Tag: Heritage

HERITAGE: THE TREE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Source:-dawn.com

Archaeologists may find history on the ocean floor, inside caves and buried underground. But it is also interesting to see how a living tree has shaped human history.

In the subcontinent, particularly in India, the Peepal (ficus Religiosa or Banyan) tree is known as the Bodhi or wisdom tree. Men of legend and faith, Lord Buddha and King Ashoka, have sat under it in meditation. Mahatma Gautama attained Buddhahood (enlightenment) sitting under the shade of the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya in India and hence it is known as the Mahabodhi tree or the tree of great awakening.

A direct linear descendant of the Mahabodhi tree was presented to President Ayub Khan when he visited Sri Lanka in December 1963. Zulifqar Ali Bhutto, then the foreign minister of Pakistan planted the sapling in a simple ceremony on January 18, 1964, in the Taxila Museum.

“We have failed to receive the boon we should have from the Mahabodhi tree here in Pakistan,” laments Dr Saifur Rehman Dar, celebrated author, archaeologist and former Director General Department of Archaeology and Museums (DOAM) Punjab. At the time of the plantation of this living relic of Gautama Buddha in Taxila, Dar was the museum curator.

Buddhists have great reverence for all religious relics such as the bodily remains of the Buddha, left over after his cremation. They erected stupas over the remains. The Dharmarajika Stupa in Taxila is one of the eight erected by Ashoka to contain the remains of the Sakya Muni.

It is in the same tradition that the Bodhi tree is revered. Since it is a living plant, it is said to be a living connection to Mahatama Budha and the event of his finding enlightenment sitting under it. It is believed that the Buddha sat meditating under the tree for seven weeks without food or water. And after attaining enlightenment, Buddha spent seven days standing in front of the tree gazing at it with gratitude. Buddhists consider the tree as an individual in its own right and it is venerated and approached with piety.

In fact, the original Mahabodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, India was killed thrice in recorded history. The first time was around 230 BC, when Tissarakkha, the jealous second wife of Mauryan Emperor Ashoka the Great, destroyed it with poisonous Mandu Thorns.

According to the seventh-century Chinese traveller Xuanzang, who wrote of the tree in detail, the tree was again cut down in the second century BC by King Pushyamitra Sunga, a violent ruler and persecutor of Buddhist beliefs. The last time was in 600 CE by King Shashanka, when Budhism went into decline and survived only outside India in Tibet, China, Nepal, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, the Far East and Japan.

There is considerable doubt whether the present tree in the Sri Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya, Bihar, is really a scion of the original tree. Indeed, the present Mahabodhi tree, planted at the original location in 1881 by British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham — after the earlier one was destroyed in a storm in 1876 — likely represents the successor of a long line of substitutions.

Fortunately, Mauryan Emperor Ashoka’s son Mahindra, and a Buddhist nun Sanghamitta Maha Theri — said to be Ashoka’s daughter and accordingly called a princess — had brought the southern branch of the original Mahabodhi tree from Bodh Gaya to Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka in 236 BC. According to Buddhist sources, the Buddha had resolved five things on his death bed; one being that the branch that detaches itself from the tree should be taken to Sri Lanka for propagation. This tree lives on and is called the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi. The Mahabodhi tree in the Taxila Museum is a plant cloned from the Sri Mahabodhi tree and is the closest authentic link to the living Buddha.

It is, however, unfortunate that the Mahabodhi tree in Taxila has been neglected and starved of sunshine. Surrounded by tall trees in the backyard of the Taxila Museum, it has grown tall and lanky like a reed. Dar suggests the DOAM should consult experts to ensure the Mahabodhi tree is nourished to good health. “It is a national treasure and will go a long way in attracting more Buddhist tourists to Taxila and Gandhara,” he says.

The current curator Taxila Museum, Mohammad Nasir Khan, says the impression that the Bodhi tree has been forgotten is incorrect. “Recently, we had the cement removed from around the Bodhi tree so that it has only soil around its roots and the trunk. A safety enclosure has also been constructed round it to keep it safe from being vandalised or accidently damaged by visitors to the museum.”

The executive director of the Centre for Culture and Development Dr Nadeem Omar Tarar believes that the DOAM should form a committee of experts to ensure care for the Mahabodhi tree in Taxila. “They should try to root cuttings from it, rather than have a significant cultural marker of Buddhism grow in isolation in the backyard of the museum,” he says. Tarar has been working to promote a revival of Gandhara art, culture and scholarship in Pakistan to attract religious tourism from abroad. He is also rallying support to use the Taxila Mahabodhi tree for scion wood (a technique used for grafting) to establish Mahabodhi trees at all the important Buddhist sites across the greater Gandhara region, starting from the Buddhist temple in Islamabad.

Patna’s Over Century-Old Heritage Market Demolished In Smart City Project

Source: ndtv.com


Patna:  The over 100-year-old Gole Market in Patna, a unique heritage building constructed as the Bihar capital’s first planned municipal market, has been demolished by local authorities as part of a Smart City project.

The demolition work began on Friday and by Sunday the historic landmark, located in the heart of Patna and endowed with beautiful red-tiled roof, was reduced to a skeletal shell.

“The Gole Market was demolished as part of a major redevelopment project of the railway station area under the Smart City initiative. Other markets lining the streets are also being knocked down as part of the mega project,” Patna Municipal Commissioner Anupam Kumar Suman told news agency Press Trust of India.

As part of this Smart City project, the now-dismantled Gole Market, located near Patna Junction, will make way for a seven-storeyed commercial complex and a modern municipal market along with a vending zone will come up in the area adjoining the Station Road, he said.

Popularly known as Gole Market, among the local people, it was Patna’s first planned municipal market designed by architect Joseph Fearis Munnings while he was planning the layout of the “New Capital” city of colonial Patna after the creation of the new province of Bihar and Orissa in 1912.

Despite the historical value of the building, the demolition has drawn feeble protest from citizens of the city, but many people in Patna are angered by this “shocking move” of the Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC).

“This is just madness. It was a historical building and should have been preserved. But, instead of restoring and reusing it as a cafe or something, the corporation razed it,” said city-based researcher and author Arun Singh.

“One by one the local government is knocking down heritage buildings in the city. This is an attempt to erase the colonial history of Patna in the name of development,” he alleged.

In December last year, the 133-year-old Anjuman Islamia Hall, perhaps the first public hall of Patna, was demolished to make way for a modern complex.

The heritage market had faced decades of neglect and its occupant shopkeepers had been feeling the shadow of the wrecking ball for years as local authorities had planned a redevelopment project much earlier too, which kept on getting stalled, a local shopkeeper, who did not wish to be named, said.

“My grandfather had a meat shop in it during the British time, and elite of the city would come in their cars to buy meat, fish, chicken, eggs, grocery and milk. It should have been preserved,” he said.

City-based 84-year-old architect and INTACH Patna Chapter Convener J K Lall also expressed shock and anger over the demolition of Gole Market.

“It was a unique single-storeyed building with a raised central hexagonal core topped with elegant red-tiled roof and two flanks came out of it and again it was topped with red tiles of the colonial-era Burn & Co. It was a perfect building and a perfect setting for a heritage cafe,” he told PTI.

“Smart City also means preserving our architectural legacy and not just building new ones,” he said.

PMC Commissioner Suman, when asked why the building was demolished, said, the Gole Market was “coming in the middle” of the layout of the Smart City project plan.

“There were suggestions made to us by a few heritage lovers to preserve the building and reuse it as a cafe. We tried but the market structure was coming in the way of the plan. So, we had no option left but to knock it down,” he said.

“Also, besides the fact that it was designed 100 years ago by Munnings as the first municipal market, there was not much heritage value of it. And, sometimes we have to lose something old to build a new, better future,” the municipal commissioner said.

However, the iron shell of the building and whatever can be salvaged will be stored and later reused in a new gazebo at the site, Mr Suman said.

“That gazebo will be built with new material and old material from the dismantled Gole Market. We are trying to look into our archives to know about the history of the building, which along with old pictures would be displayed there, so that people will know there was a Gole Market here,” he said.

Retired bureaucrat R N Dash, who served as the district magistrate of Patna from 1972-74 and Divisional Commissioner from 1983-85, also said that demolition was a “wrong move” and that restoration and proper rehabilitation of local shopkeepers should have been planned instead.

“The overall master plan should have ensured the preservation of the market and other heritage buildings, and Smart City project should have factored that in. Converting it into a cafe was a good idea and people coming to these complexes would have visited too, so it was a win-win situation,” he said.

Ironically, Gole Market was also listed as a heritage building in a 2008 Bihar goverment publication — Patna: A Monumental History.

Mr Singh, whose book “Patna – Khoya Hua Shahar” came out early this year, talks about the history and glory days of this market, located in what is termed officially as the New Market area, falling between the railway station rotary and the Patna GPO roundabout. 

“In its heydays, it had a rose garden around it and six routes leading to it from the streets around it.

“British people including European women would visit there as would the Indians in their cars. Instead of restoring old charm, as done world over, Patna is wilfully destroying its own heritage,” he rued.