The Encyclopedia of World Religions

430 S stupa

Eight kings received his remains and enshrined them in mounds known as stupas. In the third cen tury B . C . E . the Indian emperor A SOKA is said to have dug up the remains and built 84,000 stupas. Many other stupas were built later. Stupas take different shapes. In India and Sri Lanka stupas are often large hemispheric mounds surrounded by a fence. A good example is the ancient stupa at Sanchi, India. The stupa at Boro budur, Indonesia, is a massive, terraced mound, each terrace smaller than the one below it. Its carved decorations depicting the life of the Buddha are world-famous. In east Asia stupas are towers of as many as 13 layers.

1998); R. Laurence Moore, In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977); Christine Wicker, Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town That Talks to the Dead (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003). stupa A Buddhist shrine that contains a relic of the B UDDHA . Stupas are also known as dagobas (southeast Asia), pagodas (east Asia), and chor tens (Tibet). When the Buddha died or, as Buddhists say, entered the parinirvana, his body was cremated.

The Great Stupa from the south, located in Sanchi, Madhya Pradesh, India (Borromeo/Art Resource, NY)