Word: buddha
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...tree in Bodh Gaya, a town in eastern India, is the holiest place in all Buddhism. According to local lore, the tree is a direct descendant of the bodhi (a type of fig tree) where a prince named Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment 2 1/2 millenniums ago and became the Buddha. Today Buddhism is a religion associated with East Asia--with Thailand, China or Japan--where most of the world's Buddhists live. Yet Buddhism began in India at that very spot. The Buddha was born in Lumbini, Nepal, lived in eastern India, attained enlightenment in Bodh Gaya and then wandered...
...that is the tree. A group of Sri Lankan monks in golden robes gather and sit down before it. They recite from their prayer books, and their words boom around the temple complex over loudspeakers: "Buddham Sharanam Gacchami"--I go for refuge to the Buddha...
...measured and the beats are as likely to be hammered out by hand as manufactured on a synthesizer. The languid Raanjhan is the definitive track here. Saathi, featuring the voice and sarangi of Khan, will please purists old enough to remember Ravi Shankar at Woodstock while fitting right alongside Buddha Bar in their teenage sons' collections...
...culture, which is spiritual and otherworldly, and one kind of society, which is rigidly hierarchical and patriarchal. Sen points out that if Indians have historically been the world's most religious people, they have also been, paradoxically, its most skeptical. Many of India's most influential thinkers, like the Buddha, were agnostics?or outright atheists. "Indeed, Sanskrit not only has a bigger body of religious literature than exists in any other classical language, it also has a larger volume of agnostic or atheistic writings than in any other classical language," says Sen. Just as it has allowed space for skepticism...
...Buddhist heartland in eastern India has fared worst of all. The original fig tree at Bodhgaya?under which Prince Siddhartha became the enlightened Buddha?burned down centuries ago. Today, hawkers sell leaves from a replacement tree for $1 apiece. A swath of hotels and shops encroach on the temple complex, and police say looters have stolen hundreds of artifacts, an allegation that temple manager Kallicharan Yadav dismisses as "baseless." What is undeniable is that Hindu priests have turned parts of the Buddhist holy site into shrines to their own gods. A day's drive away, Nalanda University, the wellspring from...