival of its memory. The French translation of Xuanzang’s The Tang Record on the Western Regions by Stanislas Julien in 1853 paved the way for others to locate the university’s exact archaeological site but it took many years to unravel the sheer magnitude of the site. Unfortunately, the wait continues. The Archaeological Society of India still hasn’t been able to find the famous library, Dharmaganj, nor the boundary wall or the gates, where one had to answer certain questions about different subjects in order to gain access to the institution.

 

The written accounts suggest that Nalanda was a marvel for its time for several reasons. The campus housed up to 10,000 people and Yinjing wrote that the number of monks alone exceeded 3,000. It is equally important to underline that it produced great scholars such as Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Santaraksita and Kamlasila, who developed the recursive argument method that later evolved into the medieval scientific method of problem solving. Another scholar who left a lasting mark in the field of mathematics was Aryabhata, who, in his book Aryabhatia, assigned the zero a digit. There were also several scholars who focused on developing the diverse Buddhist philosophies that later travelled to China and were subsequently translated. Many travelled specifically from China and Tibet to absorb the knowledge and carry it back to their monasteries. The seventh century Thonmi Sambhota was the first to carry Buddhist texts from India into Tibet. He learned Sanskrit, Nagri and Gatha characters and devised scripts for the Tibetan language based on Devanagri and Kashmiri scripts.

 

The particular virtue of this book is that Abhay K does avoid tackling historical facts that may be considered controversial in the current political climate. He acknowledges that Bakhtiyar Khilji’s attack on Nalanda caused immense and immediate damage but the decline of the university was the result of other long-term problems that warrant greater investigation. Factionalism within Buddhism had started to show its cracks by the ninth century and political instability, along with decreasing royal patronage, all contributed to its decline. History will always remain tricky terrain, subject to different interpretations and political appropriation. In this book, the author focuses on a different path altogether, reinvigorating the philosophy of seeking a greater form of knowledge, not by claiming that we once had it all but instead focusing on achieving it in the future.

 

 The reviewer is an independent writer, journalist and translator based in Allahabad. chittajit.mitra@gmail.com