Erawan Museum's Buddhist cosmology

Thailandsworld.com; Wisdom Quarterly; Stewie1980 (Flickr.com)

Hinduism was brought to Southeast Asia 1,500 years ago and was the controlling belief system of the imperial Khmers and Siamese kingdoms. Buddhism had pervaded the lands beyond India in all directions:

• west to Afghanistan, Central Asia, ancient Greece, and onto China, Japan, and Korea
  
• south to Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Indonesia
  
• east to Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam
  
• north to Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, and Mongolia.

Many Vedic Brahminical (pre-Hindu) and pre-Buddhist myths were prevalent in art and architecture in ancient and modern Thailand. Erawan Museum is a five-storey building shaped like the three-headed elephant Erawan. The museum contains ancient objects of cultural and religious significance.

The building is constructed as a symbol, just as temple prangs are a symbol of Mount Meru. The former Kingdom of Laos used the symbol head of Erawan on its flag, and statues of Erawan can be seen throughout Bangkok.

The building's three floors have, on the first floor, antiquities, on the second floor, decorative artistic statues and a stained glass ceiling illustrating the zodiac and the world (as shown here) and the top floor contains Buddhist relics and ancient statues. There is also a painted ceiling illustrating the cosmos. More

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Nepal Annual Worship, Disaster; Two-Headed Boy

Hindu devotees worship Ganesh, the Elephant God, while celebrating Father Ganga (Reuters/Gopal Chitrakar, Nepal).


Tibetan nuns walk towards the office of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Kathmandu August 29, 2008. The Tibetans submitted to the organization their petition against Chinese actions in Tibet (Reuters/Shruti Shrestha, Nepal).

• Nepal SLIDESHOW

In other man-made disasters (stemming from chemical use contaminating the environment, turning on genes epigenetically), there is the tragic story of a two headed baby born at the end of the Ganges, in Bangladesh.

Bangladeshi baby Kiron rests in a blanket at a hospital in Jessore, on August 26. The baby boy in southwestern Bangladesh died after his parents decided to take him home because they could not afford adequate medical care, a doctor said Thursday (AFP/File).

Bangladeshi boy with two heads dies: doctor (8/28/08)

DHAKA (AFP) – A baby boy born with two heads in southwestern Bangladesh died after his parents decided to take him home because they could not afford adequate medical care, a doctor said Thursday.

The boy, named Kiron, was born Monday by Cesarean section and died at home late Wednesday after developing a fever and breathing difficulties, paediatrician KS Alam told AFP.

Kiron had attracted such attention that 150,000 people gathered at the clinic where he was cared for after his birth in Keshobpur, 135 kilometres (85 miles) from the capital Dhaka.

Police were called in to control the crowds and Kiron was transferred to a hospital in nearby Jessore city.

But his parents decided, against doctors' advice, to take him home, Alam said.

"We wanted to refer him to a hospital in Dhaka but the family was so poor that they could not afford to take him there, so they took him home where he died," Alam said.

"It was a very unusual case. The boy had one body but two complete heads."

He weighed 5.5 kilogrammes (12 pounds 1 ounce) at birth.