“Buddha-Gaya,” or “Bodhi-Gaya,” in Upper India, is famous as the locality of the holy pipal tree, or the Booddha-drum (“Tree of Knowledge”), under which for six years sat Sakya Sinha, in meditation, before he attained to Booddha-hood. A temple still standing on that site is supposed to have been rebuilt A.D. 1306, on the remains of one visited by Hwen Thsang, a Chinese traveler, in the seventh century of our era, which, in turn, had been built by Amara Sinha, or Amara Deva, about A.D. 500. This earlier temple is said to have been built by a command of Booddha himself conveyed in a vision, or by a command of the Brahmanical Mahâdeva, on the site of a still earlier sanctuary, or monastery, erected by Asoka between 259 and 241 B.C., on the site of Booddha’s meditations, about 300 B.C.[[445]] The existing temple has been called at different times “Buddha-pad” and “Vishnu-pad,” “Booddha’s foot” and “Vishnoo’s foot.”
Kuru-Kshetra, or the “Plain of Kuru,” near Delhi, India, has been deemed holy ground from time immemorial. At Thâvesar, on this plain, a temple of Siva was built on a site that was sacred long before Sivaism was known. It is even believed that the sacredness of this site runs back to the ancient times of the Rig Veda. The boundaries of this “Holy Land” are given in the great Hindoo epic, the Mahabharata. This plain is said to comprise three hundred and sixty holy shrines, each of which is erected on a foundation sacred from the times of the gods themselves.[[446]]
So general, in India, is this habit of building a sanctuary on an old sacred foundation, that it is said that “the erection of a mosk by a Muhammadan conqueror always implies the previous destruction of a Hindu temple.”[[447]] Thus a mosk erected by the emperor Altamash, A D. 1232, is supposed to have been on the foundation of a temple of the sun, built for Raja Pasupati about A.D. 300.[[448]] Not a new foundation, but an old one, was sought, in India, for a new temple, even to a god newly worshiped there.
Fourteen centuries before Christ, Pan-Kăng, an emperor of China, moved his capital from north of the Ho to south of it because he had ascertained that the original foundation was attempted to be laid there by his ancestor Thang in the Shing dynasty, seventeen reigns before him; hence the removal back to that first foundation would renew the blessing of Thang upon his descendants.[[449]]
A temple has added sacredness in China according as its foundation is on a spot originally chosen or honored by a representative of Heaven as a threshold of a place of worship. Thus Tai Shan, or the “Great Mount,” in the province of Shantung, China, is mentioned in the Shoo King, or Book of Records, as the site of the great Emperor Shun’s altar of sacrifice to Heaven, 2254 B.C., or, say, three centuries before the time of Abraham. On this holy mountain, as the earliest historic foundation of Chinese worship, “is the great rendezvous of devotees, every sect has there its temples and idols, scattered up and down its sides;” and great multitudes come thither to worship from near and far.[[450]]
This idea shows itself in modern discoveries among the ruins of ancient Greece. It appears that when Pericles (437 B.C.) began his building of the new Propylæa on the Acropolis, he would have cleared away the remains of such ancient sacred structures as stood within its outline. “The plan of Mnesikles the architect was very simple, and is still clear enough, though it was never fully carried out.” “That the original plan of Mnesikles had undergone modifications was long ago seen by every architect who made the Propylæa matter of serious study.” Dr. Dörpfeld thinks he has discovered how the plan was modified, and why. The enforced departure from the original plan seems to have been because that plan involved the destruction of shrines on an earlier foundation, with a threshold that might not be moved. The gate of Cimon, with its “statue of some guardian god of the gate,–it may be Hermes Propylaios himself,”–was within that outline, and also other sacred sites.
“Against such intrusion it is very likely the priesthood rose and protested, and, before even the foundations were laid, he had to give up, at least for the time, the whole of the southeast hall, and a part of the southwest wing.” This conclusion is the result of recent investigation by careful scholars, and it is in accordance with the ascertained fact that in primitive thought an original foundation for a temple or shrine is counted sacred for all time as the foundation there for such a place of worship, not to be swept away or ignored in any rebuilding or new building.[[451]]
When from any reason, in early Europe, an ancient shrine must be removed from its primitive foundation, it was deemed desirable to remove to the new site a portion of the foundation itself, as well as the sanctuary or altar above that foundation. Thus, for example, when Thorolf of Norway, who had charge of the temple of Thor in Mostur, removed to Iceland in A.D. 833, he took with him the temple posts and furniture “and the very earth on which the altar of that idol had been erected.” And when he landed in Iceland, Thorolf built a new temple of Thor, with an altar on the foundation which he had brought from the earlier shrine. A thousand years after this the foundation-site of that second temple was still pointed out near Hofstad, in Iceland.[[452]]
Bible language and narrative abound with incidental evidence of the commonness of this primitive idea. When Jacob, on his way to Haran, came to Beth-el–a House of God–he lighted on “the place” (hammaqâm) where,[[453]] long before, his ancestor Abraham had worshiped, as he came from Egypt by way of the Negeb.[[454]] And yet earlier Abraham himself, as he came a pilgrim from Haran and Ur, had there “builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord.”[[455]] And if that place were already known as Beth-el it must have been a sanctuary before Abraham’s day.
Moses, in the wilderness of Sinai, is told that the ground whereon he stands is “holy ground,” and that he is to bring the Hebrews out of Egypt to worship God in that mountain.[[456]] And the Egyptian records give reason for supposing that that region of Mt. Sinai, perhaps of the moon-god “Sin,” was known as holy ground, and as the “land of God,” or of the gods, before the days of Moses.[[457]]