Cremation and Resurrection
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The topography of the map showed the elevations of the mountains and depths of the sea.
I was struck by the fact that aside from the Himalayas in the north and some mountains
in the south and the east, the rest of the vast country was remarkably flat.
I followed the “HUMBLE REQUEST” of a sign at the temple which must
have been posted a long time ago.
Inside there was a man praying loudly. The Bharat Mata in Varanasi
is the only temple in the land dedicated to Mother India.
As I walked around, I noticed that, coincidentally, on this day a Japanese camera crew
was taking pictures of the wall paintings for a program.
Two boys who were washing their bodies with water from a hose just
outside the temple watched me as I entered.
It did not have the customary gods and goddesses of Hindu temples, or the furnishings
of the temples of other religions. Instead, it housed only a relief map of all of
pre-independence India, carved out of marble.
Buddhist monks in saffron and yellow robes, including some from Tibet,
were strolling in front of the Temple as we entered it.
It enshrines some relics of Buddha discovered in Madras and Punjab.
There is also a ficus tree just outside the Vihara.
Frescos covered most of the walls inside the Temple. They depicted
important episodes in Buddhist history.
These paintings are considered masterpieces; they were done in the 1930s
by the renowned Japanese artist Kosetsu Nosu.
The Dhamekh Stupa looked imposing as a solid cylindrical
tower rising some42.6 meters. Inscriptions dated to 1026 unearthed
here indicate that its old name was Dharma Chakra Stupa, presumably
commemorating the spot where Buddha gave his first sermon.
As a Buddhist “noble man,” Anagarika Dharmapala first made a pilgrimage to Sarnath in 1891.
Finding the conditions of the sites “deplorable,” he determined to restore India’s places|
of Buddhist worship in an ambitious plan to “regenerate Buddhism” in that country. He was
encouraged by the then British rulers of India. In the course of forty years he succeed in
establishing centers of the Maha Bodhi Society of India (for the purpose of resurrecting
Buddhism in India and of restoring its ancient Buddhist shrines) with the support of Indian
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