Lumbini Park

Lumbini Park is one of the hotspots in Hyderabad - it's kind of an interesting hybrid between an amusement park and a manicured garden. The main attraction is the boat ride out to the Buddha (pronounced "bood - THA", not "BOOD-ah" - which means "old man" in Hindi as my students tell me after a little snickering) which is one of the largest Buddha statues in the world. It was dedicated by the Dalai Lama himself, who currently resides in exile from Tibet in Dharamsala which is in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, somewhere in the mid 1990's. The 17.5 meter high Buddha statue is fashioned from just a single piece of stone and was completed in 1990. Unfortunately, it was so heavy (350 tons) that it sank the barge it was being transported on (hmm... this is a good buoyancy problem). It was salvaged from the bottom of the Hussain Sagar (this is the name of the large lake in which it currently calls home) and placed on a small island in 1992 and is a Hyderabad landmark.

Hyderabad is an interesting crossroads of Indian religions - it has been historically ruled by Muslim Kings, earlier during the reign of the Qutb Shahs (17th century from the Golconda Fort area) to the Nizam family more recently before independance. Even during the British Raj, the Nizam's Hyderabad was considered a princely state by the British, and was given the authority to carry out day-to-day governance of the region. Despite Muslim rule a majority of Hyderabad is Hindu and there are also Christians, Jains, and Buddhists.

The Dalai Lama is the most significant monk of Tibetan Buddhism - a religion which has had significant impact in the southern and eastern regions of Asia. It has waned in popularity over the centuries but has seen a resurgance in the past few decades (especially beyond the borders of India). In the 1959 Chinese invasion, the Dalai Lama fled Tibet for the neighboring mountain regions of northern India and was granted asylum by the first president of India, Jawarhalal Nehru.

Buddhism and the forms of ascetic life that it teaches, began in India in 556 BC with the birth of Siddhartha Guatama to the Kshatriya caste (noblemen and warriors). You can read more about the Buddha from Wikipedia by clicking here (I can feel the Humanities faculty at CHS cringing right now).