Bones of the Buddha is a documentary about the British excavation of one of the eight stupas (Buddhist burial mound and reliquary found in Piprahwa, now India, near the border with Nepal) where the historical Buddha's cremation remains (sarira or relics) were placed after the Buddha's final nirvana (parinibbana). More
Ranajit Pal's Non-Jonesian Indology and Alexander makes sense of the ancient history of proto-India and India and sheds light on the real motives of Alexander the Great in his Gedrosian expedition.
(PBS Terra) Nov. 21, 2024: Overview. In its prime, Cahokia was a prosperous mega-city with a population similar to London’s.
But this sprawling Native American metropolis from the Mississippian culture vanished long before European settler-colonial invaders arrived in North America. What happened?
This Indigenous city’s enigmatic rise and fall has inspired countless theories and has long captivated the imaginations of archeologists.
[The pyramids in the U.S. were beheaded (the peaks destroyed) by arriving Catholic priests and soldiers who did not want to face up to what amazing advanced technology the Indigenous non-humans had developed with their amazing architecture and alignments, so they were tortured, killed en masse in a slow genocide that continues to this day along with cultural erasure.]
Now, cutting-edge scientific research offers a glimmer of hope in unraveling the mystery of Cahokia's disappearance.
Hosted by Joe Hanson from Be Smart, Overview uses stunning 4K drone footage to reveal the natural and human-made marvels shaping our planet -- literally from a 10,000-foot view.
Who were these blue-eyed people like the Buddha living in Central Asia near Iranian Aryans?
Who were the Scythians who could make gold jewelry like this comb? (Solokha, 4th cent. BC)
Buddhist coin, gold kapana, circulating in Scythia/India
The distinct caps
When the Buddha-to-be, the Bodhisatta, was a boy, he grew up spoiled in a Scythian warrior culture. He had a white pony named Kanthaka. He was married off at 16 to his extraordinarily beautiful 16-year-old cousin, Princess Bimba (known to the world by the moniker Yasodhara). He learned to ride, shoot with bow and arrow, play and compete with other Scythian boys, and was educated in all the arts and sciences of the day by royal tutors, likely Brahmins and other instructors. All of this would be extraordinarily unlikely for a Nepalese or Indian boy, but it was common for a Central Asian, a Gandharan, a proto-Afghan. Similar to the Scythians of Central and North Asia are another culture designated by recent studies by Western scholars of the Yamnaya (named by Russians to refer to their burial pits, tumuli, kurgan, barrow tombs, their "stupas" of sorts).
Scythians (Barry Cuneliffe)
The Buddha was not from India. He was an outsider, a foreigner. First of all, there was no "India" at the time. There may have been a "Great Bharat" (Maha Bharata) at some time in the past, but not until the Buddhist Emperor Ashoka united disparate kingdoms and republics into a united empire two centuries after the life of the Buddha did anything like modern India come to be.
It was perhaps bigger in the past, extending into Pakistan and Afghanistan (until 1947's Partition that divided India between Hindu-majority and Muslim-majority areas (Pakistan, Kashmir, Bangladesh). The Buddha was from ancient Gandhara (in a region that is now Afghanistan), part of what the ancient Greeks called Scythia.
This was the Indo-Scythian land of the Sakas (Shakyas). These formerly nomadic horse-riding warriors (not caste kshatriyas) were very strange compared to the people of Magadha and neighboring kingdoms where Prince Siddhartha Gautama, renouncing his kingdom of Kapilavastu, went in search of spiritual answers, namely, "What do we suffer, and what can be done about it." The Magadhis and people we would today label as Indians spoke poorly of the barbarians in the Northwest frontier. They did things that ran contrary to the post-Indus Valley Civilization peoples guided by Brahmin priests and their Vedas and countless creeds, belief systems, and practices.
Female Scythians, warrior princesses
For one, they (Scythians in general throughout Central Asia, not South Asia and Indo-Scythians from around ancient Gandhara by Taxila, Pakistan, and modern Sakastan/Afghanistan/Sistan Baluchistan):
did not adhere to the Vedic/Brahminical caste system
did not revere Brahmins as but ruled by kings and warriors
did not subjugate women, who were fellow warriors
did not keep sexual standards as the east did, marrying among cousins [like British and other royals]
and so on as befits an exceedingly "proud," nomadic, horseback extended family clans in there mahajanapada or "country" (foothold of the clan).
What was the Buddha's country?
The Shakyan Clan was one of these Aryan peoples, living in what is now the Stans, the steppe of Central Asia all the way up to Ukraine and down to Persia/Iran, or land of Iranians/Ariyans.
Dr. Ranajit Pal, Ph.D.
This is not the story we are told, but it is very well explained by maverick Indian historian Dr. Ranajit Pal, Ph.D. and aligns with the facts we have from the texts about how the Buddha was regarded, particularly by the founder of Hindu-ism (Indus-ism) as a systematic religion under the Brahmins and extending their lineage back thousands of years to the ancient Vedas [much like Jews due to push themselves back as a group into Sumerian times and the precursors of the Bible stories].
The video above shows how these family clans, these Scythian-like people venturing to the steppe, like Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes on the eastern end of Asia in and around Mongolia.
Territory of the Indo-Scythians in and around Gandhara and expanding into South Asia
Super Afghan stupa carved out of stone
One of the most distinguishing aspects of the Buddha and Buddhism and what he perceived to be his (Solar Race, Aryan) lineage and their traditions is the stupa or burial mounds. These barrows, tumuli, kurgans, burial mounds have an ancient history. The Buddha continued it. One Ukrainian scholar even saw fit to declare that the Buddha was from Ukraine nearer to North Asia than Central Asia, and while this may sound ludicrous and self-aggrandizing, there are indications that he was more a part of that ancient Scythian, for lack of a better more comprehensive designation, tradition than anything "Indian." But the Indo-Scythians abutted the kingdoms that later became India, and it is said that the Buddha's clan, the Sakas or Shakyas (Shakyian/Scythians) invaded and took over and occupied Bihar (now a state in India so named because of the large number of Buddhist vihars or abbeys built throughout the land), where their leader had his great enlightenment in Bodh Gaya.
Devoted Scythian couples with the Buddha (center), Scytho-Parthian, Kushan (wiki)
.
The Yamnaya culture [a] or the Yamna culture [b], also known as the Pit Grave Culture or Ochre Grave Culture, is a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers (the Pontic–Caspian steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BCE [2].
It was discovered by Vasily Gorodtsov following his archeological excavations near the Donets River in 1901–1903. Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition: Я́мная (Romanization Yamnaya) is a Russian adjective that means "related to pits (yama)," as these people used to bury their dead in tumuli (kurgans) containing simple pit chambers.
Research in recent years has found that Mikhaylovka, in lower Dnieper river, Ukraine, formed the Core Yamnaya culture (c. 3600–3400 BCE) [3]. The Yamnaya economy was based upon animal husbandry, fishing, and foraging, and the manufacture of ceramics, tools, and weapons [4].
Exotic nomadic Eurasians with wagons
The people of the Yamnaya culture lived primarily as nomads, with a chiefdom system and wheeled carts and wagons that allowed them to manage large herds [5].
They are also closely connected to Final Neolithic cultures, which later spread throughout Europe and Central Asia, especially the Corded Ware people and the Bell Beaker culture [5], as well as the peoples of the Sintashta, Andronovo, and Srubnaya cultures.
Back migration from Corded Ware also contributed to Sintashta and Andronovo [6]. In these groups, several aspects of the Yamnaya culture are present [c].
Yamnaya material culture was very similar to the Afanasevo culture of South Siberia, and the populations of the two cultures are genetically indistinguishable [1]. This suggests that the Afanasevo culture may have originated from the migration of Yamnaya groups to the Altai region or, alternatively, that both cultures developed from an earlier shared cultural source [7].
Genetic studies have suggested that the people of the Yamnaya culture can be modelled as a genetic admixture between a population related to Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers (EHG) [d] and people related to hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus (CHG) in roughly equal proportions [8], an ancestral component which is often named "Steppe ancestry," with additional admixture from Anatolian, Levantine, or Early European farmers [9, 10].
Genetic studies also indicate that populations associated with the Corded Ware, Bell Beaker, Sintashta, and Andronovo cultures derived large parts of their ancestry from the Yamnaya or a closely related population [1, 11, 12, 13].
According to the widely-accepted Kurgan hypothesis of Marija Gimbutas, the people that produced the Yamnaya culture spoke a stage of the Proto Indo-European language, which later spread eastwards and westwards as part of the Indo-European migrations. More: Yamnaya culture
Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit
Look what I found, Coolies! - Yes, Sahib, you are a genius to dig up sacred religious monuments.
Bones of the Buddha
What are Buddhist cremation "relics"?
(PBS Documentary) The mystery surrounding the bones of the [historical] Buddha dates back more than 100 years ago. When colonial estate manager Willie Peppe set his workers digging at a mysterious "hill" (Piprahwa Stupa) in Northern India in 1898, he had no idea what they would find. Just over 20 feet down, they made an amazing discovery: a huge stone coffer [like the amazing Bimaran casket's steatite container], containing five reliquary jars [with rare spiritual relics known as Śarīras], more than 1,000 separate jewels, and some ash and bone.
One of the jars bore an inscription that appeared to say that these were the remains of the Buddha himself. This seemed to be the most extraordinary find in Indian archeology. But doubt and scandal have hung over this amazing find for more than 100 years. For some, the whole thing has to be an elaborate hoax [employing countless artisans to recreate ancient treasures, fraudulent archeologists, fake workers, and corrupt Indian and British politicians]. For others, it is no less than [one of] the [eight or so] final resting place[s] of the leader of one of the world's great religions, a sage who passed into final nirvana 2,600 years ago. For the doubters, suspicion focuses on a key figure from the time, disgraced German archeologist Dr. A. Anton Fuhrer. Renowned historian Charles Allen sets out to solve this extraordinary mystery [for PBS] once and for all. #BuddhaBones#BuddhaAshes#BuddhaRelic#Buddhism
The history of buddhas on earth (Bhumi) and on the human plane (manussya loka) in general is very strange and prehistoric. We have the historical Buddha as our source of information about prehistoric buddhas (seven recent among 28 named in this incredibly long cycle or recent cycles, kalpas, of time). The Buddha in prescribing burial practices of noble ones (Aryans, arhats) detailed an ancient Central and North Asian custom of dolmens, tumuli, kurgans, barrows, long barrows, chortens, burial mounds or what are known in Buddhism today as stupas. The Buddha, after passing into final nirvana, planned for his mortal remains to be divided among great rulers of that time. He chose a very rural and out-of-the-way place at which to pass. His attendant Ananda was shocked that he would leave the world in such a spot, until the Buddha revealed to him that in the distant past, this spot (Kushinagarnear modern Gorakhpur, India) was once the center of a prosperous kingdom in super-ancient times. Moreover, it was between the current kingdoms of great kings.
North Asian style stupa burial mound topped by statue of buried person? (Abdul Mohammadi)
.
How many millions of years old could they be?
If he had passed away within any of these, that king would have enshrined the precious relics in one great dolmen in stupa. Instead, many got the chance to do so by partitioning them, with one going to the celestial devas (in "heaven") and another going to the partitioner, who saw to their care. These were not the first stupas as many might think. It was an ancient custom all the way to Ukraine. Modern Tibetan Buddhists know this and visit secret ancient sites of other buddhas and arhats in Central and North Asia, rumor has it. Sadly, archeologists argue and do not recognize all discoveries of treasure within them unless they accord with preconceived notions of where they should be located. So the ones in Afghanistan and outside modern India get shorter shrift. This is most shockingly true as exposed in the movie Bones of the Buddha, where a stupa or dolmen ("portal tomb") was opened, its treasures looted and taken to England, and rather than being clawed back by the Indian government or Buddhists was allowed to be passed on from the British excavator (looter) to his son, who keep this priceless Buddhist treasures in his little cottage in England, much of it under his bed. Ancient Scythians and other tribes all over Central and North Asia built these funerary sites, reliquaries, mounds to enshrine significant individuals. Originally, they were topped with statuary figures rather than the pagodas that came to be in South, East, and Southeast Asia.
Giant prehistoric dolmens in the Caucasus built with advanced technology
(Universe Inside You) Aug. 14, 2024: Join us in fueling our mission to create insightful videos backed by thorough research by supporting us on Patreon or PayPal: universeinsideyou (paypal.com/donate...). All support can help UIY dive even deeper into topics that matter, enabling them to produce engaging content that informs and inspires. By contributing, one is not just backing a project, one is empowering a wealth of knowledge to be shared. Stand with UIY as they strive to bring meaningful videos to life. Every contribution counts.
Discover a world of creativity at this art and merchandise shop: teespring.com/stores/universe...
Join on:
Instagram: universe.inside.you
Facebook: universalloving. For Spanish-narrated videos, visit UIY's Spanish channel: universe inside you español#universeinsideyou
All materials on this site are submitted by editors and readers. All images, unless otherwise noted, were taken from the Internet and are assumed to be in the public domain.
In the event that there is still a problem, issue, or error with copyrighted material, the break of the copyright is unintentional and noncommercial, and the material will be removed immediately upon presented proof.
Contact us by submitting a comment marked "private."
Do not follow this journal if you are under vinaya or parental restrictions. Secure protection by Sucuri.
Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at creativecommons.org/about/licenses.
.jpg)
This was the Indo-Scythian land of the Sakas (Shakyas). These formerly nomadic horse-riding warriors (not caste kshatriyas) were very strange compared to the people of Magadha and neighboring kingdoms where Prince Siddhartha Gautama, renouncing his kingdom of Kapilavastu, went in search of spiritual answers, namely, "What do we suffer, and what can be done about it." The Magadhis and people we would today label as Indians spoke poorly of the barbarians in the Northwest frontier. They did things that ran contrary to the post-Indus Valley Civilization peoples guided by Brahmin priests and their Vedas and countless creeds, belief systems, and practices.
