India Guide
Uttar Pradesh
Sarnath
The cluster of ruins and temples at SARNATH is a place of pilgrimage for Buddhists, and is also popular with day-trippers from Varanasi, ten kilometres south, who picnic among the ruins and parklands. It was here, some time around 530 BC, just five weeks after he found enlightenment, that Buddha gave his first ever sermon. According to Buddhist belief, this set in motion the Dharmachakra ("Wheel of Law"), a new cycle of rebirths and reincarnations leading eventually to ultimate enlightenment for everybody. Seeking respite from their round of itinerant teaching, the Buddha and his followers would retire to Sarnath during the rainy season.
Also known as Rishipatana, the place of the rishis or sages, or Mrigadaya, the deer park, Sarnath's name derives from Saranganatha, the Lord of the Deer. Over the centuries, the settlement flourished as a centre of Buddhist (particularly Hinayana) art and teaching. Seventh-century Chinese pilgrim Xuan Zhang recounted seeing thirty monasteries, supporting some 3000 monks, and a life-sized brass statue of the Buddha turning the Wheel of Law, but Indian Buddhism floundered under the impact of Muslim invasions and the rise of Hinduism. Sarnath's expanding Buddhist settlement eventually dissolved in the wake of this religious and political metamorphosis – except for the vast bulk of the Dhamekh Stupa, much of the site lay in ruins for almost a millennium. Prey to vandalism and pilfering, Sarnath remained abandoned until 1834, when it was visited by Alexander Cunningham, then head of the Archeological Survey, who excavated the site. Today it is once more an important Buddhist centre, and its avenues house missions from all over the Buddhist world.
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