| Temples & Legends Of Bihar |
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| Temples & Legends Of
India |
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MAHABODHI |
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| In a similar
manner, Sarnath, the place where Buddha preached his first sermon, had become so very
neglected that when Anagarika Dharmapala, a Ceylonese monk, visited Sarnath in 1891, he
found it an abode for the grazing of the hogs and full of filth and jungles. The proper
resuscitation of Sarnath is due to the efforts of Anagarika Dharmapala and a band of
archaeologists like Sir John Marshal, Sir John Kittoe, Sir Alexander Cunningham, Daya Rain
Sahni, and others. The famous lion pillar in the Sarnath Museum has given us the
national emblem of independent India. Kusinagar might also have been lost to us but for
archaeologists like A. C. Carlyle, Vogel and Pt. Hirananda Shastri In Mahapatinirvana
Sutta and other Buddhist literature we have excellent description of the last days of
LordBuddha at Kusinagar, but the very identity of Kusinagar was getting lost to the world.
It was A. C. Carlyle who discovered the broken pieces of the image of Buddha, depicting
the scene of Mahaparinirvana and pieced them up. The inscription he found fixed the
identity of the place.In a similar manner, the excavations and the restoration of the
hundreds ofimportant Buddhist relies in various parts of India and Pakistan and their
study have supplied authentic data for a reconstruction of Buddha's life and the story of
his creed, as distinguished from the legends and myths that are associated with Lord
Buddha. |
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