Nalanda: The university that changed the world (2023) | Hacker News Reader

Nalanda: The university that changed the world (2023)

bbc.com

78 pointspriyankanath25 comments

The article is great but should have covered some of the other universities across the subcontinent: Nalanda, Vikramshila, Takshila etc were the ancient world's equivalent of Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, Harvard.

Over 100 Buddhist universities have been found across India Pakistan Bangladesh Afghanistan etc .. How many do you think they should cover? Also several Mahaviharas exist which are now serving as X-ishwara temples, where votive stupas are being worshipped as Shivas ling (phallus). The whole of India was a major buddhist educational hub. Nalanda was the most famous because several chinese travellers have studied in it, which makes it very important. As there notes is our source to determine Indias Buddhist past.

I want to respond regarding the lingam statement

Like we can save data on a SD card, people tried to save positivity in a object, so that it can be shared with everyone, ling/lingam is made from a particular material and have a particular shape, the shape its just an oval, like a planets orbit around its star, even if you observe Buddhist stupa is bigger version of the same..

There are elaborate processes of how to install positivity in that, prana pratista or mantra pratista

I have no scientific data on how to save positivity in an object , As a Vipassana meditator I feel my meditation session is very smooth when sitting around few Linga

Ling in Sanskrit refers to a thing, like female and male are referred to as Stri-Ling (woman kind, not women phallus) and Purusha-Ling(man kind)...

So Shiv-Ling mean It is representation of Shiva or what ever

Lingam is not a representation it is indeed the phallus or penis that was severed by Indra. According to Brahminical stories. Please educate yourself. Multiple jyotirling apparently are the various fallen pieces of the penis of Shiva according to the Brahman.

Any evidence of the linga claim.

As you may know the story Shivas Phallus was cut by Indra, and now Hindus Worship the fallen penis of their deity from puranas being cut by another deity of the vedas. What kind of person would write such stories and then go ahead and worship the fallen penis of its god? No respect for its own deity? Because its not their deity. Brahman exist purely for the donations to temples. If people stop giving donations Brahman will occupy something else for donations.

Buddhist caves with votive stupa: https://www.bandhavgarh-national-park.com/blog/buddhist-cave...

Nigallakonda https://www.alamy.com/view-of-ruin-of-ancient-group-of-stupa...

Votive stupas with faces of make and female bodhisattvas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingam#/media/File:4_Buddha_an... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/1_Buddha...

Why Buddhas face on this claimed shivalinga: https://www.nortonsimon.org/art/detail/F.1972.11.2.S

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukhalinga#/media/File:Five_He... https://www.civilsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/macin... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukhalinga#/media/File:Five_He... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/025_Shiv...

Claimed as shivalinga, can you explain why the buddhas hand mudra: https://static.india.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Nepal-1....

Who are these characters 2 males and one female? https://i.pinimg.com/736x/08/00/fc/0800fc34453462c46a78dc99f...

Is this shivas face on his own phallus? https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/38242

Broken votive stupa at the same Kapilvastu buddhist site : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Shiva_Li...

Large Stupas , Dhamek Stupa

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Dhamekh_...

Stupas on teh Sanchi Hill: https://asearchformore.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/stupas-on-th...

Other votive stupas: https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2006AM4892/full/1400...

https://www.vajiramias.com/current-affairs/what-is-a-votive-...

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/votive-stupas-in-bhaja-cav...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenyadri#/media/File:Lenyadri_...

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/votive-stupas-in-bhaja-cav...

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ypB5i7VGArQ/oar2.jpg

https://youtu.be/ypB5i7VGArQ

https://www.alamy.com/votive-stupa-with-four-buddhas-culture...

Votive stupas inside Ranpur Buddhist caves are being claimed as shivas phallus: https://youtu.be/3vzGBxjG9E8

Forced occupation of the cave by claiming a wall to be Ganesha: https://youtu.be/ypB5i7VGArQ

Bhadrakali Temple Itkhori stupa worshipped as shivalinga: https://youtu.be/O22bc_UIxt0

Tara devi converted to Hindu godess: https://youtu.be/6-FHiEA--x4

The list goes on and on because brahman Dharma (Hinduism) had no sculpture art, it is banned in it. India is full of buddhist art with votive stupas having multiple faces of either Buddha or Bodhisattvas. Brahminism doesnt have sculpture infact it is banned in many texts, nor do they have any description of their gods. Shiva doesnt even exist in Vedas. The character Rudra being claimed as Shiva in Vedas is the god of Thunder storms in vedas. Most of all if it is such an important god why cut write a story of its penis cut by another lowly god of the vedas? The sculpture speaks for itself.

This is a list of disrespectful, disconnected mix of facts and fictions which has flimsy grounding in reality and doesn’t address the main question I was asking, but I will engage in good faith.

https://theprint.in/opinion/western-reading-of-shivalingam-a...

> As you may know the story Shivas Phallus was cut by Indra, and now Hindus Worship the fallen penis of their deity from puranas being cut by another deity of the vedas. What kind of person would write such stories and then go ahead and worship the fallen penis of its god?

No normal Hindu knows or believes in this story. This is the first I have heard of it. Remember, only Vedas/Upanishads/Gita count as core scripture. Also, any religion will have a lot of conflicting stories that neither the lay populace nor scholars consider seriously.

> Why Buddhas face on this claimed shivalinga

How? I didn't know you had a photo of Buddha to say that is Buddha's face. Also, why does Buddha have three faces? Wasn't he human? (Tip: most ancient statues look alike facially)

> Claimed as shivalinga, can you explain why the buddhas hand mudra

Those mudras predate Buddha's birth by centuries.

> Is this shivas face on his own phallus? https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/38242

No, Hindu considers the lingam to be a real phallus. I guess the mind sees what it wants to see. I don't understand how you went to eating a phallus from the image. Not every cylinder is a phallus.

Hinduism is fluid due to accommodating scientific inquiry, I will let Sagan and Schopenhauer do the talking here. Because of this scientific/open nature, it has to be fluid. You will see names and stories change depending on current culture, language, events as stories and names are merely symbolic (Rudra -> Shiva is not the damning attack you think it is).

> “The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.”

― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

> "Thus originated in the primitive ancestors of the Brahmans, the Rishis, the almost superhuman conceptions which were afterwards set down in the Upanishads of the Vedas."

> schopenhauer

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/601581-the-hindu-religion-i...

https://deeshaa.org/2021/01/02/schopenhauer-on-the-upanishad...

Also, I am not going to respond to YouTube videos by cranks. I was hoping someone will respond with at least one peer reviewed article but ha ha I was being too optimistic lol.

> Vikramshila

I saw this spelling somewhere before - why do some people use it instead of the more official Vikramashila (Vikramaśilā)?

Because North Indians drop the trailing schwa (including in parts of compound woods). Annoyingly enough, a lot of them will insist you’re pronouncing it “wrong” if you don’t drop the schwa in your own pronunciation.

This explains why I had an Indian colleague whose name ended in an "a" that he didn't pronounce. I always wondered why romanize it with a silent letter.

Hindi pronunciation of Sanskrit words makes it so (what's called schwa deletion).

In Hindi and some other Indian languages, it is common to drop the last short “a” of a Sanskrit word, hence Ram for Rama, Vikram for Vikrama, etc.

Also, Taxila/Takshila here in Sanskrit is तक्षशिला (takṣaśilā).

Since 2013 and onwards, there is a spread of disputed information that Turkic Muslim Conquerors in 1190 burnt down Nalanda University. This was disputed by a historian on x.com: https://x.com/tishasaroyan/status/1719220845502173378?s=46&t...

My research into this traces the earliest mention of Bakhtiyar Khalji attacking Nalanda to be in a book published in 2002 that cites evidence obtained in 2001. https://vvgnli.gov.in/sites/default/files/Golden%20Age%20to%...

For Hindi speakers, there is a video disputing the details of Nalanda being burnt by Khalji. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9PZ3wyX5AY. English Transcript is available.

Overall premise of the video is that Nalanda's decline was over several years and could have been led from house fires using open lamps.

Discussed at the time (of the article):

Nalanda University flourished for more than seven centuries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35009063 - March 2023 (265 comments)

Bogus article, if Guptas were so called hindu why were they not building any Brahmanical Temple or University? Why not a single Brahman University ever been found. There are several such gaps in Indian history, it needs to be relooked at with evidence.

Brahmin education system was exclusive to Brahmin and Kshatriyas.

Vedas were taught only to Brahmin males for most of history. And higher philosophy such as Advaita Vedanta were taught only to Brahmins.

There exist many Brahminical schools in India even today where you can gain admission only if you are born to a Brahmin family.

Buddhists paid no attention to caste, and after long interview and/or written tests, people from any caste could gain entrance to Buddhist higher education institutions.

And many Hindu kings, not only Guptas, nurtured and sponsored Buddhist higher ed. institutes and higher officials of their administrations almost always were exclusively gradutes of such institutions.

Evidence of schools universities and exietnce of the brahman and its language and literature at the time?

The Guptas built plenty of Hindu temples. You should stop reading weird neo-Buddhist pop history.

Evidence of the word hindu or brahman and that the temple is built for the Brahman of Hindu ? Any inscription ? Claims arent facts.

1. https://www.worldhistory.org/Gupta_Architecture/#:~:text=CC%....

2. The Hindu-Buddhist schism is a recent one and partly enlarged due to political reasons. Buddhism was considered another atheist school within Sanatana Dharma.

https://amp.scroll.in/article/1058543/the-idea-that-buddhism...

What is Hindu Buddhist? Why does Brahman seek evidence for its existence in Buddhist Evidence? This happens only when the other is the illegal occupier such as Hagia Sophia.

> Why does Brahman seek evidence for its existence in Buddhist Evidence?

What? The concept of Brahman predates Buddha by hundreds - thousands of years.

The Vedas are older than Buddha by 1-2 thousand years. Not sure what you mean here unless you are implying time travel.

Of course, I am going by standard scientific/historic dating and not relying on scriptures like you seem to do continuously through this thread.

  1. Oldest Vedas: ~2000 BC
  2. Latest Veda: ~900 BC
  3. Buddha born: 563 BC

> This happens only when the other is the illegal occupier such as Hagia Sophia.

What do you mean?

https://www.history.com/topics/landmarks/angkor-wat#:~:text=....

> Originally dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu, Angkor Wat became a Buddhist temple by the end of the 12th century.

Evidence of this claim? Any inscription , Manuscript anything of Brahman Religion ?

I've been reading my way through the Visuddhimagga so this story is a pleasant surprise!

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