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ishness provided by donations from India's wealthy elite. I wanted to know if what I had heard was true: that these shrines were not being built according to vastu. Sudesh waved his hand at me as if to shoo away my question and responded that he did not know. "It's the ancient temples," he said, "that take your breath away." |
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Sudesh and I did discuss incredible events that surrounded the recent history of a vastu-designed Hindu temple that has been renovated over the centuries and even existed for a while as a Buddhist shrine. The Badrinath shrine rests in an ethereal setting, nestled in a high mountain valley in the Himalayas. A tourist brochure says of the old shrine, which is the holiest of four sacred shrines in this mountain range: "There are many sacred spots of pilgrimage in the heavens, earth and nether world, but there has been none equal to Badri, nor shall there be."20 |
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The Badrinath Temple is dedicated to the Hindu deity Vishnu, who, legend says, was punished and forced to sit in meditation in this spot in the valley after he permitted Lakshmi, his consort, to commit the indiscretion of massaging his feet. The meditative pose of the black stone representation of Vishnu recalls the Buddha, which is not a coincidence. The Buddha is the ninth avatar or incarnation of Vishnu. This also explains why this Hindu shrine was converted temporarily into a Buddhist shrine. |
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Throngs of Hindu devout pay homage to Vishnu at this extraordinarily sacred shrine. While the temple now has colorfully painted exterior walls, its garbhagriha, which has never been modified since its original construction thousands of years ago, is humble in comparison to the ornately carved Kandariya Mahadeva in Khajuraho. This is probably intentional. The temple site in a valley, which is 3,133 meters (10,276 feet) above sea level, is so spectacular that the modest shrine has a splendor that sets it apart from and above many other man-made creations. |
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The Badrinath Temple also rests in an earthquake belt. In 1991 a quake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale rattled through this part of the |
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20Uttar Pradesh: A to Z (Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Department of Tourism, undated). |
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