Nalanda University flourished for more than seven centuries | Hacker News Reader

Nalanda University flourished for more than seven centuries

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302 pointsbobosha265 comments

I remember being taught in school about the important Muslim contributions to science, philosophy, and mathematics. It has been interesting to learn over time that much of this was inherited from Indian scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians (and it has been disquieting to learn what “inherited” is a euphemism for).

True, but in turn when we do hear about the Indian contributions, we tend to think they were all Hindus, rather than recognizing the great contributions of the Buddhists at Nalanda. While Buddhism has little presence in India today, that's where it started.

Buddhists were the only folks who were building universities at the time Hindus didnt even have a school leave alone universities. The so called "Gurukul" has never been found at any archaeological site.

Ofcourse millions of Sanskrit manuscript were produced in fictional Gurukuls by fictional characters who never existed.

> The so called "Gurukul" has never been found at any archaeological site.

Chariot were considered fiction until they were not[0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakhigarhi&ved=2ahUKEwjwktvM...

Show one Sanskrit manuscript older than 1446. Not a single Stone inscription, Copper plate, Terracotta inscription of classical sanskrit has ever been found nor any Hindu site. Show a single evidence? The evidence of sanskrit found are of Buddhist Sanskrit at Buddhist schools like Nalanda here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda#/media/File:Nalanda_cl...

Not a single archeological evidence of Hindu (Brahman) dharm exist, if you have any evidence older that 1446 you have to furnish the proof.

Brahmins were writing Allahupanishad at the time of mughals praising Allah to be the supreme god and greater than Vishnu.

During the British Rule They wrote Bhavishya Puran and praising queen victoria to be the great ruler and even mentioned Macaulay. All those sanskrit books of Hindus religion were written much later infact they couldnt be written before teh invention of Devanagari script. And devanagari script itself was invented between 11th and 13th century.

Also your link doesnt work.

> Not a single Stone inscription, Copper plate, Terracotta inscription of classical sanskrit has ever been found nor any Hindu site

Ok here you go.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hathibada_Ghosundi_inscripti....

> All those sanskrit books of Hindus religion were written much later infact they couldnt be written before teh invention of Devanagari script.

Sanskrit is script agnostic language so Sanskrit manuscript are found in every Indian script. If you do not know this then you are not qualified to talk about Sanskrit.

Edit: Hinduism is neither doctrine based nor centralised so every single purana and upnishad isn't authentic. Hindus and are free to discard what doesn't align with Dharma as described in Vedas. What make you think Allopnishad wasn't written by Muslims to convince Hindus?

First of all you clearly have no clue that the Modern Classical Sanskrit is a newer language an earlier language existed known as BHS(Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit) this language was written in a script older than Devanagri script. There are ample Buddhists manuscripts of this language written in various scripts like Kharoshti. Why do we not find a single Brahman Dharm manuscript?

Simply because much of (Brahman Dharm) Hinduism was invented after the invention of Devanagri script in 11 century.

Also The classical sanskrit in which all Brahman Text (Hindu text) is written cannot be written in any Indian script before 11th century. Simply because the very basic sounds of sanskrit "Chha" (छ), "Tri" (त्र), "Gya"(ज्ञ), compound sounds, halants and visargas are not present in any script before that.

In the end what is the basis of your claim? All your claims are sand castles without archaeological evidence which is non existent for Brahman Dharm (Hinduism).

Vedas dont prescribe anything in terms of rejecting books, 33% of Rig Veda is only talk fire burning rituals and Indra, i suggest you first read it before speaking about it.

You must also address Bhavishya Puran.

> Simply because the very basic sounds of sanskrit "Chha" (छ), "Tri" (त्र), "Gya"(ज्ञ), compound sounds, halants and visargas are not present in any script before ....

Wrong Brahmi was capable of representing Sanskrit sounds.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmi_script

> Simply because much of (Brahman Dharm) Hinduism was invented after the invention of Devanagri script in 11 century.

With this statement you have denied the foundational claim of Buddhism. You have also disowned numerous philosopher of Buddhism. If Sanatan Dharma didn't exist what exactly was being reformed by Buddha?

> Also The classical sanskrit in which all Brahman Text (Hindu text) is written cannot be written in any Indian script before 11th century.

Classical Sanskrit?? Are you claiming Vedas were written in classical Sanskrit? Then Vedic Sanskrit was used for exactly what? Vedic books are transmitted in Vedic Sanskrit which had more sounds than classical Sanskrit. On top of that Vedas are shruti (heard) and they are transmitted orally even to this day.I hope you know about 6 pre- requisite (vedangas)required to read Vedas . First vedanga is Sikhsa which si about correct pronunciati. Chandas comes second and defines the metre of the Vedic hymns.

> Vedas dont prescribe anything in terms of rejecting books, 33% of Rig Veda is only talk fire burning rituals and Indra ...

Which part of veda teaches commandment and asks the followers to be the blind followers? What is wrong in 33% of rigved praising universe and nature. Is regressive but Buddh vandana is progressive?

> You must also address Bhavishya Puran.

Produce the questionable reference first and then we can debate.

On that note you also address the birth based castism and misogyny of Buddhism.

Ariguttara Nikaya (II.35) "beings/ puggalas" are of four categories: a)tamo tama parayano, of miserable birth and bound for misery b)tamo jyoti parayano, of miserable birth but bound for happiness c)joti tama parayano, of happy, good birth but bound for misery

https://ia800205.us.archive.org/11/items/pt1samyuttanikay00p...

I can produce more references directly from Buddhist text. I challenge to do the same from Vedas and related text.

Regarding your 11th century claim. Brahmin produced Vedas, upvedas, vedangas, upnishads, brahman granths, aranykad, arthshastras,plays and poetry of kalidas,bharthari, numerous astronomy, mathematics books, 6 schools of philosophy, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Bhagwad Gita 11th century onwards when India was attacks from the invaders. I nstead of defending kingdoms, these large projects were started by the ruling class.

* Again you should first read your own source wikipedia, where do you see in the alphabet table these sounds:

"Ksha" (क्ष), "Tri" (त्र), "Gya"(ज्ञ) in Brahmi script character ?

[correction i was talking about Ksha (क्ष) mistakenly wrote Chha (छ)]

* Hathi Bada Ghoshundi is Pali in Brahmi script again which is a Buddhist language not Hindu, there is no actual manuscript of this photograph so it could be a hoax. None of the Museums have the inscription for all we know it was on wood. and it got destroyed no one actually ever dated it only this photograph exists.

Whatever references you are pointing dont have a single actual evidence just claims your entire Arthashastra was discovered after 1901 in paper form no manuscript again.

I can point to many inconsistencies but the fact remains none of the claims have any actual physical or archaeological evidence, and to top it all Brahman dharm is trying to find their existence in buddhist manuscript and language because Brahman dharm have no evidence of their own.

You must stop with these claims and point to some actual archeological evidence.

> "Ksha" (क्ष), "Tri" (त्र), "Gya"(ज्ञ) in Brahmi script character ?

You claiming these to be the part of Sanskrit sound system which is incorrect. Show me an authentic Sanskrit alphabet in which these sound listed. For your information these letters aren't representing unique sound so they can be expressed as combinations of 2 letter while writing.

क् + ष = क्ष

त् + र = त्र

ज् + ञ = ज्ञ

All the various Sanskrit sound combinations and its nuances cannot be written down in any script, not even devnagri. Basic sound such as अ can have 18 different variations when spoken. Which script will have the capability to represent such richness. Hence it is an oral first language.

> * Hathi Bada Ghoshundi is Pali in Brahmi script again which is a Buddhist language not Hindu, there is no actual manuscript of this photograph so it could be a hoax. None of the Museums have the inscription for all we know it was on wood. and it got destroyed no one actually ever dated it only this photograph exists.

Make your mind. It is a hoax or it is a Buddhist inscription? Refute Heliodorus_pillar too as hoax.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliodorus_pillar

> You must stop with these claims and point to some actual archeological evidence.

If Brahmins came late then birth based caste system was a Buddhist invention?

https://www.jstor.org/stable/29757366

You also didn't refute Buddha's statements from Ariguttara Nikaya (II.35) in which he clearly seems to discriminate based on the birth. On the contrary you also did not produce evidence of birth based caste from 4 Vedas, 18 Upnishads, Ramayana, Mahabharata, or Bhagwad Gita.

Buddhism is not that different from Hinduism. Both coexisted and debated with each other for centuries until islamic invasions started. Buddhism being a pacifist sect fell first.

Buddhism is very distinct from Hinduism. In particular, there aren't multiple deities to worship and there is no caste system.

Buddhism, the dominant religion of India circa 400AD (as per Chinese travellers), was already under attack from Brahmins who made it a key strategy to get royal patronage, set up the religious rules for society which heavily favored themselves and also focused on acting as confidantes to kings, leading to the elimination of Buddhism(focused on monastic life) from much of the Indian subcontinent even before Islam was founded.

Nah, the so-called 'isms' of India ('Buddhism', 'Jainism', 'Saivism') are called agama traditions. The question scholars face or faced is this: what was earlier? Indologist story that both left wing and right scholars accept is that: there was Vedism, corrupted to become 'popular' hinduism, later Indian Martin Luther (Buddha) fought against the veil immorality of Hindus (because caste system forces immoral obligations on everyone), thereby Buddhism emerging. This is the standard story.

It is not clear that Vedism was created before Jainism, which has a strong archeological presence in South India.

There is also speculation that Shaivism is much older and was merged in to Hinduism quite late, some what contemporaneous with the elimination of Brahma (Brahmism) as a deity to be worshipped.

Also, it is weird to talk about left/right wrt history. History is just history, not left or right. In the Indian context, left has come to mean the actual history by historians, while right implies pseudohistory of PN Oak, out of India hypotheses and various other fantasies.

Anything that doesn't suit Western framework of looking at India can't be considered pseudo history. Most revered river in Vedas is Saraswati which disappear more than 10k years ago. Vedas describes river Saraswati in it's fully glory so they have to be much older than. Not every evidence is going to come from archeology and some evidence is yet to be found like chariots from Rakhigadhi which were also considered a fiction.

Well explained. Came here to say this.

Any archaeological evidence to prove the existence of Hindu (Brahman) dharm older than 1000 yrs? ANy written manuscript , stone inscription etc ..?

Buddhism from its very history exists because Prince Siddhartha walked out of his palace and saw people dropping dead like flies out of disease and hunger. Apparently the sheer scale of suffering drove him to quit everything and become the Buddha.

This whole narrative of rivers of milk and honey flowing in Indian history obviously appears cooked up to drive political narratives(propaganda?) to anybody who can do basic analysis of history.

> milk and honey

Could you please provide some references? AFAIK rivers of milk and honey in afterlife are claimed to be offered by certain non Indian religions.

>there aren't multiple deities to worship and there is no caste system.

There are multiple deities [0] and Buddha didn't oppose caste system. He advocated it on deed and not birth which is not very diffrent from Hindu views of caste. Could you point to some instance from ancient Indians history when discrimination was made on the basis of caste, color, or gender?

The Buddha:– "Not by birth is one an outcast; not by birth is one a brahman. By deeds one becomes an outcast, by deeds one becomes a brahman." (Vasala Sutta 27 )

Mahabharata says the same thing.

Listen about caste, Yaksha dear, not study, not learning is the cause of being "twice-born". Conduct alone is the basis, there is no doubt about it. (M.Bh. Aranya-parva 312. 106.)

Birth based caste is an acquired taste from the Muslim invaders who had and still have a system of discrimination in the form of Islamic doctrine of Kafaat (Al-Hidaya, Book VI, Chapter 55.1). This system is still in practice across middle East[1].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_deities

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafa%27ah

As a counterview, my interpretation is that Buddah is not advocating for a literal caste system, rather, that one's proactive choices shape their spiritual progression.

Buddhism has no concept of caste. Gita has caste by birth as a central theme. In particular, Gita makes it loud and explicitly clear that even if a person is better at the birth caste duties of a different caste than his own caste duty ( which he is not any good at) he should only perform his own caste duties. Caste lines cannot be crossed. There is absolutely nothing like this in Buddhism.

https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/chapter/18/verse/47

"It is better to do one’s own dharma, even though imperfectly, than to do another’s dharma, even though perfectly. By doing one’s innate duties, a person does not incur sin."

Next verse

"One should not abandon duties born of one’s nature, even if one sees defects in them, O son of Kunti. Indeed, all endeavors are veiled by some evil, as fire is by smoke."

The whole set of verses before and after this verse is worth a read

https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/chapter/18/verse/41

The website adds the phrase "and not by birth" in the translation that is not present in the original Sanskrit verse to mitigate modern sensibilities, but the following verses go on to contradict the additional phrase added in the translation.

There are other verses that shame intercaste marriages as well.

> Buddhism has no concept of caste.

Do read this.

https://archive.org/details/I.B.Horner-Vinaya-Pitaka/I.B%20H...

On the issue of Gita. Could you please elaborate the words which refer to birth categorically? I know enough of Sanskrit to understand the original verses.

Edit: Here is a link to whole research paper on caste in Buddhism. Dp read the chapter appropriately titled.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/29757366&ved=2ahUKEwiRrp7Oksz9A...

When were these document written and any original manuscript of your references?

This topic came up in the Sam Harris and Sw Sarvapriyananda podcast recently. Sam mentioned: while the Hindus and Buddhists kept debating, the Muslims won.

India is still a Hindu nation so Hindus have suffered but they are still standing. Hindu mashal spirit never surrendered to the invasion otherwise like persia India would also completely vanished.Muslims invaded Sindh in 711 AD. For next 500 years they struggled to move past sindh and never conquered India until Turko Mughal succeeded in 12th century. Even when they ruled they faced continue challenge from the Hindu. For example when Aurangzeb tried imposing zaziya tax on Hindus, shivaji dared him to collect it from Mewar.

Hindus men performed saka (fighting to the last man) and women performed jauhar by burning themselves alive in the fire.

Buddhism on the otherhand suffered due to being non violent and practically vanished.

So you must first tell what is the actual name of this religion, and its not "Hinduism" the origin of teh word Hindu is in Persian language. The persian dictionary define "Hindu" as "Thief", Also Buddhism is a Nastik Darshan (Atheist philosophy). Hinduism whose actual name is Brahman Dharm is Theistic philosophy worshipping gods etc. Also no evidence exist that Brahman dharm ever existed at the time of Buddhists, At best it was created after 11th century, which is why none of the chinese, korean, or greek travellers to India ever mentioned the existence of "Hindu" , "Brahman" or Hindu religion. All of them mentioned Buddhists and Jains. Only Al'biruni in 11th. century first mentions something called "Brahman" but even he translated the Buddhist texts, but did not get have any access to Hindu literature because the Brahman priests he met said they have not written it yet.

> So you must first tell what is the actual name of this religion

Names are not that important. But since you asked it's called Sanatan Dharma. It's also called Hindu Dharma.

> The persian dictionary define "Hindu" as "Thief",

References from pre Islamic Persia please. Don't give the usual Sindu to Hindu explanation. If Persians don't have a S sound then why salaam didn't became halaam? What about Persia itself? Why not Perhia? Word Hindu is a thoroughly Sanskrit word. It define the region from Himalaya (हिमालय) to the Indian Ocean(इंदु सरोवर).

> Brahman priests he met said they have not written it yet.

Vedic tradition is called श्रुति (heard). It's transmitted for thousands of years through the oral method. I have replied you else where on the importance of oral method in Vedic tradition. So what exactly is your fascination with writing down? Writing down makes it authoritative? Then respond to the clear defence of birth based caste and discrimination against women in Buddhism. Refute this please.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/29757366

Not only India, but Persia, countries in The Levant, North Africa and Mediterranean were highly developed before the advent of Islam (which originated amongst desert tribes). It is their knowledge which gave rise to the so called "Golden Age of Islam". Islamic conquest merely acted as a conduit for the spread of these ideas from one geographical region to another (a la the later Mongol Empire).

Central Asia certainly played its role too. I invite you to consider that when Jai Singh II built Jantar Mantar, he used "Islamic" sources (Zij) as well from there.

Central Asia's prominence before Islam was mainly due to trade routes (later named the "Silk Road").

It is fairly standard in Indian right wing media to be dismissive of anything positive of Islamic origin, by constructing a short alternative history as per the writers imagination.

So any post Islamic Arab contributions to math would have to be stolen from India, using bloodshed - as if math is a treasure that can be lifted or looted or were existing amongst Arabs before Islam.

Nobody is talking about "right wing media" etc other than you.

What is being pointed out is the achievements of civilizations predating Islam in those countries which are today Islamic.

It is simple factual History.

Very well, so what is wrong about mentioning Al Biruni or Ulugh Beg or Zij-i-Sultani as well?

It is was fairly straightforward for me to tell that you belong to the Indian right wing, from your biases when commenting about a secular topic like mathematics.

> It is simple factual History.

Just like post Islamic Arab mathematics by Al Khawrizmi, Al Biruni et al.

> Nobody is talking about "right wing media" etc other than you.

Yes, and ... ??

>It is was fairly straightforward for me to tell that you belong to the Indian right wing

None of my posts have anything to do with "right wing"; It is your reading of them that is flawed.

If anything, hiding behind internet anonymity and posting ad hominem comments tells a lot about you.

It is not merely act as a conduit. Using your anology they act as amplifier, filter, signal processing, etc toward the knowledge contributions. These regions becoming even more prosperous due to these knowledge based activities after Islamic rules unlike India who becoming much poorer after the British colonization.

Your first part is debatable.

The analogy i see is Arabs->later advancements(7th century and later) is the same as Mongols->later advancements(13th century and later). Both Arabs and Mongols were not inherently as "advanced" a civilization as the ones they conquered.

I'm not sure if you're trolling but I'll bite.

Unlike Mongols, Arab and Muslim scientists are well-knwon to have numerous and extensive contributions to the scientific knowledge. A lot of the novel scientific, mathematics, and other knowledge terminology are based on the Arabic languages namely algorithm, chemistry, alkali, just to name a few [1].

For medicine alone the contributions are numerous from Al-Nafis discovery of blood cirtculation several hunderds years before Harvey[2], Avicennna's book adoption as standard medicine textbooks for several hundred years at Oxford, Cambridge and other major European university [3], Ibn Al Quff the father of modern anesthasia [4] and Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawai the father of modern surgery [5].

Actually I want to mention well-known contributions to mathematics and astronomy by Arab and muslim scientists and mathematicians as well, but I think you probably get the points by now.

If your claim is true about the Mongols I'd like you to come up with similar list just for modern medicine alone from the Mongolian scientists (not ancient China) but I doubt you can and will.

[1]List of English words of Arabic origin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Arabi...

[2]Ibn al-Nafis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Nafis

[3]Avicenna:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna

[4]An Arabic surgeon, Ibn al Quff's (1232–1286) account on surgical pain relief:

https://journals.lww.com/anar/Fulltext/2010/04010/Historical...

[5]Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi: Father of Modern Surgery:

https://www.hbku.edu.qa/en/academic-events/CIS-PM-AQAZFMS

You have not understood my point at all.

If anything, pointing to various scholars with Arabic names in a large geographical area which hosted "advanced civilizations" before their conquest by Islam only strengthens my argument.

It is the achievements of the native people which were built upon by the now larger group of people of various ethnicities which is being pointed out. Islam was a conduit for the spread of ideas and not their originator. The Arabs were as "primitive" as the Mongols after them. Only after "mixing" with other ethnicities, converting them to Islam, making Arabic official lingua franca were these countries "Arabicized".

The difference between Arabs and Mongols is that the Arabs gave themselves a specific identity i.e. Islam which they then imposed on others while the Mongols integrated themselves into the native cultures.

Basically nobody invents anything from scratch. It would be a pity if we have to rediscover everything all over again, every time there is a major change in a regions political order.

The modern USA is today a continuation of the Europe's printing press revolution.

The point was that the achievements of civilizations predating Islam have been given short shrift.

I can't think of anybody giving short shrift to the achievements of civilizations predating Islam: Rome, Ancient Greece, Ancient China, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and many more civilizations are all commonly referred to as having made major achievements.

I thought it was obvious but apparently not; my other comment clarifies it as;

>What is being pointed out is the achievements of civilizations predating Islam in those countries which are today Islamic.

Oh yeah - that's a big issue. Lots of big civilizational achievements were happening in what became the Islamic world before Islam became dominant.

My strong contention is that much of the credit for the "Golden Age of Islam" should go to these pre-Islamic civilizations whose achievements were forcibly appropriated by the Arabs under their "Islamic" conquest.

Perhaps Indian author Vishal Mangalwadi's example of the mathematical theory behind the mechanical clock would illustrate the flow of ideas well. He wrote (I'm going my memory here, so I don't have his exact dates) that an Indian mathematician came up with the theory for a mechanical clock in the early 11th century, but didn't try to build one; 50 years later middle eastern Muslim scholars were debating and studying the theory, but didn't try to build one; another half-century later the idea had come to Europe, and it was there in the early 12th century that the bishop of Paris suggested to his monks that building a mechanical clock would improved their ability to organized their communal work and worship in their monastic communities.

Mamgalwadi also asks the question of why neither the Indian nor Islamic cultures tried to build a mechanical clock when they knew of the theory. He suggests that the Indian Hindu belief that reality is /maya/ or illusion (and one meditates to escape the illusion) prevented them from trying to make a clock; in the middle-east, he suggests that the Islamic rejection of possibility of God becoming incarnate in the person of Jesus prevented them from trying to flesh out the theory, while in Christian medieval Europe their belief in incarnation primed the culture for trying to work the theory out in practice.

I think you've missed Al-Jazari who's well regarded as the father of modern robotics several hundred years before Leonardo da Vinci [1]. Some historians even suggesting that some of the da-Vinci inventions were copycats and derivatives of the Al-Jazari's more than hundred of inventions but he's not properly credited by da Vinci [2].

FYI, of al-jazri most famous invention is the elephant clock [3].

[1]Ismail al-Jazari:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismail_al-Jazari

[2]Ismail al-Jazari: The Muslim inventor who may have inspired Leonardo da Vinci:

https://www.europeana.eu/en/blog/ismail-al-jazari-the-muslim...

[3]al-Jazari's Clocks: Perhaps the Earliest Programmable Analog Computers:

https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=2341

To be honest it's not your "strong contention" but rather your ignorant or in denial contention, but I think you probably is the latter. In Arabic the word kafir is not translated to the infidel as made popular by the western media but literally means the "those who are in denial" or "those who cover up".

Why not you provide and share your proper references of your case for not overly crediting the Arab and muslim contributions so we can all can learn and move forward, or you can create a reference book and a thesis on that? But even if you can provide proper references, in which I strongly doubt, what's wrong for crediting the Arab and muslim scholars where credits are due. It seems to me you have strong enmity towards them that they have had more contributions to the knowledge than you can even dream of yourself in your lifetime.

You seemed to have popped out of the proverbial woodwork and that too of a most malodorous kind.

If you want to engage in a discussion on this topic, don't hide behind anonymity, understand properly what has been written and don't use ad hominem attacks.

For your edification w.r.t. my comments; there is a lot to unpack but here are the highlights for you to research on :

a) Arabs as a Ethnic group who originated in a particular "backward" geographical area.

b) Islam as a religion/philosophy/political/social framework which originated with them. Note also that Islam is the youngest of the major abrahamic religions.

c) Conquest of neighboring "advanced" countries under the Islamic banner thus appropriating their achievements under the same. Do some research on the civilizations of these countries as they were before Islamic conquest.

d) Spread of these achievements to Europe who named it the mythical "Golden Age of Islam". Note that this also includes knowledge gained from other civilizations who were not conquered but whose knowledge was studied and spread by scholars (of various ethnicities) in the now large geographical area under Islamic rule.

The above is factual History and this is what is being pointed out.

> and it has been disquieting to learn what “inherited” is a euphemism for

To be blunt: Islamic invaders to the Indian subcontinent were by and large iconoclastic, at best intolerant and at worst genocidal (by forced conversions, marriages, outright murder, etc) of the native Dharmic (read: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain) population, and burned down, looted, and deconstructed Hindu and Buddhist places of worship to construct their own mosques on top of said ruins.

The India-Pakistan debacle today is an extension of a nearly millennium-long Hindu-Muslim feud.

The burning of Nalanda University (whether or not it is a 'university' is an orthogonal matter) is another facet in this feud. The decline of Buddhism in the late classical era in the Indian subcontinent—already on a somewhat downhill slope, due to Hinduism co-opting much Buddhist thought, and in general being more popular and accessible than the ascetic demands of monastic Buddhism—was drastically accelerated by the Islamic incursions into the Indian subcontinent.

The Ayodhya mosque-temple riots are another facet of this clash. Western commentators glibly say 'Hindus are anti-Muslim'. The issue in India is so much more nuanced than that; there is bad blood on both sides going back a thousand years. Islam cannot escape from these charges: the religion is fundamentally intolerant of non-Abrahamic ones, especially ones with liberal iconography (like Hinduism and Buddhism).

There is a reason why (most of) the oldest and largest Hindu temples are in South India, which mostly escaped from the period of Muslim rule relatively unscathed. There are (possibly apocryphal) stories about how the idols at several temples (such as the one in Srirangam, Trichy) were relocated to mountain redoubts to prevent them being stolen and melted down by 'the invaders'.

The destruction of Buddhist iconography by Islam (or its followers) continues to this day: the Bamyan Buddhas in Afghanistan were blown up by the Taliban in 2001.

> The India-Pakistan debacle today is an extension of a nearly millennium-long Hindu-Muslim feud.

Not really. A lot of these arbitrary borders in modern times came about due to actions of former colonial powers. Prior to colonial times, there were many individual kingdoms/territories throughout the subcontinent. Other examples of arbitrary borders include the Durand line, and the Wakhan corridor.

> A lot of these arbitrary borders in modern times came about due to actions of former colonial powers.

By 1940, Jinnah had come to believe that the Muslims of the subcontinent should have their own state to avoid the possible marginalised status they may gain in an independent Hindu–Muslim state. In that year, the Muslim League, led by Jinnah, passed the Lahore Resolution, demanding a separate nation for Indian Muslims. - Wikipedia

The Two-nation Theory is a joke and the world's been laughing since 1971.

> an independent Hindu–Muslim state.

A single state spanning most of the Indian subcontinent wasn't a political reality prior to colonial times. There were many individual kingdoms and territories prior to that time. The political structure set up by the British was a major contributing factor behind the partition.

Another instance of a partition happened about 10 years prior to India's and Pakistan's independence. The British Raj decided to split Myanmar from India. Maybe if they had not done that, India would have extended further east to encompass present day Myanmar.

> A single state spanning most of the Indian subcontinent wasn't a political reality prior to colonial times. There were many individual kingdoms and territories prior to that time.

Never said it was. It came closest to the current boundaries under the Mauryan empire and Peshwai rule, however.

> The political structure set up by the British was a major contributing factor behind the partition.

Yes, the political structure that forced the majority of Muslims to vote for a separate Muslim state to be carved out of India. So sad, that the British did this to Indians. Without the British, there would be no enmity between the Hindus and Muslims. Truly a travesty.

>> A single state spanning most of the Indian subcontinent wasn't a political reality prior to colonial times. There were many individual kingdoms and territories prior to that time.

> Never said it was.

Had Europe been colonized and been organized into a single state, then, when the colonists relinquished power, areas with different ethniticies and/or religions would probably have voted to have more autonomy or be separate states altogether. The fact that there are many languages in India that are mutually unintelligible would indicate that gathering all of them in a single country is a relatively recent construct, and that the default arrangement was that control was much more local.

>> It came closest to the current boundaries under the Mauryan empire and Peshwai rule, however.

Just because political arrangements from centuries/millenia past existed doesn't mean that they're a good idea in modern times. Hence the reason we have many countries in Europe rather than a modern single political entity spanning an area similar to the Roman or Byzantine empire.

> Yes, the political structure that forced the majority of Muslims to vote for a separate Muslim state to be carved out of India.

Had the British Raj not split Myanmar off from India, it's likely they may have voted for a partition along similar lines based on religion (Budddhism vs Hinduism). Another example of strife caused by political structures set up by the British resulted in the civil war in Sri Lanka. In fact, the Tamils in Sri Lanka wanted to create their own independent state because of discrimination they faced from the Sinhalese majority.

> Without the British, there would be no enmity between the Hindus and Muslims.

Enmity really comes from trying to group people from different cultures, ethnicities, religions, etc under a single political entity where one group is a minority. Tyranny of the majority becomes a problem in those cases.

> Had Europe been colonized and been organized into a single state, then, when the colonists relinquished power, areas with different ethniticies and/or religions would probably have voted to have more autonomy or be separate states altogether. The fact that there are many languages in India that are mutually unintelligible would indicate that gathering all of them in a single country is a relatively recent construct, and that the default arrangement was that control was much more local.

Partition would never have been so hotly contested if this was indeed the case. However, it wasn't. Thousands of Hindus and Sikhs had to flee the newly created Islamic nation of Pakistan, who knows exactly how many were killed in that process.

> Had the British Raj not split Myanmar off from India, it's likely they may have voted for a partition along similar lines based on religion (Budddhism vs Hinduism)

Buddhism and Hinduism have coexisted in relative peace (with a few exceptions) for millennia. No such thing would have happened.

> Enmity really comes from trying to group people from different cultures, ethnicities, religions, etc under a single political entity where one group is a minority. Tyranny of the majority becomes a problem in those cases.

By this point it is abundantly clearly that you are not educated on the history of the Hindu-Muslim conflict. Before you further embarrass yourself, have a gander at this page [1] and see the timescales involved.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus

> Partition [between would never have been so hotly contested if this was indeed the case.

> Buddhism and Hinduism have coexisted in relative peace (with a few exceptions) for millennia. No such thing would have happened.

They weren't forced exist under a single political entity where one group was a substantial majority of the total. The civil war in Sri Lanka[1] is the result of trying to do so. The actions[2][3] of the Myanmar government towards people originally from India residing in Burma suggest that your assertion isn't really true.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_Civil_War

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_Indians#Anti-Indian_se...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_Indians#The_Second_Wor...

> By this point it is abundantly clearly that you are not educated on the history of the Hindu-Muslim conflict. Before you further embarrass yourself

First off, your assertion about my knowledge of the subject is false. Second, you're resorting to ad hominems.

> They weren't forced exist under a single political entity where one group was a substantial majority of the total.

See: The Mauryan Empire, various Khmer kings. The Kings were previously Hindu, converted to Buddhism with no conflicts arising from this change. There was no iconoclasm, no discrimination against Hindus, no mass genocide.

> [1]

See the main article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_Sri_Lankan_civi...

In the entire article the word "Buddhism" is mentioned but once.

"Moreover, the British pushed for the dominance of Christianity and the removal of privileging Buddhism in the state government, the main religion followed by the Sinhalese"

> [2] "Indians played a prominent role in the British administration and became the target of Burmese nationalists. Racial animosity toward Indians because of their skin-colour and appearance also played a role. Meanwhile, the price of rice plummeted during the economic depression of the 1930s and the Chettiar from South India, who were prominent moneylenders in the rice belt, began to foreclose on land held by native Burmese."

Literally nothing to do with their religion

> [3] "After he seized power through a military coup in 1962, General Ne Win ordered a large-scale expulsion of Indians. Although many Indians had been living in Burma for generations and had integrated into Burmese society, they became a target for discrimination and oppression by the junta. This, along with a wholesale nationalisation of private ventures in 1964, led to the emigration of over 300,000 ethnic Indians from Burma. Indian-owned businesses as well as Burmese businesses were nationalised due to the so-called "Burmese way to Socialism". Many Indians returned and were given 175 kyat for their trip to India."

The common thread between your assertions are that one side is predominantly Buddhist and the other side is predominantly Hindu, however this does not mean the religion is the source of the conflict. Deeper investigation reveals in fact that the conflict was anything but religious. Nationalistic, linguistic, cultural, yes. But not religious. There isn't any bad blood between Hinduism and Buddhism the way there is between Hinduism and Islam.

Stop trying to manufacture a conflict between Buddhism and Hinduism where none exists. These two religions have coexisted for millenia in relative peace, unlike Islam and literally any other religion.

> Stop trying to manufacture a conflict between Buddhism and Hinduism where none exists.

The point I'm trying to make is that these conflicts are caused by trying to place people of different ethnicities, religions, traditions, etc under the same political entity when they did not consent to it. It has nothing to do with particular religions. I've posted examples of various artificial partitions in previous comments that had nothing to do with religion, yet those borders still exist today. For example, the Durand Line dividing Pakistan and Afghanistan. That has nothing to do with religion, yet the line still exists because of the British. Many of the country borders in the Middle East were decided based on negotiations between France and the UK.

Religion is one of the reasons behind the divisions, but you seem to be focused on that reason to the exclusion of all others. Just like you're overly focused on the partition of Pakistan and India to the exclusion of all other examples that have been presented.

> Religion is one of the reasons behind the divisions

My brother it is literally in the founding documents of Pakistan. There is no other reason. There is no ethnic, cultural, genetic or other such divide between Pakistanis and Indians - we are the same for all intents and purposes except for religion.

> it is literally in the founding documents of Pakistan.

Have you looked into any of the other examples I cited in the last several comments I made? Why do you keep circling back to Pakistan and religion when I literally just told you that there are many other reasons why conflicts exist. For an ethnic Tamil living in the Tamil Nadu state in India, Pakistan isn't even relevant to them. They definitely would be more focused on what's happening in their state and Sri Lanka. Similarly, someone living in the Uttar Pradesh state wouldn't really be following what happens in Sri Lanka.

I'm looking at this from a more holistic point of view and trying to show that there are multiple factors beyond religion. I said religion is one of the reasons, but I didn't say it was the sole reason or primary one. This is referring to many examples of political entities and artificial devisions between them in general. You're not really using the most charitable interpretation of what I'm stating when responding.

> literally just told you that there are many other reasons why conflicts exist

And I agree with you. There are factors beyond religion for conflicts existing. No one is denying that. It is just not so in this case.

> Why do you keep circling back to Pakistan and religion

Presumably because that's what the discussion was about?

I'm not just talking about border disputes, and I don't make this connection lightly. Pakistan was explicitly founded as a country for 'Indian Muslims'. The 1971 war wasn't over a border dispute: West Pakistanis openly genocided and raped[1] Bengali Hindus (and Muslims, for that matter), declaring Bengali women 'war booty', which forced India to step in.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_genocide

As for 'no united India before colonial times': what about the Maurya and Gupta empires, or even the Delhi and Hyderabad sultanates? They governed over a significant portion of modern-day India + Pakistan.

If this is your sort of goalpost, then even relatively homogenous countries like Germany and Italy shouldn't really exist today, given that they only coalesced in the late 19th century.

>>If this is your sort of goalpost, then even relatively homogenous countries like Germany and Italy shouldn't really exist today, given that they only coalesced in the late 19th century.

Yup. The Holy Roman empire, Roman Empire, Byzantines, Greeks, Hellenistic period etc etc.

Over a period of long intervals the geographical boundaries of any and every region on earth expand and shrink. That's just fact of life. And boundaries are basically things written on a piece of paper, where one administration decides to start or end its control. Also what does things like 'new countries' even mean here. It is not like when people make new countries they take they dig up their region from beneath and relocate to Mars. They are just saying they don't wish to live under your political administration.

There is no need to overthink these things beyond a certain point.

> If this is your sort of goalpost, then even relatively homogenous countries like Germany and Italy shouldn't really exist today, given that they only coalesced in the late 19th century.

The strength of modern state propaganda is such that people have developed all kinds of crazy notions about history. The nation state is a modern invention and this involves myth building about the country going back to ancient times.

The French spoken in southern France had much more in common with northern Italian. Its just common sense that it would be so. Modern French was forced down it's subjects just like Urdu in Pakistan, Standardized Mandarin in China and ongoing attempts for Hindu in India.

The state has been elevated to the status of a mythical quasi religious entity.

https://youtu.be/hdUbIlwHRkY

For your edification w.r.t. India : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33556881

A person who equates Mandarin:China :: Hindu:India has no clue about either.

It's a typo: I meant Hindi-India. In any case, I won't be responding to ultra nationalist, religion supremacist, right wing trolls anymore. So you can take your "edifications" and random articles elsewhere.

Sigh; again with the name-calling ad hominem attacks from an anonymous account.

Reminds me of this : https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/17/remain-silent/

Related: You might find the links (the comment is not applicable) i have listed here useful - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33556881

> The Ayodhya mosque-temple riots are another facet of this clash. Western commentators glibly say 'Hindus are anti-Muslim'. The issue in India is so much more nuanced than that; there is bad blood on both sides going back a thousand years. Islam cannot escape from these charges: the religion is fundamentally intolerant of non-Abrahamic ones, especially ones with liberal iconography (like Hinduism and Buddhism).

Bhaktiyar Khilji burned down Nalanda University but there is a town (Bhaktiyarpur) nearby named after him! I guess this can happen only in India. Now if you try to change the name of the town it will be called anti Muslim move.

Recently Aurangabad and Osmanabad in MH were renamed to Sambhajinagar and Dharashiv. So the only people who will oppose are those without understanding of history or those who have not read Aurangzeb's own historian's words and how everything he did was sanctioned by the holy scriptures including killing, subjugating people from other religions

Heh. Should Delhi itself be renamed Indraprastha, then?

Ngl, as a Muslim, Indraprastha is a much cooler name than Delhi.

Shivaji sacked the city of Surat twice. I'm pretty sure you'll find plenty of stuff named after him in and around Surat.

Oh, and the same Shivaji allied with the Muslim Qutub Shah of Golkonda to defend the Deccan homeland from the Northern invaders.

One of the big problems with trying to fix history(which is impossible as past can't be changed) as a means for emotional relief for your current pains due to bad politics is you run in all sorts of contradictory situations, where any principle you take today will be in total opposition to a principle you will have to take days from now.

Wars happen because any political power over any region looks at war as a means to expand administrative control. When such wars happen they have to pull down power centers in conquered lands and rebuild their own ones. In many such contexts the seat of political power to a significant degree rests with the land's religious authority.

I guess if you took a step back to shoot a panoramic perspective of India's history you would find everybody was attacking everybody.

It is also stupid to blame the rulers of the past for making decisions that give you emotional pain in the present.

Who was ruling Surat when Shivaji sacked the city? Shivaji sacked Surat when it was ruled by Mughals. I am not sure why you have failed to take that into account. When Shivaji attacked, did he carry out a general massacre of non-combatant population like the invaders did?

Conflict among Hindu kings were rarely deadly for the conquered population. But conflict with invaders mostly resulted in massacre, loot, and slavery. So they are not the same.

> Bhaktiyar Khilji burned down Nalanda University but there is a town (Bhaktiyarpur) nearby named after him! I guess this can happen only in India

No it is overall. A lot of criminals have street names named after them in the west.

The unfortunate reality is that society is still not evolved enough to judge and pass judgements on certain viewpoints and their impact on global history unless the said criticism is of Catholicism , Christianity or casteism amongst Hindus. I hope there is more open criticisms of ideologies especially in the modern era when people find it a convenient hiding place.

Fun fact: Indian laws are not the same for all religions even today. Muslims have their own version of personal laws closely derived from Sharia. This happens in a 'secular' country

Actually the most widespread form of Buddhism in India at the time was Theravada, and they dont worship gods like other religions do. Buddha vandana is not actual worship, because there is no concept of God in Buddhism, truth is the most basic tenet of Buddhism and God cannot be proven to be true. Same applies to Jains no concept of god.

Buddhist Viharas and Mahaviharas (Universities) like Nalanda, Takshila, Vikram shila were places of learning. So no they were not places of worship like Hindus do in their temples.

As a matter of fact more that 70 Buddhist Universities have been found till date.

Theravada was not the most widespread school at the time, nor were its doctrines yet systematised and formulated into the Vinaya and Abhidhamma the way it's read and practiced today until Buddhaghosa started his work on the Visuddhimagga... his teachings spread and took root in Sri Lanka and were spread to Myanmar, Thailand and parts of South East Asia including parts of Cambodia and Laos.

Theravada as a word itself is relatively new, as the schools at the time had derived from either the Sthavira or the Mahasamgha (Mahasamghika) traditions. Mahayana itself had its roots in Mahasamghika which had started evolving into Kukkutika and its companions and descendents, while the predecessor to Theravada itself was the Sthavira school which then evolved into the Sarvastivada, Puggalavada, Vibhajjavada and its descentants, one of which later evolved into Theravada.

At the time the more dominant schools of thought were the predecessors of what is now the Mahāyāna schools, some of which evolved later into the Tibetan Vajrayāna schools, and some went through the north west of India, through Gandhara and the Kusan empires into Central Asia, into China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam and parts of Cambodia.

There are several academic works that clearly lay out the history and evolution of the Buddhist schools from verifiable sources. I'll update this if and when I get the time to look into my bookshelf later :)

However you are completely right about Buddha Vandanā. This is not worship. In fact there's no worship in the traditional Pāli canon, or the Tripitaka, and in fact Sakhyamuni himself advocated against forms of worship. In Buddhist schools the Vandanā and other forms of such processes are for showing respect to the Tri-Ratna, i.e., the teacher, the dhamma and the sangha, as a means to bring oneself into a conducive frame of mind, to develop the mind.

>There are several academic works that clearly lay out the history and evolution of the Buddhist schools from verifiable sources. I'll update this if and when I get the time to look into my bookshelf later :)

Reminder; please provide the sources/books. You have made some interesting points which i would like to know better.

The Destruction of Nalanda, as chronicled in the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri by the Persian historian Minhaj-i-Siraj written a couple of decades after Bhaktiyar Khilji's death [1]:

"There were two brothers of Farghanah, men of learning, one Nizam-ud-Din, the other Samsam-ud-Din [by name], in the service of Muhammad-i-Bakht-yar; and the author of this book met with Sam-sim-ud-Din at Lakhanawati in the year 641 H., and this account is from him.

These two wise brothers were soldiers among that band of holy warriors when they reached the gateway of the fortress and began the attack, at which time Muhammad-i-Bakht-yar, by the force of his intrepidity, threw himself into the postern of the gateway of the place, and they captured the fortress, and acquired great booty.

The greater number of the inhabitants of that place were Brahmans, and the whole of those Brahmans had their heads shaven; and they were all slain.

There were a great number of books there; and, when all these books came under the observation of the Musalmans, they summoned a number of Hindus that they might give them information respecting the import of those books; but the whole of the Hindus had been killed.

On becoming acquainted [with the contents of those books], it was found that the whole of that fortress and city was a college, and in the Hindu tongue, they call a college Bihar.

When that victory was effected, Muhammad-i-Bakht-yar returned with great booty, and came to the presence of the beneficent Sultan, Kutb-ud-Din, I-bak, and received great honour and distinction."

1. https://archive.org/details/tabaqat-i-nasiri-volume-1/page/5...

> It has been interesting to learn over time that much of this was inherited from Indian scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians (and it has been disquieting to learn what “inherited” is a euphemism for).

This is a fairly standard line in the Indian middle class. However, apart from the decimal system none of the Arabic contributions are of Indian origin, and I am not aware of any philosophical ideas being borrowed at all.

For instance, the key contribution - the invention of algebra is clearly of Arabic origin by Al Khawrizmi.

This is a fairly comprehensive list of Arabic contributions. Which of these (apart from non fractional decimal systems) are if Indian origin? . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_in_the_medieval_Is...

Also, it would be helpful to clarify what was disquieting about the confirmed borrowed idea - the decimal system. Most of the time I only come across vague references with nothing concrete stated.

There is also a lot of speculation about ancient Indian mathematics being borrowed from Sumerian sources (where the first Pythagorean triples were observed etc)

I know there’s a lot of political discussion going on under my post (it’s impressively restrained for how strongly felt the emotions involved are!), but I assure you I’m coming from an uninvolved/uninformed perspective - I’m lower-class white Australian (very Australian - my ancestry traces back to both the convicts and the officers on the prison ships) and I have no idea what the common Indian or Muslim views on this topic are, nor am I trying to pass much judgment on them. I’m also not equipped to debate the subtleties - what was going through my head when I made the comment was “I remember prominent caveats that Edison stole from Tesla when we learned about electricity, that Bell stole from Gray when we learned about telephones, that Watson and Crick stole from their secretary when we learned about DNA, that Grace Hopper was robbed when we learned about computers, etc., but those caveats were missing when we learned about Islam’s contributions to math and science.”

> Which of these (apart from non fractional decimal systems) are if Indian origin?

There is in fact a wikipedia article on the subject https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_influence_on_Islamic_sc...

I am sure that the references there will provide a jumping off point to learn more

indeed hindu sages invented the zero and numerical system, sanskrit etc, that became hindi, then somehow the muslims and christians started calling it hindi-arabic numbers when the script itself is much older and founded by hindus

Wait, so is this the oldest university then?

Because a quick Google says "The Jagiellonian University is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and the 13th oldest university in continuous operation in the world. It is regarded as Poland's most prestigious academic institution."

Ugh...

ChatGPT says "The University of Bologna, located in Bologna, Italy, is considered the oldest university in the world, founded in 1088. It was initially established as a law school, but over time, it grew to include faculties of medicine, philosophy, and theology. The university played a significant role in the development of European higher education, and its model of organization and academic freedom has been emulated by other universities around the world."

This seems to be a contentious topic.

Those sound like universities that are still in operation. Nalanda was destroyed about 800 years ago.

It depends on how you define a university.

Medieval European universities are often considered the first true universities, because they are direct ancestors of modern universities, and their traditions have survived and evolved into what we see today. There were earlier institutes of higher education all around the world (including Europe), but those traditions have not survived.

> It depends on how you define a university.

I think the institution that invented the term probably gets to define it. And that is the University of Bologna.

So what's their definition?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University

Language doesn't work that way.

Won't that imply that "humans" didn't exist until the term "human" was invented?

a term defined is different from a thing existing.

is it though?! "language is the house of being"

A term by any other name would still smell as sweet as ... ;)

That might in fact be true.

If we define humans as having a sufficiently sophisticated language, and using a term to reference one's entire species is characteristic of that, then at a stretch we could define the first human being as the child of proto-humans who first invented this linguistic concept.

Point taken :)

What if "human" would be replaced by "ape"?

Sure. There are several similar arguments made in this thread. Such as, before the word "run" was first used, we could only walk quickly.

The logic of these arguments is fine. I just noticed a way to nit-pick your implementation of it.

> If we define humans as having a sufficiently sophisticated language

That would be hard to object to.

> and using a term to reference one's entire species is characteristic of that

But this is easy to object to. People can easily do without a term for the species; it's more common to use tribal names, so that a contrast is drawn between different groups of humans (as opposed to between humans and animals, or humans and gods).

Terms for humans as a species come along pretty quickly, but they're not universal.

So what about Bachelor and Baccalaureate both being words that have their pre-Latin roots in Arabic: Bihaqq Al-riwayatt (“the right to restate the learning to somebody else“).

Or the fact that ceremonial graduation garb in the EU and US, from the robes to the caps, is also based in Arab tradition.

The medieval Enlightenment and subsequent Renaissance was huge for Europe, yes, but just as important to realize today is that a lot of it was taking heavy inspiration from other cultures and regions and “Europeanizing” it and then calling it their own (I.E. a cultural exchange)

That link you gave for Bihaqq Al-riwayatt was very interesting but not conclusive imho.

> Or the fact

Muslims are just as capable as Christians at promoting theories with very little evidence to support their arguments.

Both of your assertions are unproven theories, with the evidence against them: bachelor originally meant a young knight who followed another (though the etymology before that is uncertain), and academic robes derive from similar (European) mediaeval clerical and secular clothing.

There's a scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where the father says that the etymology of all English words can be traced back to Greek[1]. When someone challenges him with the word "Kimono," he pauses for a second, and then concocts a semi-plausible sounding explanation about how the word evolved from a Greek word.

A comedy, but I think it does reflect how a lot of people can be so impressed by their own culture that they end up spinning fictional narratives about it. For example, I was surprised to find that a common myth among Germans was that the USA almost had German become its official language, and German only lost out by a single vote.

Pride in one's culture isn't a bad thing, but too much of it can definitely lead people to believe some very questionable claims.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXt0VCPKfQ4

> There's a scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding

And there is linguistics, a science that studies language including etymology.

I mean, I don’t think anyone here doubts that linguistics exists. The point was rather that fake etymologies also exist, and can be extremely common. As other replies have noted, it doesn't look like there's evidence that the word "Baccalaureate" comes from the Arabic "Bihaqq Al-riwayatt," and there seems to be a high likelihood that this is a fake etymology.

The Oxford English Dictionary even points out the fake etymology for bachelor meaning a laurel wreath, and says it's just an old pun.

> For example, I was surprised to find that a common myth among Germans was that the USA almost had German become its official language, and German only lost out by a single vote.

That myth does exist, but I do not think that it is a belief commonly held by Germans (i.e. people living in Germany, not referring to those US citizens tracing their heritage to the Fatherland here). I heard about it only long after crossing the pond. I rather think it's spread by people interested in German language/German culture albeit living in the USA. And I don't think anyone takes it too seriously.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-german-vote/

EDIT: I stand corrected: it's not only known in Germany, but was apparently first spread there in 1847: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhlenberg-Legende

I assumed it was common because I've run into different Germans who brought up the myth to me, and were surprised I didn't know about it (treating it as common knowledge). But it's certainly possible the people I've known aren't a great representation of the general population.

Funny I heard the same thing about the US but it was French that lost by one vote.

True, but let me give you a counterexample. In India ,a lot of 'modern' liberal historians promote hating own culture, history and the roots denigrating Hinduism and its scriptures as origin of all things bad such as casteism. This has surprisingly led a lot of neutral folks more to take a tougher stance of defending own culture even though we do not necessarily practice it to the letter like some groups.

Battle of ideologies, groups, regions and culture is as old as history and does not seem like it will ever completely die down. We need a more hybrid understanding where we evolve with time and apply modern lens to historical ideas carefully. Without ideological pride in Christianity, white superiority I doubt most of the European countries would've had been the colonizing superpowers they became controlling most of the world.

> In India, a lot of 'modern' liberal historians promote hating [their] own culture, history and [roots,] denigrating Hinduism and its scriptures as [the] origin of all things bad

Change "Hinduism" into some other word and you have a pretty general description of liberal historians in most Western countries.

This might be an imperialist perspective, but I'm guessing India imported this cultural tradition from them. :/

> So what about Bachelor and Baccalaureate both being words that have their pre-Latin roots in Arabic

What evidence do you have for this extraordinary claim?

> Or the fact that ceremonial graduation garb in the EU and US, from the robes to the caps, is also based in Arab tradition.

This is also an unfounded claim. University garb is derived from monstic order garb, which in turn is from early Nicean period monk tradition. This long predates your source.

Wiktionary states the following for "baccalaureate":

From French baccalauréat, from Medieval Latin baccalaureatus, from Latin baccalaureus, an alteration of baccalārius (“young man aspiring to knighthood”), to resemble bacca lauri (“laurel berry”) (the ancient symbol of victory). Compare bachelor.

For "baccalaureus":

Alteration of baccalārius, influenced (by folk etymology) by Latin bacca ("berry") and laurea ("laurel") due to the fact that graduates wore laurel crowns filled with berries in order to represent the fruit of their study. Perhaps of Celtic origin, from Gaulish *bakalakos, itself borrowed from Latin baculum (“stick”).[1]

No Arabic roots here.

Folks on HN sometimes have very unusual beliefs but that was definitely eyebrow raising.

Yeah, it is ridiculous to believe "baccalaureate" could have originated from "one who may teach others". It is far more plausible that this word originated from "stick" or "berry".

Ah, so the robes are Turkish, then?

> Or the fact that ceremonial graduation garb in the EU and US, from the robes to the caps, is also based in Arab tradition.

This particular "fact" is in error unless you believe Medieval Christian monks copied Arabic dress. Academic dress in the US derives from Oxford and Cambridge, which was developed from extremely common clerical garb of the Middle Ages. Arabic dress is not necessarily black, but also white and dyed colors, are shaped differently than academic dress and have a trim never seen in academic dress. The two types of dress have origins distinct from each other. They may both belong to a larger category of robes, but the similarity ends there.

Usually the medieval European universities are distinguished by not being primarily religious institutions, although there have been objections to this definition. Otherwise, several older madrasas remain in operation, the oldest being the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco (847), which is listed as the world's oldest university by e.g. the Guinness Book of World Records:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_al-Qarawiyyin

Surprisingly, there are some schools for adolescents in England which are even older, the oldest dating to 597:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King%27s_School,_Canterbur...

That the oldest continuously operating institutions in the world are mostly in England (schools), Japan (hotels) and the desert mountains of North Africa (madrasas and St. Catherine's Monastery) is likely a consequence of "splendid isolation". Nobody is quite sure how old the government of Haida Gwaii is.

Continuous operation is a key word--which indeed apparently applies the the University of Bologna--and according to Wikipedia it is the oldest continuously operating university. (It's apparently either 1088 or 1180-90 depending on your criteria--just a few years earlier than Oxford with the same criteria).

ADDED: As others note "university" is also a key word though college would probably also serve.

You may have gotten it confused it for a recently created university by the same name. Just putting it out there.

https://nalandauniv.edu.in/

Are we fixated on the word "University"?

Irrespective of the word, it is the knowledge that was taught in those places.

Sorry about that, it is indeed a bias I have

Certainly this was a University, even metallurgy lab has been found in Nalanda. Many chinese Scholars use to come to Nalanda and Study, we know this because of their notes and their day to day life in the university. Xuanzang lived in Nalanda for about 15 yrs and studies and he noted a lot of things in his notes. He even explains about Brushing the teeth and morning cleansing rituals. Like how too do bowel and clean the hands. How to use the toilet etc. And when he returned he took bak 10000 Books back with him.

It is amazing it taught 10,000 students at once, but having 10 million books … at times when only handwritten books existed?!? Currently Indian National Library has 2.2 million books and British library has > 13 million. Something is misquoted I guess.

Or they're taking an ancient figure at face value, which nine times out of ten end up being grossly exaggerated.

I wouldn't take its numbers seriously. It's a travel article by someone who thinks Ashoka lived in the 3rd century CE instead of BCE. May not have gone through any editorial review or fact check.

I think what the author is calling book maybe a manuscript?

I think they are counting even five written pages as a unique book?

So maybe essays are also being counted as books.

It is still an unrealistically high number. I think it is just as exaggerated as the "knowledge" of "medicine" and "mathematics" that was taught at what was just a crazy indoctrination center for a particular brand of old-fashioned superstition.

Not really.

Medicine in those times was quite standardized and effective.

There was not scientific method involved.

And the philosophy and mathematics was quite advanced.

I'm not a historian. But "book" sometimes meant something much shorter in the past, at least in the West. Euclid's Elements is organized as "13 books" ... but it's one "book" today even with massive commentary included. Possibly that might account for one order of magnitude or so.

I went to the university in Salamanca Spain, founded 1218.

There were a lot of old buildings, but nowhere was there a Salamanca U t-shirt as a souvenir (and FYI, the Rome University sweatshirts aren't official--the biz school sells some polos, but that's it).

Exactly. The BBC must show us a Nalanda U hoodie, with a copyrighted logo, or else abandon these wild claims! Did this so-called 'university' even have a lacrosse team??

Irony notice: this comment contains irony.

Uh I don´t know what this has to do with the rest of the discussion but... The University sells some official swag through their "Mercatus" store, including clothing, and in fact in recent years had a lot of it related to the 800th aniversary.

But it also tolerates every souvenir shop in the town selling shirts and hoodies showing the university seal, which I guess makes them kind of "semi-official". Many students wear them.

Anyone curious can enter "Rua Mayor, Salamanca" in Street View and look at the front of every other shop in that street...

It was before that. Maybe they got my strongly worded comment card and took it to heart.

It's weird when people talk about Islamic contribution when the fact is that Islamic invaders burnt Nalanda university. It was the beginning of dark ages for India. Not the only institution to be destroyed. It was accompanied by ethnic cleansing by invaders that sent the whole education system into an abyss.

It is just two years younger than the University of Constantinople, established in AD 425 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Constantinople

9 million books and 10k students - Unrealistic.

Why? Books need not be unique books. There could be variations of the same book. For example, many books / scriptures were still being reconciled as recently as 100 years back and there are so many versions of ramayana available from one corner of Asia to another corner, that I would expect a respectable university to try to look at the variations and do some kind of lineage analysis. And also book may not imply a 1000 page book, it could also mean an 8 page manuscript.

Does 9 million sound big, sure? But in the absence of other information, maybe we can debate the quantum of overstatement rather than just assuming that since we can't explain it, everything related to it may be fake.

And last point, maybe there were 9 million books. What's a university if it does not have more than one book per student especially if they built that library over 700 years. Maybe each student had an annual journal which is classified as a book.

Yale has 15k students and its library has a collection of 15 million.

Cornell has 25k students and 10 million books.

Most of Cornell's books cost between $5 and, say, $200. They represent between less than an hour and a day's labour.

Copying a book in mediaeval times took months, so 9 million is an incredible amount of work. Other sources put the number of books in the low hundreds of thousands.

How many of the books that Yale and Cornell have are hand-written on hand-produced paper and manually bound codexes?

The printing press is kind of a big deal.

The printing press allows magnitudes greater than that but it doesn't limit the number that can be written by hand, especially over hundreds of years, at an institute dedicated to study.

Copy out a short novel, by hand, using a quill pen, and then decide what the limit is for handwritten books.

By the way, you also need to make the quills, ink and paper by hand, and work with natural light and no eyeglasses.

Why is the chosen length a short novel? Books range from a few pages to hundreds of pages.

If we make some unlikely assumptions - that there were 10,000 students attending Nalanda every year from its foundation to its destruction, and that each student wrote for only 1 hour a day, 5 days a week for 40 weeks of the year, that gives us 2,000,000 hours of writing. Over 763 years that is 1,526,000,000 hours.

There were 2000 teachers at Nalanda, that's 400,000 more hours per year, 305,200,000 hours over the course of Nalanda's existence.

The population of India in 1000 AD is estimated at anywhere from 75 million to 200 million. Not all the students would have to write all the books as there was another university nearby that was also destroyed by Muslim invaders called Takshashila[2] which would've also housed and produced books, some of which no doubt made their way to Nalanda, and show that books weren't only produced in one part of ancient India, and that there was a large enough population to support a book "industry" with things like quills and ink (they actually used a knife with palm leaves that could last hundreds of years[3]), let alone writers.

Add to that, what are some of the students going to be doing once they graduate? Writing books. As that last link says:

> Hindu temples often served as centers where ancient manuscripts were routinely used for learning and where the texts were copied when they wore out. In South India, temples and associated mutts served custodial functions, and a large number of manuscripts on Hindu philosophy, poetry, grammar and other subjects were written, multiplied and preserved inside the temples. Archaeological and epigraphical evidence indicates existence of libraries called Sarasvati-bhandara, dated possibly to early 12th-century and employing librarians, attached to Hindu temples. Palm leaf manuscripts were also preserved inside Jain temples and in Buddhist monasteries.

That is all to ignore that movable type printing was invented in China[4] before Nalanda was sacked, and that scholars from all over Asia went back and forth from Nalanda sharing texts. You might have heard of the Journey to the West, which was inspired by an actual journey that was written down in a book called Great Tang Records on the Western Regions[5]. In it, Nalanda is mentioned because Xuanzang, the author, visited there. That book took 2 people to produce, and is described as:

> The book contains more than 120,000 Chinese characters and is divided into twelve volumes

That's in 646 AD. I think you underestimate the abilities of the people of that time to produce books.

[1] https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/33640/what-was-t...

[2] https://www.britannica.com/place/Taxila

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm-leaf_manuscript

[4] https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/printing-press

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Tang_Records_on_the_West...

How was Taksashila (where my cousins live today by the way) destroyed by Muslim invaders when it happened before Islam existed? Don’t you mean the Huns, as your own cited source of Britannica says? See my other comment in this thread.

cf. “Decline” in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxila#History

>The White Huns and Alchon Huns swept over Gandhāra and Punjab around 470 CE, causing widespread devastation and destruction of Taxila's famous Buddhist monasteries and stupas, a blow from which the city would never recover. From 500 CE to 540 CE, the city languished [54] after falling under the control of the Hunnic Empire ruled by Mihirakula. A patron of Hindu Shaivism,[55] Mihirakula presided over some destruction of Buddhist sites and monasteries across northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent.

You are of course, correct, an egregious error on my part.

Yes, a big deal that existed for around two hundred years before the founding of Nalanda University. I'd assume the majority of their texts to be the product of xylography; movable type and book binding are not prerequisites for mass-produced text.

Oftentimes the ancient world did not distinguish between manuscripts of a couple pages and books. If that number is not made up then that must be what’s happening here.

Exaggeration is an integral part of such stories. It definitely didn't take 3 months to burn. But even if it was 9 million pages, still impressive and important.

I think they are considering even 5 written pages as a "book"?

Bare with me here:

Why is it that articles need to start with lines like

> "The winter morning was cloaked in thick fog..."

and postpone the actual information pertaining to the title? Instead, we have to sift through irrelevant story-like content to get to the meat of the information and facts.

Will one promise of tools like ChatGPT and their successors be to summarize-away this fluff?

> Bare with me here:

Most people would pay money to ensure I don't.

> Instead, we have to sift through irrelevant story-like content to get to the meat of the information and facts.

Because journalists are frustrated novelists, and editors think the "human interest" angle sells.

> editors think the "human interest" angle sells.

does it not?

When "human interest" means "keep scrolling to find the content while you look over our ads" then that angle gets less and less meaningful.

I found it ironic that OP started complaining about the author’s writing style by urging us to bare it all!

I had the same reaction. I read the first line of the article and instantly knew I didn’t have the patience to find the content implied by the title. There have been discussions here about this problem for recipe sites especially. What I wonder is whether the majority of their readers (non HN people) also feel annoyed by this.

It's a travelogue, not a Wikipedia article. People read it for the fluff and prose.

It's crazy to see the jingoistic Indian comments here, and anti-Muslim sentiment. Why attempt to rewrite history just to show the Hindu people were capable? Let's appreciate both their achievements

Can you clarify how is history being rewritten here? All I see is a discussion of historical events to the best extent possible using available data. Everything can be googled for references. Are you discrediting the BBC? And where is the anti-Muslim sentiment? I reckon your victim complex is the real problem here. I suggest reading more rather than falling for cheap simplistic narratives that are widely available for consumption.

It is sad how much of the knowledge was destroyed due to ideology and religious fanaticism. I have a book here next to me with the title "Vedic Mathematics". The book is based of ancient Indian text. Reading the preface of the book it is clear that what is written in the book is just a small portion of a very large volume of work that was lost. It is sad that so much advance knowledge was lost.

Had it been still there, we would have learnt so much about ancient knowledge.. also amazed to know how big it was at those times. When Afghan invader burnt it, it took 3 months

>> The campus was so vast that the fire set on by the attackersis said to have burned for three months.

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