它的出土
When the Mahabodhi temple was re-discovered by Alexander Cunningham and Major Mead in 1875, it opened a new chapter in Buddhist religious studies. They saw its top portion gently jutting out of the earth and, after extensive excavations, uncovered the 52-metre-high temple. Today, it is one of the four places of great significance in the historical legacy and heritage of the Buddhist faith.
Art historian Benoy Behl says the temple survived as the earth had protected it for so many centuries. He says this probably happened as there was an international community of intellectuals at Gaya at that time who figured out the only way to protect the temple from Islamic invaders was to bury it under a mound of earth. The Nalanda and Vikramshila universities had already been destroyed, along with numerous temples in various parts of India. "As a scale of human activity, this was probably greater than making of the pyramids. Just imagine thousands of devotees piling up millions of cubic feet of earth over such a huge temple," says Behl.
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