New Delhi: Studying abroad is an aspiration Indians chase through visas, loans, and uncertainty. But Nalanda is proof that the world once looked to India for learning. Historian William Dalrymple said on Sunday that India has not treated the institution with the seriousness it deserves.
The room was packed for veteran journalist Sunit Tandon’s conversation with Dalrymple at the India International Centre. It was the final session of the Delhi Nalanda Dialogues, and the historian spoke of Nalanda as much more than a ruin. He used it to talk about an older India whose texts, teachers, and ideas drew scholars from across Asia, and travelled far beyond the subcontinent.
The Delhi edition of the Nalanda Lit Fest, held on 9 and 10 May, closed with the session ‘Golden Pathway, with Nalanda at its Centre’. Drawing on the argument of his latest book, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World, Dalrymple moved beyond Nalanda as a monument. His larger point was simple: ancient India’s influence was much wider than many Indians today realise.
“How come Nalanda?” asked Tandon. Much of Dalrymple’s writing has focused on the decline of the Mughals, the rise of the East India Company, and the transition to British rule in India. But, he said, his “first fascination” had been archaeology. He went to the Ajanta and Ellora caves on his first visit to India.
“My younger self would be surprised,” he said, that he had spent so long “stuck in the 18th century.”
However, the period mattered because it had been neglected. “Historians love golden ages,” Dalrymple said.
The decline of the Mughals and the rise of Company rule, according to him, had received far less attention.
That phase of his work was bookended by the death of Bruce Wannell, his friend, collaborator, and Persian scholar, who had helped him access primary sources. Covid then gave Dalrymple the time to go further back, past the Company rule and the Mughals, to ancient India and his own early fascination with archaeology.
Where Hindu and Buddhist worlds overlapped
The lines between Hindu and Buddhist influence in Southeast Asia used to be blurred at one point in history. “Thailand’s kings are Buddhist,” Tandon pointed out, “but carry the title, Rama.”
Ayutthaya in Thailand, whose name echoes Ayodhya, has a Hindu temple. Royal ceremonies in Thailand still carry Sanskrit traces. In ancient Southeast Asia, Dalrymple said, Hindu and Buddhist worlds mingled far more freely than modern boundaries suggest.
What struck him was how “little” even Indians often know of “ancient India’s resonance” across its borders. At Angkor Wat, the largest Hindu temple in the world, Indian visitors often seem surprised to find carvings from the Mahabharata and the Bhagavata Purana. The footprint is extended across the region. “There’s a Kurukshetra in Laos,” he added.
Other ideas travelled too. Indian mathematicians developed the number system and the idea of zero that later moved through the Arab world to Europe, where the numerals came to be called Arabic. In parts of West Asia, Dalrymple said, they are still known as Hindi numbers.
The historian also spoke of Chinese pilgrims and scholars such as Faxian, Xuanzang and Yijing, who crossed deserts and seas to study in India, copy manuscripts, and carry Buddhist learning back across Asia. “They believed the original and least corrupted forms of Buddhist texts could be found in Nalanda,” Dalrymple said.
While the university was Buddhist, Dalrymple said, it was not narrow. It admitted non-Buddhists and taught subjects beyond Buddhism.
Dalrymple clarified that Buddhism had already travelled to Sri Lanka and China before Nalanda was established. But once established, it became “the epicentre of the Buddhist universe.” According to Dalrymple, the only library that could rival Nalanda’s was Alexandria. After Alexandria burned, Nalanda had no equal.
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India’s neglected heritage
Today, Nalanda is far removed from its glory days. Only a fraction of the site has been excavated. What has been found suggests a vast institution, with the excavated stretch “looking almost exactly like Oxford High Street,” Dalrymple said. The library had three divisions and rose nine storeys.
According to Dalrymple, India has neglected Nalanda and given it only a “tatty” museum.
“Every airport in this country has been redone in the last 20 years. Any other country with a site of this scale would have turned it into a major global attraction. Nalanda could be one of India’s best advertisements to the world, but instead it has a fourth-rate museum,” Dalrymple said.
He also challenged the popular story of Nalanda’s end. It is said that Bakhtiyar Khilji burnt it down. But Dalrymple said the archaeological record points to several fires, not one act of destruction, and to a university already in decline. “The popular version of the end of Nalanda is not right,” he said. “It was more complex than that.”
In 1270, Kublai Khan was crowned as the emperor by a monk who had studied at Nalanda, according to the historian.
The fires of the late 12th century didn’t erase Nalanda in one stroke. The end was not as sudden as the popular stories tell. Manuscripts had already travelled to Tibet. Some survived and now live in Western collections.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)