The Destruction of Nalanda, by Jayant Kashyap

The End of the Buddhist Monks, A.D. 1193 from Hutchinson's Story of the Nations.

The Destruction of Nalanda

below a high, an almost-white moon
a man is unusually awake

this unusual night also observes a
silhouette, an uncanny motion

what belongs next to the lonely sight is a
streak of flames — the library that

has twice been destroyed and twice
rebuilt makes love with fire that shores higher

than itself in a city that yet only
hallucinates in the arms of night save

for a man who doesn't know of the
walls but only fire, sees only flames

and jets of smoke, yet to recover from
shock so as to awaken the people

thither — what happened before this
something incomprehensible:

a turk fell ill

amid these: he was treated by
someone who was not what he was

Nalanda wouldn't have suffered another time,
to never again breathe as twice earlier it did,

had he: not have been resurrected,
or been a little thankful --

jealousy took the toll, it was three
months until each page had burnt itself alive

— a slaughter of cultures


Note: The Nalanda University in Bihar was burnt for the third time in A.D. 1193 by the Turkish ruler Bakhtiyar Khilji. It took three whole months for the 9 million manuscripts stored there to burn.

Jayant Kashyap

Jayant Kashyap's poems have been published widely, including in StepAway and Rigorous magazines; his debut chapbook comes later this year by NY-based Clare Songbirds Publishing House. He's also the founding editor of India-based Bold + Italic e-magazine alongwith a friend of his. Find him at https://onlyhumane.wordpress.com/