The Fall of a Great University

By the late 12th century, Nalanda no longer stood under the protection it once

enjoyed. Northern India was politically fragmented, and military raids had become common.

Around 1193 CE, a Turkic military commander named Bakhtiyar Khilji led a raid through

the region. Contemporary accounts suggest that his forces encountered Nalanda unexpectedly.

The university was not fortified like a city or palace. It was a place of scholars,

monks, and students. Nalanda's libraries, known collectively as the Dharmaganja,

contained hundreds of thousands of manuscripts accumulated over centuries. During the attack,

these libraries were set on fire. Later chroniclers recorded that the fires burned for