Word: stupa
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Like most Buddhist shrines, Borobudur's architecture (see color opposite and overleaf) is symbolic. Rising in stepped terraces, signifying the ten stages of the Buddhist Way of Salvation, the temple is crowned by a bell-shaped stupa. Dozens of dagobas, or small stupas, dot the terraces, while the solid superstructure, measuring 400 ft. at the base and rising to a majestic 130 ft. in height, is laced with open galleries displaying statues and reliefs telling the story of Buddha's life...
...until the early 1800s did Dutch colonialists examine this strange mound and discover the temple. They did little except to add a teahouse to what appeared to be the main stupa of the complex. Then in 1907, a Dutch military engineer named T. Van Erp began digging out the ancient ruins. Van Erp laid bare the magnificent carvings and in four years reconstructed Borobudur in its entirety. Only the floors were new. The rest was all there to be put back into place, including some 3,000 pieces of statuary, 432 balustrade niches and 72 latticed stupas, each with...
...001st anniversary of the fabled stupa of Tat Phnom, a gilt-gabled temple wherein reposes one of the Lord Buddha's ribs. The quiet country town of Tat Phnom, set on the banks of the Mekong River, was alive with revelry. Shapely Thai strippers wriggled through their acts while giggling Buddhist monks and greasy-haired village sharpies looked on. A magician sawed a girl in half. Sarong-clad farmers swilled down rice whisky, then took their turns at the local brothel. But the most unusual attraction in Tat Phnom last week was a network of foxholes from which...
...dominant theme of the exhibit is Buddha, for the art of Thailand grew out of a yearning for new ways to worship him. After Buddha died in the 5th century B.C., his bodily relics were divided and divided again, but there were never enough to supply all the stupas (Buddhist shrines) in the land. As a result, the faithful constructed a hierarchy of lesser deities (Bodhisattvas) to worship, as well as an elaborate system of "reminders" of the sage himself. A reminder could be a stupa that possessed no relics but was a replica of one that did. There were...
...Stave & Stupa. Johnson's recent work (see color) shows how far he has gone in breaking new ground while finding imaginative uses for old forms. The haystack-shaped shrine, set in a Grecian court in New Harmony, Ind., was built as a memorial to the Harmonists, a German Separatist sect that assured its own extinction by faithfully practicing celibacy. But to Johnson it suggests the stave churches of Norway and the stupa forms of India. Without its name, the Nuclear Reactor Building in Israel could be a medieval cloister, topped by a huge, 20-sided tower that seems...