Download or read book The Buddhist Landscape of Varanasi written by Vidula Jayaswal and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Varanasi Rediscovered written by Brajamādhaba Bhaṭṭācārya and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illustrations: 40 B/w Illustrations and 12 Maps Description: Varanasi has been a subject of perennial interest eversince the days of Hiuen Tsang, Al-Biruni, Fitch, Coleman, Prinsep, etc. Interest in Varanasi has not in any way faded even in the modern days of electronics and computers. Travellers in India, and from the outside world have been equally keen about learning of this mysterious city, the oldest on earth, and yet the most vibrant for historians, scholars, antiquarians, travellers, sight-seers and pilgrims. In true and appropriate response to the theme hundreds of books in many languages do credit to the lore of Varanasi, a connoisseur's caravanserai. It takes courage to add to the vast literature existing on Varanasi, unless an author has something definitely new and a first time hit on the age-old fascinating subject. And this book, Varanasi Rediscovered, precisely proposes to hit a ground never before tried by scholars. It questions the very geography, topography, structural existence of the city so named, and accepted as a matter of fact, unchallenged, and unquestioned. Varanasi Rediscovered questions this. Does the present city really represent the Varanasi of the Buddha, or for the people even before him? For the Harappan encroachers, or for the later Aryans? Has the city changed its site? Where could have been the original real Varanasi, so much praised in the scriptures, held so dear by the millions of Hindu devotees? Who or what caused such catastrophic changes for a city which still draws travellers and devotees from all over the world? The author's submission is bound to be a fundamental addition to the vast Varanasiad, although the thesis proposed could understandably raise a volume of controversy.
Download or read book Sarnath Varanasi and Kausambi written by Suresh Bhatia and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive and illustrated Guide Book deals withthree Buddhist places: Sarnath, Varanasi and Kausambi. Itsmain focus, however, is Sarnath, the place where the Buddhaaturned the wheel of dharma:.The author explains in simple language the Four NobleTruths of Buddhism expounded in Sarnath for the first time,the significance of sacred sites , the history of the Buddhistkings and the records of the Chinese pilgrims, all of whichconform the history of Sarnath. He describes the main archaeologicalsites, monuments and temples of Sarnath.He then presents a picture of Varanasi and its ancientBuddhist heritage, and lastly makes a case for the rediscoveryof Kausambi with its practically forgotten Buddhist heritage.Other information of interest is also included.
Download or read book The Hindu Temple and Its Sacred Landscape written by Himanshu Prabha Ray and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-05-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hindu Temple and Its Sacred Landscape explores Hinduism as it was practised in temples across the Indian subcontinent throughout history, highlighting the temple’s significance as a marker of cultural identity. The Hindu Temple and Its Sacred Landscape illustrates how careful attention to the Hindu temple, its social history, and cultural landscape allows us to better appreciate how Hinduism has been practised and lived throughout history. The Hindu temple was not merely a place of worship or a static indicator of royal generosity but an institution that involved the active participation of the community for its establishment, maintenance, and survival. Rather than studying temples as isolated structures, The Hindu Temple and Its Sacred Landscape thus suggests that we need to examine them in the context of their social base and the sacred microcosms of which they form a part. Through a combination of textual study, archaeological evidence, and insights from contemporary anthropology, the book explores the diverse ways in which devotees, patrons, and visitors have engaged with temples, shrines, and their wider surroundings. Drawing attention to the vibrancy of the Hindu temple in different locales, The Hindu Temple and Its Sacred Landscape traces the ways in which Hindu notions of sanctity and sacredness were defined and redefined throughout history through the diversity of temple audiences, deities, and rituals. The book thus allows us to form a more accurate picture of Hindu religious life in the past and the central role the temple has played in consolidating Hindu identity. EXPERT ANALYSIS: Author Himanshu Prabha Ray provides authoritative analysis of the Hindu temple, drawing on her expertise as an award-winning Sanskrit scholar, historian, and archeologist. SUPPLEMENTAL STUDY: The Hindu Temple and Its Sacred Landscape provides a breadth of educational knowledge as a supplement to both academic coursework and the independent study of Hinduism. With the integration of discussion questions, suggested further reading, a glossary of key terms, and images throughout, The Hindu Temple and Its Sacred Landscape offers an accessible introduction to studying the history and significance of Hindu temples. EXPLORE THE SERIES: The Hindu Temple and Its Sacred Landscape expands the collection of academic texts developed by the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies Publishing Series offers authoritative yet accessible introductions to a wide range of subjects in Hindu Studies. Each book in the series aims to present its subject matter in a form that is engaging and readily comprehensible to persons of all backgrounds – academic or otherwise – without compromising scholarly rigour. The series thus bridges the divide between academic and popular writing by preserving and utilising the best elements of both. Women in the Hindu World and The Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation and Study Guide are also available in the series.
Download or read book Benares written by Niels Gutschow and published by Axel Menges. This book was released on 2006 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book gives a comprehensive view of the complex world of India's sacred place par excellence, also known as Benares. Beyond a scholarly presentation of pilgrimages and documentation of their routes the book opens a new view: visually compelling photographs focus on sacred objects.
Download or read book Sarnath written by Frederick M. Asher and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first analytical history of Sarnath, the place where the Buddha preached his first sermon and established the Buddhist monastic order. Sarnath has long been regarded as the place where the Buddha preached his first sermon and established the Buddhist monastic order. Excavations at Sarnath have yielded the foundations of temples and monastic dwellings, two Buddhist reliquary mounds (stupas), and some of the most important sculptures in the history of Indian art. This volume offers the first critical examination of the historic site. Frederick M. Asher provides a longue durée (long-term) analysis of Sarnath—including the plunder, excavation, and display of antiquities and the Archaeological Survey of India’s presentation—and considers what lies beyond the fenced-in excavated area. His analytical history of Sarnath’s architectural and sculptural remains contains a significant study of the site’s sculptures, their uneven production, and their global distribution. Asher also examines modern Sarnath, which is a living establishment replete with new temples and monasteries that constitute a Buddhist presence on the outskirts of Varanasi, the most sacred Hindu city.
Download or read book The Ancestors written by Laksh Maheshwari and published by Penguin Random House India Private Limited. This book was released on 2024-05-31 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has been two years after the black element was discovered; two years since Jay disappeared, believed to be dead. The revelations continue for the Somvanshis, as they deal with the changes that the black element caused in their bodies. As Karan makes discoveries that shake him to his core, Shantanu Somvanshi finds the key that he has been waiting for in the shape of a young, strong-minded girl. The Ancestors takes the reader on a whirlwind ride with twists and turns that will shock.
Download or read book Banaras Region written by Rana P. B. Singh and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first compendium of cultural sites in and around Varanasi, written by two of the most renowned specialists of the city. It covers a very wide range of places and subjects and provides a huge quantity of information, being a veritable small encyclopaedia of the Banaras region. The first section includes Setting, Historical background, Religious landscape, Cosmogony, Festivities, Riverside landscape, and 7 detailed Area Walks along the ghats and the old city. Also included are the Panchakroshi pilgrimage, Ramanagar, Sarnath, the Jain and Muslim sacredscapes, etc. The second section `Around Banaras' covers the sites lying at less than 80 km, like Chunar, Ahraura, Lekhania, Vindhyachal, Kaithi, Shitala Dham, Jakhini, Bhadohi, Sitamarhi, Jaunpur, Chandraprabha and Kaimur Wild Life sanctuaries. The third part covers the places in the range of 100-300 km, like: Allahabad, Ayodhya, Chitrakut, Khajuraho, Mundeshvari, and many other places.
Download or read book Kashi and Varanasi written by and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Archaeology and Buddhism in South Asia written by Himanshu Prabha Ray and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-08-31 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the archaeological trajectory of the expansion of Buddhism and its regional variations in South Asia. Focusing on the multireligious context of the subcontinent in the first millennium BCE, the volume breaks from conventional studies that pose Buddhism as a counter to the Vedic tradition to understanding the religion more integrally in terms of dhamma (teachings of the Buddha), dāna (practice of cultivating generosity) and the engagement with the written word. The work underlines that relic and image worship were important features in the spread of Buddhism in the region and were instrumental in bringing the monastics and the laity together. Further, the author examines the significance of the histories of monastic complexes (viharas, stupas, caityas) and also religious travel and pilgrimage that provided connections across the subcontinent and the seas. An interdisciplinary study, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars in South Asian studies, religion, especially Buddhist studies, history and archaeology.
Download or read book Where the Buddha Walked written by Rana P. B. Singh and published by Spotlight Poets. This book was released on 2003 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first attempt to describe all the fifteen placeswith which the Buddha had direct association: Lumbini,Kapilavastu, Bodh Gaya, Gaya, Sarnath, Shravasti,Kaushambi, Rajagriha, Nalanda, Vaishali, Patna, Kesariya,Kushinagar, Sankisa, and Mathura. The sequence of the fifteenBuddhist places follows the life-cycle and the journeysperformed by the Buddha as narrated in the JÈtakas and theTripi aka.Narration of each of these places accounts the mythology,legend, JÈtaka tales, cultural history, archaeology, field studiesand general information. The book is illustrated with 55photographs and 55 maps and figures, and also contains adescription of the main link stations like Varanasi, Allahabadand Gorakhpur. Nearby sites for excursion are also describedin the context.
Download or read book Myths and Places written by Shonaleeka Kaul and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-06-23 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the dialogic relationship between myths and places in the historically, geographically, and culturally diverse context of India. Given its ambiguous relationship with ‘facts’ and empirical reality, myth has suffered an uncertain status in the field of professional history, with the latter’s preference for scientifism over more creative orders of representation. Myths and Places rehabilitates myth, not as history’s primeval ‘Other’, nor as an instrument of socio-religious propagation, but as communitarian mechanisms by which societies made sense of themselves and their world. It argues that myths helped communities fashion their identities and their habitat/habitus, and were fashioned by these in turn. This book explores diverse forms of territorial becoming and belonging in a grassroots approach from across India, studying them in culturally sensitive ways to recover local life-worlds and their self-understanding. Further, challenging the stereotypical bracketing of the mythical with the sacred and the material with the historical, the multidisciplinary essays in the book examine myth in relation to not only religion but other historical phenomena such as ecology, ethnicity, urbanism, mercantilism, migration, politics, tourism, art, philosophy, performance, and the everyday. This book will be of interest to scholars and general readers of Indian history, regional studies, cultural geography, mythology, religious studies, and anthropology.
Download or read book A Guide to Sarnath written by B. Majumdar and published by Pilgrims Book House. This book was released on 2004-12 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the places in India of interest to Indian and foreign tourist and pilgrims, Sarnath must surely rank near top of the list. Located a few kilometers from Varanasi, the holiest city of the Hindus, in Uttar Pradseh, Northern India, Sarnath is the spot where Buddhism first saw the light of day. Here in the beautiful Deer Park is where the Buddha preached his First Sermon. Tucked away amongst mango groves, the Deer Park still preserves the peaceful charm of that it had on that day when Buddha first expounded his solution to the mystery of life to his five followers. This guidebook is a mine of information on the religious, historical and artistic background and takes you on a guided tour around all the monuments and the Museum of Archaeology. After traveling so far to see Sarnath, you owe it to yourself to really understand what you are seeing. “The reader is….provided with a description of the principal monuments and an interpretation of the symbolic animals which are carved on the Lion Capital. Finally, there are some philosophical explanations on the most important inscriptions…†----Frank E Reynolds, Guide to Buddhist Religion
Download or read book Varanasi written by Subhadra Sen Gupta and published by books catalog. This book was released on 2004 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kashi, Benaras, Varanasi... for centuries it has been the most sacred of Hindu places of pilgrimage, the supreme tirthasthana. The holy city that every Hindu wishes to visit, at least once in their lifetime. This oldest living city in the world is the home that Shiva and Parvati chose as their home on earth.
Download or read book Banaras written by Diana L. Eck and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2013-06-05 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sacred city of Banāras on the River Ganges is one of the oldest living cities in the world—as old as Jerusalem, Athens, and Peking. It is the place where Shiva, the Lord of All, is said to have made his permanent home since the dawn of creation. There are few cities in India as traditionally Hindu and as symbolic of the whole of Hindu culture as Banāras. In this eloquent, finely observed study, Diana Eck shows how the city over the centuries has become a lens through which the Hindu vision of the world is precisely focused. She reveals the spiritual and historical resonance of this holy place where great sages such as the Buddha and Shankara were taught, where ashrams, palaces, and universities were built, where God has been imagined and imagined in a thousand ways. She describes the rites of its temples, the busy life of its riverfront, and the exuberance of its festivals. She tells how people travel from all over India to Banāras for the privilege of dying a good death here, for they believe that on the banks of the River Ganges where “the atmosphere of devotion is improbable in its strength,” it is possible to be released from the earthly round forever. In her account of the sacred history, geography, and art of the city, its elaborate and thriving rituals, its myths and literature, and its importance to pilgrims and seekers, Diana Eck uses her wealth of scholarship to make the Hindu tradition come powerfully alive so that we come to understand the meaning of this sacred city to the millions of believers who have been coming here for over 2,500 years.
Download or read book Buddhist Landscapes in Central India written by Julia Shaw and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-08-12 with total page 1029 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “monumental bias” of Buddhist archaeology has hampered our understanding of the socio-religious mechanisms that enabled early Buddhist monks to establish themselves in new areas. To articulate these relationships, Shaw presents here the first integrated study of settlement archaeology and Buddhist history, carried out in the area around Sanchi, a Central Indian UNESCO World Heritage site. Her comprehensive, data-rich, and heavily illustrated work provides an archaeological basis for assessing theories regarding the dialectical relationship between Buddhism and surrounding lay populations. It also sheds light on the role of the introduction of Buddhism in changing settlement patterns.This volume was originally published in 2007 by the British Association of South Asian Studies.
Download or read book Ancient Varanasi written by Vidula Jayaswal and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Varanasi is not only one of the oldest living cities of the world, but is also a model reflecting a comprehensive picture of our rich cultural heritage. The undisrupted occupation of Kashi region since ancient times till this date, played a vital role in the make up of modern Varanasi. The unique qualities of this settlements raise a number of questions, like, how old is Varanasi? What are the factors which helped this city to continue till today, particularly when other old cities on the banks of the Ganga died out? Also, why did Lord Buddha select peripheral region of Varanasi, Sarnath, for delivering his first sermon, particularly when he attained enlightenment in Bodh Gaya? It is on record that he was well conversant with Rajgriha, Pataliputra and other places of Bihar. And since when Saivism became an integral part of the Varanasi culture? All these questions are deeply rooted in the history of this holy city, which are attempted in this book on account of the archaeological findings. Ancient remains of Varanasi which were unearthed at Kashi-Rajghat about four decades ago, could demonstrate that this holy city was inhabited around ninth century BC, Sarnath, the place of the first sermon of Gautam Buddha, retains archaeological remains from the time of the Maurya king Asoka. But, excavations at Aktha reveal that this settlement had greater antiquity than has been obtained at Kashi-Rajghat. It also reveal the factors which helped make up of Sarnath as the first place for preaching the teachings of Lord Buddha. The first colonization of Kashi region, on account of the excavated findings could be pushed back to about four/five hundred years. this bridged the gap between the antiquity ascertained by ancient texts and earlier archaeological records of Varanasi. Besides the Risipattana concept attached with Sarnath in the Buddhist literature is also corroborated by Aktha. This book adds new chapter to the early history of Varanasi city and Sarnath.
