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Buddhism
The modern districts of
Gaya, Nawada, Aurangabad, Nalanda and
Patna may be described as the holy land of Buddhism. These districts contain a
fairly large number of places associated with the life and teachings of Buddha, the
great founder of Buddhism. It was at Gaya that Gautama spent long years of
penance and meditation before he finally attained Nirvana. It was to Gaya that
he turned at an early stage in his search of truth. The tree under which he
attained enlightenment thus became most sacred to Buddhists and worship
has consequently centred it from the earliest period of Buddhism. Bihar became
the last refuge of Buddhism in northern India up to the time of the
Mohammedan conquest. The Biharis still revere the Buddha today just as deeply as
they honour Krishna, Rama, Shankara,
Ramanuja, Kabir (poet) and Nanak (Sikh guru). They honour him
as an avatar.
Jainism
Jains in Bihar are the followers of the Tirthankaras.
Vardhamana Mahavira, their last Tirthankara was born about the middle of the
sixth century B.C. at Kundagrama near Vaishali, about 27 miles north of Patna,
in Bihar. Vardhamana Mahavira renounced the world and became an ascetic. He
lived a life of extreme self-mortification under a shala tree on the banks of
the river, Rijupalika, where he achieved the state called nirvana or Kaivalya.
He was acclaimed as a Kevalin (supreme omniscient), jina (conqueror), arhat
(blessed one) and Tirthankara (ford-finder). In a long wandering life of 42
years in north and south Bihar, he gathered a considerable following of monks
known as Nirgrathas, or men who discarded all social bonds who after Mahavira's
death became known as Jains.
The Jains believe God as such does not exist. A liberated
soul, that of a prophet or Jinas is god. Absolute truth comes only to these
periodic Redeemers. The universe-plants, animals and human is a plurality
of Jivas, all subject to the cosmic process of Karma and rebirth. One can
free oneself through austerity and penance. Mahavira breathed his last at a
place called Pavapuri near Patna. A large number of Jain monks too died on the
famous Parasnath, a
mountain take its name from the twenty-third Jain Tirthankara.
Sikhism
Patna was the birth place of Gobind Singh, the tenth and last
guru of the Sikh brotherhood and the site where the Guru was born is marked by a
temple containing his cradle and shoes. It was Guru Gobind Singh who gave the
present militaristic form and character to the originally pacifist Sikh
religion.
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