Author: Parshu Narayanan
Publication: The Organiser
Date: February 8, 2004
I had to attend a wedding at Patna
and managed a side trip to Nalanda. As I walked into the ruins, a huge
dark sadness descended on me. Nalanda, the greatest every Buddhist university,
with its hundreds of monks and thousands of books, was destroyed by Bakhtiyar
Khilji's Turki troops around 1200 A.D. As I looked at walls still blackened
by the bonfire of books, I began my search for answers. Te museum nearby
gives you a glimpse of Nalanda's sanctity and fame across the Buddhist
world. Tibet, China, Japan and Southeast Asia. While inside, I saw a group
of Tibetan monks walking through, placing sacred white scarves on same
statues.
Back home, I downloaded the pages
of the past. Buddhist was not swallowed up by Sanatana Dharma, as we now
believe. It thrived, with sincere patrons like Harsha. Even the infamous
Jaichand built a monastery to honour his Guru, Srimitra. No, what finished
Buddhism off was that it revolved around the Sangha. To alien invaders,
a monastery's imposing walls and towers made it an obvious military target.
After Odantapura, the monastery near Nalanda, was razed and all the monks
beheaded, the Turks found no treasure and certainly no arms. All they found
were books, and they were burnt and Odantapura turned into a military camp.
Let me quickly add that Bakhtiyar Khilji's Turkic forefathers, the White
Huns of Mihirakula - behaved no differently towards the Sangha although
they were Shiva-bhaktas, it was with the greatest difficulty that the Guptas
and others could save their lands from their depredations in the sixth
century.
As I browsed, a terribly poignant
account of the last lesson at Nalanda emerged. Incredibly, it was by Nalanda's
last student: A Tibetan monk called Dharmaswamin. He visited Nalanda in
1235, nearly forty years after its sack, and found a small class still
conducted in the ruins by a ninety-year old monk, Rahul Sribhadra. Weak
and old, the teacher was kept fed and alive by a local Brahmin, Jayadeva.
Warned of a roving band of 300 Turks, the class dispersed, with Dharmaswamin
carrying his nonagenarian teacher on his back into hiding. Only the two
of them came back, and after the last lesson (it was Sanskrit grammar)
Rahul Sribhadra told his Tibetan student that he had taught him all he
knew and in spite of his entreaties asked him to go home. Packing a raggedy
bundle of surviving manuscripts under his robe, Dharmaswamin left the old
monk sitting calmly amidst the ruins. And both he and the Dharma of Shakyamuni
made their exist from India. (Indian Express, 18 September 2003)
