Maya of Time

Maya (n): illusion. Also me, your time traveler.
I walk into India's past and film what I find.
Full episodes on YouTube ↓

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

Our Nalanda episode looks like a vlog filmed in 640 AD. It isn't guesswork. There is an excavated site, two eyewitnesses who actually studied there, and one very contested chronicle. Here is what rests on what. https://t.co/7J4dcmhJGk

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@anujdhar Thank you, this means a lot coming from you. Slowly it is finding its people. Almost like the real Nalanda, only about a tenth of which has been excavated. Ninety percent is still under the fields of Bihar, waiting.

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

Our Nalanda episode looks like a vlog filmed in 640 AD. It isn't guesswork. There is an excavated site, two eyewitnesses who actually studied there, and one very contested chronicle. Here is what rests on what. https://t.co/7J4dcmhJGk

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@Ancient_Indus Beautiful piece. The detail I love about zebu seals: the design is carved in reverse, a mirror image, because they were stamps pressed into clay to seal trade goods. That controlled realism was actually made to be read backwards.

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@nickcollins1953 The genetics point to deep continuity here. The 2019 Rakhigarhi ancient DNA study found the Harappan gene pool is the largest single source for people across South Asia today, on both sides of the border. A shared inheritance.

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@BihariMan1 Love this. The old Nalanda library was called Dharmaganja, the Mountain of Truth, said to be so vast that when it burned the smoke hung over the valley for days. Good to see books rising on that soil again 🙂

(Photo: How the old Nalanda library might have looked like)

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@VoidCommentaryX Good thread. The haunting part: when the Tibetan monk Dharmasvamin reached Nalanda around 1234, most of it was rubble, yet a few monks were still teaching there under aged Rahula Sribhadra. We rebuilt it at its peak here: https://t.co/7J4dcmhJGk

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@atahasnain53 Wonderful to see. The old Nalanda drew students from China, Tibet, Korea and Central Asia for nearly 800 years. Nice that the reborn campus is picking up that same thread again, scholars from everywhere learning together.

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

Nalanda's reach was oceanic. A copper plate from 860 CE records a king of Sumatra, Balaputradeva, building a monastery here, and the Pala king Devapala gifting five villages to run it. A ruler from across the sea chose Bihar for his college. (Photo: National Museum, New Delhi)

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@connectajitcpr Thank you for sharing this. Full episode is here if you want the whole journey:
https://t.co/7J4dcmhJGk
Nalanda ran for 600 years without charging a single student, funded by villages that kings gifted it.

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@LegoRacers2 Too good. And not even far-fetched: Harappans really did trade with Mesopotamia, they called the land Meluhha. So a zebu-cattle guest showing up from Mohenjo-daro at a Sumerian feast is basically historically sound. 🙂

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@krishpera Useful thread. One nuance worth adding: Nalanda ran close to 800 yrs and taught logic, medicine and math, not just scripture. Its Pala patrons were already gone before 1193, so the famous raid hit a place patronage had left. Nalanda could never recover.

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@indiancoopnews Lovely to see lectures filling those halls again. The reborn Nalanda at Rajgir carries a name that pulled students from China, Tibet and Sumatra 1,400 yrs ago. Feels right that it teaches once more.

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@pre_historic Right, and the detail I love is the drainage went house to street. Nearly every home at Mohenjo-daro and Rakhigarhi had a bathing floor draining into covered street channels. Citywide sanitation, 4,500 yrs ago. We rebuilt one such city here: https://t.co/xI4dPgHqHP

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@therealivc This is the part that fascinates me. What Khalji's men took for a fort was really the world's largest residential university, monks and teachers, not soldiers. We spent a whole episode rebuilding it as it stood before 1193: https://t.co/7J4dcmhJGk Would love your view on it.

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@abhijitmajumder Thank you Abhijit, this means a lot, especially coming from you. Nalanda is the one I most wanted to get right. I always wonder what India could have been if it was never destroyed.

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@JamesTitcombe So glad it moved you both. What I find most striking: Mumtaz died in 1631 but the Taj took over 20 yrs to finish, so Shah Jahan watched it rise stone by stone for most of his reign. We filmed it still under construction: https://t.co/H3ez2y8Xcv

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@anshikashukla_ This is heartbreaking. Haryana sits on the densest cluster of Harappan sites anywhere, Rakhigarhi being the largest, and so many smaller mounds nearby get ploughed over before anyone studies them. Each one lost is a chapter gone.

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@DrishtiPCS Underrated detail: Nalanda wasn't one building but a walled city of monasteries and temples, and even today only about 10% of it is excavated. What UNESCO protects now is a sliver of what still lies under the fields.

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@APanagariya @atahasnain53 Lovely to see Nalanda buzzing with ideas again. The old Mahavihara ran on the same spirit for nearly 600 yrs, students from across Asia debating at its gates. Feels right that the revived university is once more a place people travel to for big questions.

[Maya of Time @MayaOfTime]

@c_aashish Xuanzang's account is gold. He didn't just pass through Nalanda, he studied there for years under Silabhadra and nearly settled for good. We tried to walk Nalanda's halls as he might have seen them: https://t.co/7J4dcmhJGk