[Buddha-l] Nalanda's library destruction

[Dan Lusthaus]

Dear GM,

> The destruction  of Nalanda and other Buddhist libraries and monasteries 
> on the subcontinent by Muslim invaders is generally regarded as a myth by 
> historians of the conquests ( as well as  historians of South Asia).

It's not a myth -- and there certainly has been a very concerted revisionist 
effort to whitewash the history. One of the tactics is to label anyone who 
points this out as some sort of right-wing hatemonger. Very effective 
smoke-screen.

The destruction and mass slaughter of the Buddhist and Jain monastics at 
Vallabhi is not contested (though there are all sorts of efforts to soften 
its significance); Dharmasvamin's eyewitness account of Nalanda's last days 
is compelling -- and the harrassment of monastics by Muslims at that time 
was, in his account, not confined to Nalanda. The documentation of mass 
killings, temple desecrations, etc., not least by the muslims themselves in 
exuberant boastful tones, is vast -- it must be exhausting for those who 
feel compelled to find ways to explain all of that away in favor of 
politically correct fabrications that never fits the facts.

Books like Buddhism and Islam along the Silk Road by Johan Elverskog are 
filled with misleading and outright erroneous factual claims and 
misrepresentations of sources, all designed to soften, exonerate or deny 
muslim actions. (E.g., he cites Dharmasvamin as his source that Nalanda 
"continued as a functioning institution of Buddhist education well into the 
thirteenth century," p.2; Dharmasvamin found a deserted Nalanda with only 
one aged abbot remaining, who he could not entreat to flee the harrassing 
hordes that threatened his life. He also cites a Korean pilgrim's account as 
proof that Nalanda was still operating, but that Korean, if one actually 
reads his account, never made it south of Nepal, if even that far south, and 
had nothing to say about Nalanda.  And so on. It's easy to make 
unsupportable claims to an audience hungry to hear and applaud those 
"truths." That sort of misuse of sources takes chutzpah.) Any half competent 
fact checker would throw that book away before getting a quarter of the way 
through -- but the climate is such that the book is lauded, and his 
exonerations, baseless as they are, are celebrated.

This is a subject that has been gone over countless times on this list -- so 
please review the archives; I don't intend to rehearse this all again. The 
revisionist efforts are being revealed for what they are, piece by piece. 
For a more contemporary version, the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Hindus 
from Kashmir is currently being whitewashed and erased from history by a 
similar cadre of "historians." Purported history that is agenda driven, 
instead of giving allegiance to accuracy, is not history but, at best myth, 
at worst brainwashing.

Dan