Volume - V
Major Sections
Culture Course

SANCHI

WHEN you travel from Bombay to Delhi, you see near Bhopal the great stupa at Sanchi. It has the shape of a big hemi- sphere. If you cut a ball into equal halves, each half would be a hemisphere.

A stupa is always built on a grave where some great personality is buried. Or it may be built over the ashes of a person's body.

Once the Buddha said to his disciple Ananda: "When I die, bum my body. Build a stupa over the ashes of the body at a place where four streets meet."

Even before the time of the Buddha, people built stupas over the remains of great men and women. But after the Buddha, this became a regular Buddhist practice.

This stupa at Sanchi was built by Emperor, Asoka in memory of his queen Devi. Asoka became a Buddhist monk after a murderous war he waged in Kalinga.

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