Mulagandhakuti Vihara, Sarnath
Sarnath, India · 1949–1956
25.38030°N, 83.02290°E
Key Facts
- ◆ A spacious rectangular hall with frescoes on all walls and a chapel housing a life-size gilded image of the Buddha, built in pink sandstone by Anagarika Dharmapala in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
- ◆ Sangharakshita received his bhikkhu higher ordination in November 1950 at the adjacent Burmese Temple (presiding monk: U Kittima).
- ◆ During the 1956 Buddha Jayanti pilgrimage he returned and discovered that U Kittima had been living with a woman — placing the validity of his own ordination in question.
- ◆ The Dhamekh Stupa marked the spot where the Buddha delivered the First Sermon; it dominates the excavated area.
- ◆ Sangharakshita visited Sarnath at least four or five times between 1949 and 1956.
“In the course of the last seven years I had visited Sarnath at least four or five times, more than once staying there for a few days, and was familiar with its excavated area, dominated by the massive bulk of the Dhamekh Stupa, its two or three modern temples or monasteries, its archaeological museum, and its Birla dharamśālā or pilgrims’ rest house, as well as with the half-dozen Sinhalese bhikkhus who ran the Maha Bodhi Society’s activities there and cared for the Mulagandhakuti Vihara, the pink sandstone temple built by Anagarika Dharmapala in the late twenties and early thirties.”
— In the Sign of the Golden Wheel
“On the opposite side of the excavated area from the Mulagandhakuti Vihara stood the modest structure that was the Burmese temple. It was in this temple, almost exactly six years earlier, that I had received my bhikkhu ordination.”
— In the Sign of the Golden Wheel
Source: In the Sign of the Golden Wheel
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