Q1.
Writing some 60 years after Bakhtiyār Khiljī’s campaign through Bihar, the historian Minhaj al-Siraj Jūzjānī, recorded in his Tabakāt-i-Nāsirī how Bakhtiyar’s forces captured a ‘fortress’ and “acquired great booty.” He adds, “The greater number of the inhabitants of that place were Brāhmans, and all those Brāhmans had their heads shaven; and they were all slain. There were a great number of books there. … It was found that the whole of that fortress and city was a college, and in [their] tongue, they call a college bihār.” Remembering the meaning of vihāra and noting that Nālandā was known in ancient inscriptions as ‘Nālandā Mahāvihāra’, can you find two more clues in the above passage to identify the ‘fortress’ near the Nālandā university? (Hint: Who do you think these ‘Brāhmans’ actually were?)
Answer
The ‘fortress’ was not a fort at all — it was a Buddhist monastery-university, almost certainly a mahāvihāra of the Nālandā region. The word bihār in the last line is Jūzjānī’s rendering of vihāra, a Buddhist monastery, and Nālandā’s own name in ancient inscriptions was Nālandā Mahāvihāra. Beyond that word, the passage gives two further clues.
| Clue in the passage | What it really tells us |
|---|---|
| Clue 1 — “all those Brāhmans had their heads shaven” | Brahmins did not shave their heads; Buddhist monks did, as part of their ordination. Jūzjānī, a foreigner unfamiliar with Indian religions, simply used the only word he knew for Indian religious men. The shaven heads identify the inhabitants as monks, and the place as a monastery |
| Clue 2 — “There were a great number of books there” | A fortress holds soldiers, weapons and grain, not a great number of books. A building full of manuscripts is a library, and a library that size belongs to a teaching institution — which the passage itself then confirms: “the whole of that fortress and city was a college” |
A third clue, if you want one: the phrase “the whole of that fortress and city” — the walled complex was not one building but a campus large enough to be called a city. That fits Nālandā, whose library alone was “spread over three multi-storey buildings” and “contained lakhs of manuscripts”.
Why the mistake happened, and why it matters: Jūzjānī wrote about 60 years after the event, in Persian, about a country and religions he did not know. He saw high walls and called it a fortress; he saw religious men and called them Brahmins. Reading a source like this means separating what the writer saw from what he assumed. What he saw — shaven heads, books, a walled college called bihār — is exactly what identifies the place. What he assumed — that it was a fort held by Brahmins — is what misleads.
Did you know? The chapter adds that the province of Bihar takes its name from this very word, vihāra — the land was so full of monasteries that it was named after them.