The Key West Citizen

Buddha's Death Commemorated
By EUGENE LEVIN

NEW DELHI, India (AP)—India is taking the lead in worldwide celebrations of the 2,500th anniversary of the death of Gautama, the Hindu prince who founded Buddhism.
Buddhist pilgrims from all over Asia are expected to visit India by the thousands to pray at the historic sites associated with Gautama, who became the Buddha—“The Enlightened one.”
Buddhism has relatively few followers in India, where the religion was born. But it remains strong in Japan, Ceylon, Burma, Thailand and Tibet, and many pilgrims from those countries are expected in India in the coming months.
Prime Minister Nehru will launch the celebrations when he lays the foundation stone of a commemorative monument in New Delhi next Wednesday.
The following day, known as Buddha Purnima, has been picked generally as the best day to begin the actual death anniversary celebrations, which will last throughout the year.
Buddha Purnima marks the day that Prince Gautama, sitting under a pipul tree at Bodh Gaya in Bihar state, attained “enlightenment” by conceiving his “law of life.”
Most of the pilgrims are expected to head for Bihar state, in northeast India, to visit Bodh Gaya and the area of Benares, where the prince delivered his first sermon as the Buddha.
India is spending more than three million dollars on the celebration. Many ancient Buddhist temples and ruins are being renovated. New roads and rest houses are ready for the pilgrims, who will also visit Lumbini, birthplace of Buddha just across the Indian border inside the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal.
Buddhist countries outside India are planning their own celebrations. Perhaps the most spectacular will be in Ceylon, at the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy. There a tooth said to be one of Buddha's is kept in shrine.
But Nehru and the Congress party have seized upon the opportunity of Buddha's death anniversary to emphasize their views on the international scene.
A Congress party resolution said the message of Buddha is needed “more than ever before” in this age of “growing violence and terrible weapons of destruction.”
Apparently Prince Gautama sought more to reform Hinduism than to create a new religion. But it developed as a separate faith, spreading over India and most of Asia.
In India Buddhism went into a gradual decline, with Hinduism eventually accepting Buddha as an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu.