Word: anuradhapura
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...Lanka seemed gripped by madness last week as a series of violent attacks resulted in the slaughter of more than 200 people. The killings began when separatist guerrillas belonging to the country's predominantly Hindu Tamil minority hijacked a bus and headed for Anuradhapura, a city largely inhabited by Buddhist Sinhalese. As the guerrillas drove into the city's crowded main bus station, they opened fire with automatic weapons, killing about 100 men, women and children. Then they drove to the Sri Maha Bodhiya, a sacred Buddhist site, and fired indiscriminately into a crowd that included nuns and monks...
...their attacks on troops in an effort to force the government into granting them an independent homeland. The Tamils claim that in the 37 years since Sri Lanka achieved independence from Britain, their political rights have been gradually eroded by the Sinhalese majority. Last week's Tamil rampage through Anuradhapura was the guerrillas' first major attack on unarmed civilians...
...lost cities that are shown and described here died in battle, some several times over. Angkor in Cambodia is world-famous, but the others, though less well known, are well worth the discovery. Sigiriya, a mountain fortress in Ceylon, was abandoned after King Kassapa, disgraced in battle, committed suicide. Anuradhapura and Polonnarawa, also in Ceylon, were capital cities until their destruction by Tamil invaders; Pagan, Burma's pagoda city, gleamed with golden cupolas, bright frescoes and a forest of stupas before it was overwhelmed by Mongols. Swaan's text is as illuminating as his color plates...
When enlightenment first came to Gautama Buddha, 2,400 years ago, he was sitting under a Bo tree. Buddha's tree has been an object of reverence, ever since, and its offspring still stands amid ancient ruins at Anuradhapura, Ceylon, where it was brought in 246 B.C. Among Buddha's 150,000,000 followers word was spreading last week, however, that the sacred Bo was withering, and the prognosis looked bad. Adoring pilgrims knew only one thing to do: as generations of them had done before, they poured gallons of milk around its trunk...