Public exposition of the most sacred Buddha relics from Sarnath
Vesak exposition for the public at Temple Trees from today till Wednesday
The sacred Buddha relics enshrined at the Mulagandhakuti Vihara at Sarnath in India were brought for public veneration yesterday on a request from the Prime Minister’s Office. This is only the second time these relics discovered by British archaeologists in colonial India in 1913 and handed over to the Maha Bodhi Society of India for custody have left India, and the first time brought to Sri Lanka in nearly a hundred years.
Picture shows Ven. Pelewatte Seewali Thera, General Secretary of the Maha Bodhi Society of India and India’s High Commissioner Taranjit Singh Sandhu carrying the historic relics from the Air India aircraft that brought the relics from Varanasi via New Delhi to Colombo. Parliament Speaker Karu Jayasuriya accepted the sacred relics on behalf of the Government of Sri Lanka.
Members of the clergy, representatives of the Anagarika Dharmapala Trust and the Maha Bodhi Society of India and government officials from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were present at the airport for the arrival ceremony from where a special motorcade took the relics to Temple Trees where theywill be kept till May 2.
Lord Buddha's most revered relics, from Sarnath, were brought to Sri Lanka yesterday for public exposition on the occasion of Vesak. The relics, carried by the General Secretary of the Maha Bodhi Society of India, Ven. P. Seewali Thera were received by India’s High Commissioner Taranjit Singh Sandhu inside the Air India aircraft and presented to Speaker Karu Jayasuriya at the foot of the gangway.
This is the first time these sacred relics have been brought to Sri Lanka from India, and special arrangements have been made by the Government of India for this purpose with the concurrence of the Maha Bodhi Society of India, the High Commission of India said in a release this week.
The public can pay homage to these relics at Temple Trees in Colombo from today (Sunday) till Wednesday (May 2).
These relics are enshrined at the Mulagandhakuti Vihara at Sarnath in India. Sarnath is historically significant since Lord Buddha preached his first sermon in a deer park in the area after attaining Buddha hood. Ana garik a Dharmapala, founder of the Maha Bodhi Society of India, built the Mulagandhakuti Vihara to restore the glory of Sarnath. The land and the sacred relics were gifted to the Maha Bodhi Society of India by the Government of India.
A specially-made casket secures these two most revered and authentic relics. The first relics, enclosed within the silver casket enshrined in the Vihara, were found by Sir John Marshall in 1913- 14 near the ancient city of Taxila ( Takshasila). They were found in a small Buddhist chapel close to the Dharmarajika Stupa in, a silver reliquary with inscriptions dating the year 136 (circa 79 A.D). They were recorded as the relics of the Blessed One.
The second relic enshrined at Sarnath was found by A. H. Longhurst of the Archaeological Survey of India in 1929 in a large Stupa at Nagarjunakonda in the Guntur District of the then Madras Presidency. The Stupa in which the relic was found is described as the Maha Chetiyaor viz. the ' Great Stupa' of the Blessed One.
The High Commission of India thanked the Mahabodhi Society of India for loaning these sacred relics for exposition in Colombo and said the sacred relics of Sarnath are “yet another manifestation of the shared Buddhist heritage of India and Sri Lanka, which forms a spiritual bond between our two nations”.
Several monks and lay members from the Maha Bodhi Society of India and officials of the Indian Archeological Department have accompanied the relics.
Speaking at the brief ceremony, Ven. Seewali Thera said that on the instructions of the Anagarika Dharmapala, resident monks at the Mulaghandakuti Vihara at Sarnath have been re citing the Dhammachakka Sutra – the first sermon of Lord Buddha enunciating the Doctrine of the Middle Path, every evening for the past nearly one hundred years at the Vihara.