Bakhtiyar Khalji’s raid on Bihar and the sack of Odantapuri

01Minhaj’s account

Minhaj-i-Siraj heard the story from one of the men who took part. Bakhtiyar, he writes, attacked a fortified place with two hundred horsemen. Most of its inhabitants were Brahmans with shaven heads, and they were all killed. Afterwards the raiders found a great number of books, and when they sought someone to explain them, they learned that the whole place was a college, called in the Hindi tongue vihar. The monks were Buddhist, and the place is identified with Odantapuri.

02Nalanda and Vikramashila

The same years saw the ruin of Vikramashila and the decline of Nalanda. The Tibetan monk Dharmasvamin, who visited Nalanda in 1235, found most of its buildings damaged and deserted and an aged teacher, Rahula Shribhadra, still instructing a few students in hiding. The province took its name, Bihar, from the vihara Bakhtiyar destroyed. From Bihar he went on to strike the Sena capital at Nadia and then, in 1206, met his own end in Kamarupa.

Place · 5th century CE, Kumaragupta I of the GuptasNalanda MahaviharaFor some seven centuries the greatest seat of learning in Asia, with thousands of monks and teachers, libraries and royal grants from Kanauj to Sumatra. It was ruined in the raids on Bihar around 1200 and its brick courts were dug out from 1915.Read →