This book is lush with facts but yet lacks a fabric that emotes with the reader
The word Nalanda evokes images of studious monks abuzz with dialogue, of kitchens and lodgings, of furious yet not cantankerous arguments, of raised eyebrows at noticing yet another foreign visitor in the crowd. For centuries, Nalanda was a magnet that attracted the best minds of Asia.
King Ashoka’s act of establishing a vihara to Sariputra, Gautama Buddha’s right hand in his lifetime, provided the physical nucleus of what, in the centuries following, became an enormous centre for learning and discourse. Nalanda as a university represents the first attempts to summarise and encapsulate the teachings of the Buddha within written frameworks of language and commentary. Until this time, the Vedas, too, were confined to Brahmin scholars and lineages, transmitted orally and selectively shared. At Nalanda these were made available to the general scholarly public. The democratisation of knowledge created a culture of fierce discourse within the boundaries of pragmatism and patronage.
This effort then provoked the rethink of the primary lines of Buddhist thought. The dialogue was as intense as it was power-minded. In time, the thought leaders of Nalanda were brave enough to adapt or drop some cardinal themes of the Buddha himself. This resulted in a more dynamic basis for the spread of Buddhism across east and central Asia, as what we have come to know as Mahayana Buddhism.
And then, quite suddenly, after a millennium or so, Nalanda faded away, crushed by invasions from Muslim hordes and ignored thereafter.
Nalanda the book is the product of meticulous research. A slim volume of only 140 pages of main text, it summarises the several activities of royals and intellectuals from different regions ranging from Bactria and Kashmir to the Yamuna Doab and the Ganga and Brahmaputra plains, as well as scholars from all over the world.
This book is lush with facts but yet lacks a fabric that emotes with the reader. Numbers and dates leap at you, but consistently fail to connect to a coherent picture. For all its plainly evident investment in detail and documentation, it fails to capture the ebullient spirit of Nalanda at its peak, reading like an extended Wikipedia entry.
Facts and figures are compressed into needlessly tight spaces. These are poorly located within the socio-politics of the time, or even the larger history of the world. There is little mention of similar academic endeavour, and older learning repositories and libraries as in Alexandria and elsewhere. There is inadequate discussion of China where learning protocols and institutions were embedded into governance and social frames. There is indeed precious little discussion on the infusion of ideas into Nalanda from all directions. Most important, there is almost nothing on how Brahminism and Jainism also redesigned themselves to combat the rising tide of a constantly evolving Buddhist thought-stream that seemed to be more plural in outlook and determinedly inclusive in intent.
The subtitle of this book — how it changed the world — promises an extra dimension that it fails to deliver. But the most important contribution on this front is derived from two quotes from Dalrymple’s The Golden Road. A set of colour photographs of tourist-brochure quality with sparse legends decorates the middle of the book without really adding value to it. The author also provides poetic interludes which at points summarise and take the story forward much like songs in a musical play. The poetry is interesting in its own right, but these stylistic interventions stymie the flow for a reader seeking connections and a coherent web of ideas, beyond dates and events.
After four decades in social change and public policy, R. Sursh now spends time with books, music, birds and movies
Nalanda: How it Changed the World
By Abhay Kumar
Penguin
pp. 224; Rs 699
