THESE findings say much more than their physical shape and size and stated purpose. They should be considered symbols and signatures of a glorious history whose time-line is difficult to be established authentically. These findings -- and countless others in the category -- represent a civilisation of immense merit and substance that added tremendous value to the advance of humanity to a greater refinement.

Thanks to the relentless efforts of at least four generations of historians, researchers, scholars and explorers of Indic culture and tradition, the world now knows a lot of detail of the Indic civilisation traces of whose influence can be seen all over the world. The world now knows definitively that the ancient civilisation of India was rich in every which the way one can think of -- science, literature, architecture, religion, philosophy, art -- visual and performing, agriculture, industry, education, cosmology, oceanography ...!

The established time-line of the history of Nalanda says that a great institution flourished there from the 3rd century BCE to the 13th century CE (which means about 1,600 years). And when such an institution of excellence comes into existence, it indicates that it is an outcome of a long-term and dedicated work that may span across long periods of time. In other words, when such an institution takes shape, it is because a lot of thought goes into its conception and creation. When a society is capable of harbouring such a high-calibre thought, it is obviously advanced enough with people of that kind of depth, maturity, knowledge-base and knowledge-spread.

This is the meaning of the Nalanda metaphor. It is common knowledge that when foreign invaders attacked the famous Nalanda University, they set on fire countless lakhs of manuscripts of great books put together in the libraries there. That fire was believed to be burning in full flame for as much as six months. In those days when the science and technology of printing was not known to man, all books were written by hand. Each book took years and years of hard work to be completed. It was obvious that those lakhs of books in the Nalanda University library were the outcome of lifetime of efforts involving those many lakhs of people over centuries. This means, in the Indian society of those ancient times, countless lakhs of people were engaged in the intellectual industry of producing books -- whose enormity is difficult for us to fathom today. Nalanda, thus, represents to us today -- as it did then -- the epitome` of a highly cultured civilisation that embodied a confluence of science and art.

Votive stupas -- two of which have been found at the Nalanda Mahavihara site -- represented, again, a fine culture in which people expressed gratitude to the Divine for the fulfilment of their wishes and vows. In turn, such stupas went on to motivate others to follow the social tradition of making vows on important issues and working hard to fulfill those. In those days when collective cultural refinement had peaked to now-unimaginable height, every achievement was converted into a permanent memory by creating structures of art and architecture. The miniature votive stupas are such structures.

Nalanda is just one of the countless such sites of a particular time-segment that represented well over 2,500 years, to say the least. It is a metaphor of greatness of the Indic civilisation that flourished over countless thousands (may be lakhs) of years. Nalanda, thus, may be treated as one of the peaks of the Indic civilisation in later years. In historical time-line, Nalanda, actually, happened much later -- possibly after passage of countless thousands of years of existence and prevalence of a fine culture. Nalanda may be treated as one of the sad points in Indic history suggesting the beginning of certain unfortunate decay of India’s prowess.

It was after the destruction of Nalanda that the invaders started somewhat succeeding in their effort to loot the land and destroy the cultural fabric of the nation whose geographical spread, too, was at least four times bigger than today’s India. The Nalanda metaphor has, thus, to be deciphered from several such stand-points. Understanding this metaphor correctly is learning the correct history of India.