The Site of Buddha's First Sermon – Sarnath

After the light show, Gord told me he was going to go to a place called Sarnath. I had read the name of the place on Wikitravel, but I didn't know any more about it. I could have tried to get to the fort one more time, but Sarnath was an equal choice and I decided to go with Gord. He also talked to another person about going and we all ended up heading to the spot together. We headed to the train station, where information suggested that we could catch a bus to Sarnath. This turned out to be not so. There was no bus to Sarnath, and we could only take an auto-rickshaw. Or so we were told. Although we weren't exactly sure about that, we didn't have any other way to find out, so we haggled a price to get out there and headed to the temple of Sarnath.

Sarnath is an archaeological site related to Buddha and is one of four such sites that are important in the life of Buddha. It lay in ruins and had been largely taken apart by later people seeking to reuse the materials of the monastery for other buildings. It was rediscovered by a man who came to the area in search of a way to rejuvenate Buddhism in India. That man was Anagarika Dharmapala. When we arrived at the Sarnath temple we first entered the working temple. There was a statue of Anagarika Dharmapala. He discovered Sarnath in bad condition and set about restoring it to its former glory. Somewhere along the way, some ruins of a previous temple/monastery were also discovered. Legend had it that Buddha made his first sermon at the spot and the monastery was built later.

We arrived both a day late and also on something of an auspicious day for the temple. On the full moon of November of every year there are relics of Buddha, possessed by the temple at Sarnath, that are put out on display. The full moon of November happens to coincide with Dev Deepawali and I was otherwise engaged at the time. We went to Sarnath on the day after the full moon and the relics had been re-stored away. Oh well. On the other hand, some seemingly well-respected of Buddhism happened to be present at the temple, and so we got to watch people walking around with him making sure he had enough shade. I did kind of wonder who he was and how important he might have been.

The temple itself was well-restored, but seemed very new and hardly seemed to be the old thing it really is.

Gord got into a conversation with a monk-like seeming guy at the temple and lagged behind while he was talking. Olivia and I headed towards the archaeological site, but were blocked by a locked gate. We saw some people coming in by what looked like some kind of entrance at the back and thought we might be able to get in some way from the back of the temple. There seemed to be a ticket booth in that direction, so Olivia went to wait there and I went to see about Gord. While I was doing that, Olivia went ahead and bought entrance tickets. But when we arrived and met up again, it turned out that we had tickets to get into the zoo. A little zoo. A rather pathetic little zoo. There were a few birds, a couple of crocodiles and a little lake with a boat and boatman eagerly trying to drum up business. He didn't find any from us.

We got a bit split up with Olivia kind of disappearing, I assumed, to head into the archaeological park itself. Eventually Gord and I followed and, for only 20 times the entrance price for an Indian, we got into the park. However, in something that actually impressed me no end, there was no camera fee. Small things impress small minds I suppose.

Inside there was some very restored ruins. They were so restored that they mostly didn't look like they might have been real ruins. I suspect this might have been the reason that, even though it was such an important site in Buddhism, it was not a World Heritage site. Nevertheless, because the whole site had been basically razed, the whole plan of a monastery was clear. And it was quite a large area, although I have seen larger monasteries.

The one structure that remained relatively intact over time was the Damekh Stupa, apparently built right on the place where Buddha gave the first sermon after his enlightenment. It was quite large, for a stupa. I was impressed in spite of myself.

And that is where we were reunited with Olivia who had been waiting and spending the time getting stared at and sitting in the shade of some bushes. But maybe not in that order. We headed out and got some lunch and then made our way back to Varanasi.

The rest of the day was just chillin'. It was good.