They Burned 9 Million Books

[00:00:00]India once had a library so vast, it reportedly burned for 3 months [music] straight. 9 million books gone forever, and the world barely remembers it. This was Nalanda, the world's first residential university built in Bihar in 427 [music] AD. At its peak, it had over 10,000 students from China, Tibet, Persia, and Korea all studying under one roof. It had nine floors of books covering mathematics, astronomy, [music] medicine, and philosophy. In 1193 AD, the military commander Bakhtiyar Khilji invaded. His army burned Nalanda to the ground. Monks were slaughtered. Students fled. The library reportedly burned for 3 full months.

[00:00:40]Cuz there were so many books, the fire simply could not finish them quickly.

[00:00:43]Historians believe the knowledge lost at Nalanda set human civilization back significantly. Texts on surgery, astronomy, mathematics, fields where India led the world simply vanished. We will never know what was in those books.

[00:00:56]No copies survived. They didn't just burn a building, they burned humanity's future. Subscribe because someone has to remember.