turchi -- induisti e musulmani -- uccisero il buddismo indiano
अश्वमित्रः
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 ever Buddhist university, with its hundreds of
monks and thousands of books, was destroyed by Bakhtiyar Khalji’s
Turki troops around 1200 AD. As I looked at walls still blackened by
the bonfires of books, I began my search for answers. The museum
nearby gives you a glimpse of Nalanda’s sanctity and fame across the
Buddhist world: Tibet, China, Japan and most of Southeast Asia. While
inside, I saw a group of Tibetan monks walking through, placing sacred
white scarves on some statues.
Back home, I downloaded the pages of the past. Buddhism 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 with none left to explain their
meaning, 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-bhakts. It was with the greatest difficulty
that the Guptas and others managed to 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 Sakyamuni made their exit from India.