Wednesday, November 9, 2022

India sends the Buddha's relics to Mongolia

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NEW DELHI: In a special goodwill gesture to its “spiritual neighbor” Mongolia, India will send four holy relics of the Buddha to be displayed for 11 days at Batsagaan Temple in Gandan Monastery of Ulaanbataar, Mongolia.

The sacred "Kapilvastu relics" will be flown to Mongolia in two special bullet-proof caskets aboard an Indian Air Force aircraft, along with a 25-member Indian delegation led by Union Law and Justice Minister Kiren Rijiju.

The relics, believed to contain Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha's remains, are part of the collection on display at the National Museum and were last part of a multi-city display in Sri Lanka in 2012.

They were accorded the "AA" category status by the Archaeological Survey of India on account of their rarity and delicate nature, and it was also decided that they will not be sent out of the country.
However, an exception was made for Mongolia following a special request from the Mongolian government and considering India’s long-standing diplomatic ties with its "Third neighbor" in the East.

Incidentally, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the first Indian premier to visit Mongolia in 2015. He had visited Gandan Monastery, where the relics will now be displayed, presented a bodhi tree sapling to Hamba Lama, and defined India and Mongolia as spiritual neighbors during his address to the Mongolian Parliament.

India has since doubled down on its efforts to leverage its "soft power," develop and promote the Buddhist circuit, a move made with an eye on China, which has also invested heavily in infrastructure projects to cultivate Buddhist leaders.

India also printed and presented 75 copies of 108 volumes of the "Mongolian Kanjur," a Buddhist canonical text, for distribution to every monastery across Mongolia, and has undertaken to digitize Kanjur manuscripts for the Mongolian government. More

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