Story of Stupa - 2000 years of history

स्तुप को कथा - २००० वर्ष देखिको

Story of Stupa

Extracts from Book "Stupa-Chaitya: The Origin of Buddhist Art and Architecture" by Sumati Bajracharya.

The book describes the origins of Stupa and Chaitya an extraordinary piece of monuments in the Kathmandu Valley and many places in South Asia. The describes the origin, styles and architecture of them.
This is an extract from the book written in Khas Nepali language. Now the extract is in Khas Nepali language written in Nepali Script. It goes on like this:
   Even before the nirvana(death) of lord Budhha, Stupa has been erected in honor of the special relics, that needed to be worshiped or respected. After the nirvana (death) of Guatam Budhha, it was decided to build a stupa with the relics. But so as not to bring any contention among the kings and rulers at that time a Kumbha(urn - volume measuring tool) was used and the relics(Asthidhatu) were divided to eight parts  and distributed to eight areas. Then using those ashes eight Stupa at Vaishali, Kushinagar, Magadh, Kpilvastu, Alkaap, Raamgram, Vesthideep and Pawa were constructed.
   The honor towards the lord was so intense that a Stupa was made using the same measuring Pathi as well. The Maurya people even collected the coal used to cremate the Budhha's body and made a Stupa out of it in Pippali.
   Thus ten Stupas were made immediately after the nirvana of Budhha.
   After many years emperor Ashok dismantled all eight of the original Stupa and divided the ashes(AsthiDhatu) to 84,000 (Eight-four thousand) parts. He made 84,000 Stupa/Chaitya from that in many different and far away lands.
  The Stupa made by Ashoka are present in many places till date including in Kathmandu and Lalitpur.   


 Extracts from the Book:

For Further reading refer to book: