With the coming of autumn, the harbinger of the festive season in most parts of Bengal and eastern Bihar is the kaash phool or the glorious white flowers of a long grass or wild sugar cane going by the scientific name of Saccharum spontaneum. It has inspired poets down the ages, including Rabindranath Tagore of recent times.
We have bunched together kaash and with Shefali flowers, garlands made.
The wicker tray with new-sprung paddy has been decorated….
When Anand Singh, author of Nālandā: A Glorious Past, says in his introduction that perhaps this plant is the reason why the institution of Nalanda got its name, the story of a romantic past unfurls almost all on its own. And why not, asks the author, when Pataliputra was named after the plant Patali (Stereospermum suaveolens–Trumpet Flower), Kosambi and Kusinagara after kusa grass (Desmostachya bipinnata) and so on. Kaash was also called Nalaka. There are of course many more possibilities of why Nalanda got its name; perhaps from the unit of measurement of agrarian land which was Nali or after the Naga king of the times called Nanda. Nalanda is also mentioned as the birthplace of Sariputta by scholars though Buddha is said to have told Ananda that Sariputta was born in Nalakagrama, which the author says is in the whereabouts of Nalanda but is not Nalanda itself. Mogglana too was born in this region. ‘The whole area may be termed the Nalanda sacred zone,’ says the author. Another popular belief that the word Nalanda came from Nalam (lotus) and da (giver) is not even considered. The name, as we can see, does not lead us to any definitive conclusion.