[Buddha-l] Nalanda's library destruction

[Ngawang Dorje]

Hi Dan,

>From the source given earlier, Kim, J (2013), p.6:

"In Ratnodadhi, which was nine-storeyed, there were the sacred scripts called Prajnaparamita-sutra, and Tantric works such as Guhyasamaja, etc. After the Turushka raiders had made incursions in Nalanda, the temples and Chaityas there were repaired by a sage named Mudita Bhadra. Soon after this, Kukutasiddha, minister of the king of Magadha, erected a temple at Nalanda, and while a religious sermon was being delivered there, two very indigent Tirthika mendicants appeared. Some naughty young novice-monks in disdain threw washing-water on them. This made them very angry. After propitiating the sun for twelve years, they performed a yajna, fire-sacrifice, and threw living embers and ashes from the sacrificial pit into the Buddhist temples, etc. This produced a great conflagration which consumed Ratnodadhi. When all of them were ablaze, streams of water gushed forth [i.e., miraculously] from the Prajnaparamita [manuscript of the great Mahayana sutra] and the
 Guhyasamaja [manuscript of a Tantric work] from the nnth storey of the Ratnodadhi temple and many pothis [manuscript] were saved." [6]

6. This passage is from Sum-pa mkhan-po (1704-1788)'s Dpag-bsam ljon-bang (Pag San Hon Zang or History of Buddhism). Sarat Chandra Das, ed., Pag sam jon zang, 2 vols. (Calcutta: Presidency Jail Press, 1908), 92. The translation given here mainly follows that of Satis Chandra Vidyabhusana except for the last sentence, which follows the translation by Lokesh Chandra give in Sukumar Dutt's study of Buddhist monasteries. See Satis Chandra Vdyabhusana, A History of Indian Logic: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Schools, reprint ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1921, 1971), 516; Sukumar Dutt, Buddhist Monks and Monasteries of India (London: G Allen and Unwin, 1962), 343, fn 2.

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The last sentence by Vidyabhusana reads:
It is, however, said that many of the Buddhist scriptures were saved by water which leaked through the sacred volumes of Prajnaparamita-sutra and Tantra.

Regards,
Rahula