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Public exposition of the most sacred Buddha relics from Sarnath
View(s):The sacred Buddha relics enshrined at the Mulagandhakuti Vihara at Sarnath in India were brought for public veneration yesterday on a request from the Prime Minister’s Office. This is only the second time these relics discovered by British archaeologists in colonial India in 1913 and handed over to the Maha Bodhi Society of India for custody have left India, and the first time brought to Sri Lanka in nearly a hundred years.
Picture shows Ven. Pelewatte Seewali Thera, General Secretary of the Maha Bodhi Society of India and India’s High Commissioner Taranjit Singh Sandhu carrying the historic relics from the Air India aircraft that brought the relics from Varanasi via New Delhi to Colombo. Parliament Speaker Karu Jayasuriya accepted the sacred relics on behalf of the Government of Sri Lanka.
Members of the clergy, representatives of the Anagarika Dharmapala Trust and the Maha Bodhi Society of India and government officials from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were present at the airport for the arrival ceremony from where a special motorcade took the relics to Temple Trees where theywill be kept till May 2.
