Did Man walk on the Moon?

As recently as yesterday, that too after attending a technical talk on the Chandrayans, somebody raised a doubt, about whether The Apollo Missions were true or fakes? Someone else clarified that such information has to be accepted mostly on FAITH only.

This led me to read up, once again, on the Apollo Missions, the facts as they stand, the conspiracy theories surrounding these missions and the counter arguments. 

First the Facts as presented…

First Landing of Man on the Moon – Apollo 11

The primary objective of Apollo 11 was to complete a national goal set by President John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961: perform a crewed lunar landing and return to Earth.

Additional flight objectives included scientific exploration by the lunar module (LM) crew; deployment of a television camera to transmit signals to Earth; and deployment of a solar wind composition experiment, seismic experiment package and a Laser Ranging Retroreflector. 

During the exploration, the two astronauts were to gather samples of lunar-surface materials for return to Earth. They also were to extensively photograph the lunar terrain, the deployed scientific equipment, the LM spacecraft, and each other, both with still and motion picture cameras. 

This was to be the last Apollo mission to fly a "free-return" trajectory, which would enable a return to Earth with no engine firing, providing a ready abort of the mission at any time prior to lunar orbit insertion.

Apollo 11 launched from Cape Kennedy on July 16, 1969, carrying Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin into an initial Earth-orbit of 114 by 116 miles. An estimated 650 million people watched Armstrong's televised image and heard his voice describe the event as he took "...one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" on July 20, 1969.

The Mission was made up of a command and service module, or CSM, Columbia, piloted by Collins which included the spacecraft-lunar module adapter, or SLA, containing the lunar module, or LM, Eagle.

The first EVA began when Armstrong emerged from the Eagle and deployed the TV camera for the transmission of the event to Earth. At about 109 hours, 42 minutes after launch, Armstrong stepped onto the moon. About 20 minutes later, Aldrin followed him. The camera was then positioned on a tripod about 30 feet from the LM. Half an hour later, President Nixon spoke by telephone link with the astronauts.

Commemorative medallions bearing the names of the three Apollo 1 astronauts who lost their lives in a launch pad fire, and two cosmonauts who also died in accidents, were left on the moon's surface. A one-and-a-half inch silicon disk, containing micro miniaturized goodwill messages from 73 countries, and the names of congressional and NASA leaders, also stayed behind.

During the EVA, in which they both ranged up to 300 feet from the Eagle, Aldrin deployed the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package (EASEP) and Armstrong and Aldrin gathered and verbally reported on the lunar surface samples. After Aldrin had spent one hour, 33 minutes on the surface, he re-entered the LM, followed 41 minutes later by Armstrong. The entire EVA phase lasted more than two-and-a-half hours, ending at 111 hours, 39 minutes into the mission.

Armstrong and Aldrin spent 21 hours, 36 minutes on the moon's surface. 

EVA refers to Extravehicular activity - Any activity done by an astronaut in outer space outside a spacecraft.

Trans-Earth injection of the CSM began on July 21. Two Television Transmissions each were made during the trans-moon and trans-earth courses. 

Re-entry procedures were initiated on July 24, 44 hours after leaving lunar orbit. The SM separated from the CM, which was re-oriented to a heat-shield-forward position. Parachute deployment occurred and after a flight of 195 hours, 18 minutes, 35 seconds - about 36 minutes longer than planned - Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, 13 miles from the recovery ship USS Hornet on July 24, 1969.

Subsequent Apollo Missions carrying Men – Apollo 12–17

Apollo 11 was followed by six further trips to the Moon, five of which landed successfully. 12 men walked on the lunar surface in total. But in 1970 future Apollo missions were cancelled. Apollo 17 became the last crewed mission to the Moon, for an indefinite amount of time. Taking place between 7 and 19 December 1972, it was a 12-day mission and broke many records, the longest space walk, the longest lunar landing and the largest lunar samples brought back to Earth. 

Harrison H. Schmitt was the lunar module pilot, as well as being a geologist. He was joined by Ronald E. Evans as command module pilot and Eugene Cernan as Mission Commander. 

Apollo 17 was the only Apollo mission to not carry any astronauts who had previously been test pilots. After the cancellation of Apollo 18, the Apollo mission Schmitt had originally intended to go on, the scientific community lobbied that he be put onto Apollo 17. 

Scientist-astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 lunar module pilot, collects lunar rake samples at Station 1 during the mission's first spacewalk at the Taurus-Littrow landing site (NASA)

Cernan was the last to leave the lunar surface, and therefore is the most recent person to stand on the Moon. As he ascended to the lunar module he said:

 ".. I'm on the surface; and, as I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come - but we believe not too long into the future - I'd like to just [say] what I believe history will record. That America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17."

At that time, it was known that no further crewed missions will be sent to moon for sometime.

Beginning of the Fake Controversy

It took 400,000 Nasa employees and contractors to put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969 – but only one man to spread the idea that it was all a hoax. His name was Bill Kaysing.

Kaysing said it started as “a hunch, an intuition”, before turning into “a true conviction” – that the US lacked the technical prowess to make it to the moon (or, at least, to the moon and back). Kaysing had actually contributed to the US space programme. Between 1956 and 1963, he was an employee of Rocketdyne, a company that helped to design the Saturn V rocket engines. In 1976, he self-published a pamphlet called 'We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle', which sought evidence for his conviction by means of grainy photocopies and various theories. He managed to establish a few perennial doubts, that are kept alive to this day in Hollywood movies and Fox News documentaries, Reddit forums and YouTube channels.

Despite the extraordinary volume of evidence (including 382kg of moon rock collected across six missions; corroboration from Russia, Japan and China; and images from the Nasa Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter showing the tracks made by the astronauts in the moon dust), belief in the moon-hoax conspiracy has blossomed since 1969. 

According to Guardian - Among 9/11 truthers, anti-vaxxers, chemtrailers, flat-Earthers, Holocaust deniers and Sandy Hook conspiracists, the idea that the moon landings were faked isn’t even a source of anger any more – it is just a given fact.

Until his death in 2005, Kaysing maintained that the whole thing was a fraud, filmed in a TV studio. “It’s well documented that Nasa was often badly managed and had poor quality control,” he told Wired in 1994. “But as of 1969, we could suddenly perform manned flight upon manned flight? With complete success? It’s just against all statistical odds.”

In a way, he was right. When the Soviets launched Sputnik 1 in October 1957 (followed one month later by Sputnik 2, containing Laika the dog), the US space programme was all but non-existent. Nasa was founded in 1958 and managed to launch Alan Shepard into space in May 1961 – but when John F Kennedy announced that the US “should commit itself to achieve the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth”, it seemed a stretch. By the mid-60s, Nasa was consuming more than 4% of the US federal budget, but while the Soviets were achieving more firsts – the first woman in space (1963), the first extra-vehicular activity, ie spacewalk (1965) – the Americans experienced various setbacks, including a launchpad fire that killed all three Apollo 1 astronauts.

This, however, can not be the basis for doubting a mission (a series of missions), witnessed by people all over the world, analysed, vetted and endorsed by an entire community of scientists, technocrats and astronauts from all over the world.

The supposed Anomalies and counter Arguments

The moon-hoax theory entered the modern era in 2001, when Fox News broadcast a documentary called Did We Land on the Moon? Hosted by the X-Files actor Mitch Pileggi, it repackaged Kaysing’s arguments for a new audience. So widespread was its popularity, that parents and school teachers started asking NASA for their version of justifications.

The 4 major questions/ theories proposed by Kaysing and developed further by others include

 The waving flag

Conspiracy theorists say:

In the footage, the US flag that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin rammed into the moon's regolith blows in the wind. But that is not possible, because there is no atmosphere on the moon.

 

Science says:

The flag did not flap. It only moved when the two astronauts touched it and rammed it into the ground. On Earth, the atmosphere quickly slows down such light oscillations. But on the moon - without atmosphere - the oscillations keep going for much longer. In addition, a cross strut was braced in the flag to give the impression it was blowing.

 No stars in the Photos

Conspiracy theorists say:

On the moon pictures, no stars are to be seen. So they were created in a studio.

 

Science says:

It's true that on the moon — without an atmosphere to disturb things — one should have a fantastic view of the starry cosmos. But when the astronauts were on the moon, it was always daytime. In fact the moon's surface, the lander and the astronauts were so brightly illuminated by the sun that the weak light of the stars would be impossible to be seen.

            

        The Photos were too perfect

Conspiracy theorists say:

The Hasselblad cameras carried by the astronauts at chest height had no viewfinder. How could the astronauts take so many perfect photos with them?

 

Science says:

Not all pictures were perfect. There are numerous blurred images in NASA's archives. Only the most beautiful ones have been published. In addition, the astronauts had time to practice with the Hasselblad cameras on Earth. A special wide-angle lens simplified focusing and allowed larger image sections.

        The shadows run diagonally

Conspiracy theorists say:

Some photos show shadows that do not run parallel to each other. With the sun as the only light source, however, all shadows should run in parallel. But they don't. That's why spotlights must have been involved.

 

Science says:

Parallelism is always a matter of perspective. Parallel lines on a three-dimensional surface always appear as if they are converging if they are imaged two-dimensionally. Think of railway tracks. They seem to converge towards the horizon, although they are always guaranteed to be parallel. This is true on earth and also on the moon. 

Fried by Radiation

Perhaps the most convincing argument that the landings were faked has to do with something called the Van Allen belts. These are two giant doughnut-shaped belts surrounding the Earth. They are made of highly energetic charged particles from the solar wind. Some people believe humans couldn’t have passed through these belts without being exposed to lethal doses of radiation.

This was a genuine concern before the Apollo missions. And it is the reason scientists behind Apollo 11 made sure they protected the astronauts as best they could. They insulated the spacecraft from radiation with an Aluminium shell. And they chose a trajectory from the Earth to the Moon which minimised the amount of time spent in the Van Allen belts.

Readings from the nine Apollo missions that reached the Moon showed the astronauts’ average radiation exposure was 0.46 radiation-absorbed dose (rad). This proved Nasa was right to shield the astronauts from radiation. Though it’s less than that experienced by some nuclear energy workers, 0.46 rad is around 10 times more than the radiation exposure of medical professionals who routinely work with x-ray and radiotherapy machines.

However the Moon fact is very clear. As of today, even with a powerful amateur telescope you can see the Apollo landing sites and, if you look at the photos from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, you can spot the remnants of the Apollo missions yourself.

In Conclusion

Of course, until we return to the Moon there will always be anomalies and oddities in the records that can spark new claims that the Moon landings were faked. But it is the sheer size and variety of this record that proves every one of these claims to be false.

From the Apollo Moon missions, there are 8,400 publicly available photos, thousands of hours of video footage, a mountain of scientific data, and full transcripts and audio recordings of all air-to-ground conversations. We even have 382 kilograms of Moon rock that Apollo astronauts brought back to Earth. These rocks have been independently verified as lunar by laboratories around the world, ruling out a US conspiracy.

If this is not enough,, Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) takes high resolution pictures of the lunar surface from a low orbit, even today. During its mission, it has captured the landing sites and the abandoned descent modules and rovers from the Apollo missions. And its resolution is so good it has picked up the dark squiggly paths that the astronaut’s footprints made. Spacecrafts from China, India and Japan have also spotted these landing sites, providing further independent verification of the landings.

Apart from all the above, is a simple instrument installed 54 years ago by Apollo 11. During their day on the Moon, Armstrong and Aldrin planted a lunar laser ranging retroreflector array on the surface. It’s still operational today, and allows us to reflect lasers off of it and measure the distance to the Moon down to the centimetre. We simply couldn’t do this if we hadn’t visited the Moon.

In Armstrong’s own words – If walking around on the surface of the moon was difficult (inspite of the TV cables wrapped around his feet), then correcting course and landing on the moon was ten times tougher -“far and away the most complex part of the flight. And we were not sure if we were ready for it till it happened".

That is until you compare it with the difficulty of maintaining a lie to the entire world for five decades without a single slip from any Nasa employee. You would also have to imagine that 2019-era special effects were available to Nasa in 1969 and not one of the 600 million TV viewers noticed anything amiss. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a decent indication of what Hollywood special effects could do at the time – and it’s extremely tacky. It genuinely was simpler to film on location.

Lastly in a homage to science and its achievements it is only fair to believe that that the 12 astronauts in total who have walked on the Moon and the 400,000 people involved in the Apollo programme would have neither the will nor the way to fake one of humanity’s greatest ever achievements.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/apollo-sites.html
The above link also offers latest evidence lending absolute credence to the Apollo Missions.

References :

·   One giant … lie? Why so many people still think the moon landings were faked - The Guardian

·   How do we know that we went to the Moon? – Institute of Physics

·   Did the Moon landing actually happen? – Made for Minds

·   Wikepedia and other sites

 

Why QWERTY? Why not ABCD?

As a two finger typist, I have often wondered about what could have been the rationale behind the QWERTY key board.

For the uninitiated lot, 

QWERTY is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard (Q W E R T Y). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to E. Remington and Sons in 1873. It became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878, and remains in ubiquitous use.

Who came first/ The Typist or the Keyboard?

As I was looking for the logic behind the design, a natural question came to my mind. Did the Typist decide the ultimate keyboard design or the other way round?

Surprisingly there are 2 theories regarding the History of Evolution of the keyboard design, each supporting a different option. 

However there is no dispute regarding who invented this keyboard and when? The options are only for Why?

History of the QWERTY Keyboard

QWERTY layout was developed along with, and inextricably linked to, early typewriters.

In the 1860s, a politician, printer, newspaper man, and amateur inventor in Milwaukee by the name of Christopher Latham Sholes spent his free time developing various machines to make his businesses more efficient. One such invention was an early typewriter, which he developed with Samuel W. Soulé, James Densmore, and Carlos Glidden, and first patented in 1868. The earliest typewriter keyboard resembled a piano and was built with an alphabetical arrangement of 28 keys. The team surely assumed it would be the most efficient arrangement. After all, anyone who used the keyboard would know immediately where to find each letter; hunting would be reduced, pecking would be increased. 

Experimental Sholes & Glidden typewriters circa 1873 The World of Typewriters

In 1873, Sholes after redesigning and re patenting his keyboard several times, arrived at the QWERTY. Then, along with his cohorts, he entered into a manufacturing agreement with gun-maker Remington, a well-equipped company familiar with producing precision machinery and, in the wake of the Civil War, looking for new business.  The deal with Remington proved to be an enormous success. By 1890, there were more than 100,000 QWERTY-based Remington produced typewriters in use across the country. 

The fate of the keyboard was further sealed in 1893 when the five largest typewriter manufacturers –Remington, Caligraph, Yost, Densmore, and Smith-Premier– merged to form the Union Typewriter Company and agreed to adopt QWERTY as the de facto standard that we know and love today.

Further Remington’s pre-merger business tactics ensured lifelong popularity for QWERTY. Remington didn’t just produce typewriters, they also provided training courses – for a small fee, of course. Typists who learned on their proprietary system would have to stay loyal to the brand, so companies that wanted to hire trained typists had to stock their desks with Remington typewriters. It’s a system that still works today, as illustrated by the Apple Ecosystem.

Thus QWERTY came to be.

U.S. Patent No. 207,559. The first appearance of the QWERTY keyboard. Google patents

Now to the question of the 

Logic behind QWERTY

Option 1 - The Typewriter/Keyboard decided its fate (Machine came before Man)

The popular theory states that Sholes had to redesign the early keyboard in response to the mechanical failings of early typewriters, which were slightly different from the models most often seen in antique stores and museums today. The type bars connecting the key and the letter plate hung in a cycle beneath the paper. If a user quickly typed a succession of letters whose type bars were near each other, the delicate machinery would get jammed. So, it is said, Sholes redesigned the arrangement to separate the most common sequences of letters like “th” or “he”. In theory then, the QWERTY system should maximize the separation of common letter pairings. This theory could be easily debunked for the simple reason that “er” is the fourth most common letter pairing in the English language. 

By 1873, the typewriter had 43 keys and a decidedly counter-intuitive arrangement of letters that supposedly helped ensure the expensive machines wouldn’t break down. Form follows function and the keyboard trains the typist. 

Option 2 - The Typist dictates the Design (Man decided the fate of the Machine)

The development of QWERTY design as a response to mechanical error, has been questioned by Kyoto University Researchers Koichi Yasuoka and Motoko Yasuoka. In a 2011 paper, the researchers tracked the evolution of the typewriter keyboard alongside a record of its early professional users. They conclude that the mechanics of the typewriter did not influence the keyboard design. Rather, the QWERTY system emerged as a result of how the first typewriters were being used. Early adopters and beta-testers included telegraph operators who needed to quickly transcribe messages. However, the operators found the alphabetical arrangement to be confusing and inefficient for translating morse code. The Kyoto paper suggests that the typewriter keyboard evolved over several years as a direct result of input provided by these telegraph operators. 

The Kyoto paper also cites the Morse lineage to further debunk the theory that Sholes wanted to protect his machine from jamming by rearranging the keys with the specific intent to slow down typists:

“The speed of Morse receiver should be equal to the Morse sender, of course. If Sholes really arranged the keyboard to slow down the operator, the operator became unable to catch up the Morse sender. We don’t believe that Sholes had such a nonsense intention during his development of Type-Writer.”

In this scenario, the typist came before the keyboard. 

Sholes Further Developments

Regardless of how he developed it, Sholes himself wasn’t convinced that QWERTY was the best system. Although he sold his designs to Remington early on, he continued to invent improvements and alternatives to the typewriter for the rest of his life, including several keyboard layouts that he determined to be more efficient, such as the following patent, filed by Sholes in 1889, a year before he died, and issued posthumously.

U.S. Patent No. 568,630, issued to C.L. Sholes after his death Google patents

Why QWERTY continued in the Computer era?

I was then obviously wondering, why this rather cumbersome design continued into the Era of Computers. Computers never got jammed.

But the reason is obvious. Millions of people had learned to type on the QWERTY keyboards. It had become truly ubiquitous in countries that used the Latin alphabet. 

Also, Teletype, the company that produced electronic typewriters and computer terminals widely used around the world, in the beginning, had adopted QWERTY, thereby ensuring its place as the new technological standard.

Competitors for QWERTY

Although, from time to time, there were competitors for QWERTY, the noteworthy ones are

Dvorak Simplified Keyboard

Developed by Dr. August Dvorak in the 1930s, Dvorak users reported faster and more accurate typing, in part because the system dramatically increases the number of words that can be typed using the “home” row of keys where your fingers naturally rest – also known as the keys you type when you’re just trying fill space. asjdfkal; sdfjkl; asdfjkl; asdfjkl; dkadsf. asdfjklasdfjk. 

But even in 1930 it was already too late for a new system to gain a foothold. While Dvorak certainly has its champions, it never gained enough of a following to overthrow King QWERTY. After all, the world learned to type using Remington’s keyboard.

Dvorak simplified Keyboard

KALQ  Keyboard

When a design depends on a previous innovation too entrenched in the cultural zeitgeist to change, it’s known as a path dependency. The new KALQ keyboard attempts to break from the tyranny of Christopher Latham Sholes, whose QWERTY system makes even less sense on the virtual keyboards of tablets and smartphones than it does on a computer keyboards. 

It has been designed around a very specific, very modern behavior – typing with thumbs. Like the telegraph operator QWERTY theory, the user is determining the structure of the keyboard. 

The KALQ keyboard (dubbed after the order the keys appear in the keyboard, analogous to QWERTY) is a keyboard layout that has been developed by researchers at the Montana Tech, University of St Andrews and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics as a split-screen keyboard for thumb-typing, which is claimed to allow a 34% increase in speed of typing for the people who use touchscreen. KALQ was released as a free app, albeit a beta, for Android-based smartphones. Although the KALQ project received some buzz in tech media, as of early 2017, the latest public version is dated October 2013, and still labelled a beta.

KALQ - For Thumb typing

In Conclusion....

Almost any system that has been developed wrt to Keyboard design (including the KALQ) , seems to be a product of path dependency. Because no matter how the letters are arranged, the basic notion of individually separated letters distributed across a grid dates back to Sholes and co. tinkering away in their Milwaukee workshops. Which does not meet any requirements of a tablet or Smartphone.

Which leads one to 2 more questions

• Is it at all possible to have a faster, more intuitive, more user friendly keyboard design? Would we have to start from scratch then? Preferably someone who has never used a keyboard to minimise influences?
• Why is our cutting edge technology, developing in leaps and bounds, still basing its design of a core Input component on something that dates more than 150 years ago, when design was a different ball game altogether?

Truly, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Thanx to

• Google, Wikepedia and umpteen sites and specifically
• Fact of Fiction? The Legend of the QWERTY Keyboard - Jimmy Stamp

 

Sarnath - Where Buddha spoke First!!

 

We visited Sarnath recently, as part of the Buddhayana trail arranged by the Heritage India group. Although, I had read enough and more about Sarnath, right from my school days, the site was a real surprise!

What we were witnessing were ruins 1500 - 2000 years old. Yet the systematic overall  planning of the complex, as well as the scale & proportions of the various buildings left me wonder struck. There was also a sense of calmness and serenity, inherent to the place which made the entire visit a delightful experience, not to mention the Greenery all around.

Overall Site

Site Plan of the Complex

Spread over     acres, Sarnath is broadly divided into 2 groups of monuments Group "A" is represented by the Chaukhandi Stupa, while all other monuments (e.g., temples, stupas, monasteries, and the pillar of Ashoka) are included as part of group "B".

Since Chaukandi Stupa was under renovation, we spent time only on the Group B Monuments.

As we approached along the pathway, the sun dappled pathways overlook the green vista dotted with the reddish brown, low level structures. Suddenly the stupa emerges into view and dominates the skyline.

The view is mesmerising, with all other ruins acting as a collective foreground for its beauty and scale.

                                                                                    

Before we get into the details of the various buildings, let us look at the importance of Sarnath in its religious and historic context

Sarnath and Buddha

Sarnath is one of the four most important Buddhist pilgrimage sites in the world, the other three being Lumbini (where Buddha was born), Bodhgaya (where Buddha attained enlightenment), and Kushinagar (where Buddha attained Parinirvana). 

Also known as Mrigadava, Migadāya, Rishipattana & Isipatana, the name refers to the deer park where Gautama Buddha first taught the Dharma, and where the Buddhist Sangha came into existence.

Gautama Buddha 

Life of Buddha - At Sarnath Museum

Siddhartha Gautama was born to a royal family of the Shakya dynasty sometime in the 6th century B.C. His mother died just a few days later, and the young prince was brought up by his father in a palace completely shielded from the realities of the outside world. Anything Gautama wanted his father would provide instantly. As he grew up, Gautama was allowed out of the palace on a few rare occasions, and it is during these forays out into the “real world” that he started to witness at first hand the level of human suffering that existed beyond the palace walls.

Although Gautama would go on to marry and even become a father, at the age of 29 he left the royal palace and adopted a life of wandering and meditation in order to understand the nature of human suffering.

After a period of harsh self-discipline, he decided to stop his extreme ascetic practices and sat down to meditate under a pipal tree with the determination not to get up until full awakening (sammā-sambodhi) had been reached. That tree where he attained enlightenment is known as the Bodhi tree, in Bodh Gaya in modern day Bihar.

Gautama thus became known as the Buddha or “Awakened One”, and travelled to Banaras (Varanasi) to teach others the truths he had realised. In a grove filled with deer just outside Banaras at a place called Mrigadaya (or Sarnath) he delivered his first sermon to a small group of five people who were to become his first followers. Buddha set in motion the wheel of Buddhist law (dhamma), and here at Sarnath first preached the Four Noble Truths, which are :

1. All life is suffering.
2. Suffering is caused by desire.
3. We may end suffering by removing craving and passion since all that we desire is perishable and changing.
4. We can get rid of craving and passion by methodically following a path.

The path he laid out consists of correct aspirations, correct views, correct speech, correct conduct, correct mindfulness, correct livelihood, correct effort and correct meditation. Following this path leads to the end of sorrow and to the attainment of peace, enlightenment, and nirvana.

Sarnath - Historical Context

Located about 13kms Northeast of Varanasi (India's famous religious town in Uttar Pradesh), Sarnath is near the confluence of the rivers Ganges & Varuna. This is the place, where around 528 BC, Gautama Buddha gave his first sermon. This first sermon was given to His first 5 disciples, who had been his companions earlier and who had abandoned him midway, in his struggle to find the middle path. 

These 5 disciples, Kaundinya, Assaji, Bhaddiya, Vappa and Mahanama had moved on to Sarnath; hence Sarnath became the designated spot for the first sermon. Buddha began the Way of Buddhism here, by preaching about Dharma for the first time. This sermon, called the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, was given on the full-moon day of Asalha.  Kaundinya was his first disciple who attained enlightenment.

Sarnath is also the place, where Buddha laid the foundation of his “Sanga”, or the order of monks. Yasa, the son of a rich householder in Banaras, together with 54 of his friends was attracted by Buddha’s teachings. With them and the five monks that witnessed Buddha’s first teachings, the first Sangha of 60 monks was founded who were sent to various destinations to preach Buddha’s dharma. Buddha subsequently spent his first rainy season at Sarnath, at the Mulagandhakuti Vihara. 

After Buddha's death, Sarnath became an important center for teaching and practicing Buddhism until the twelfth century C.E., when the Turkish armies ransacked the site.

Sarnath is equally sacred to Jains being the venue of austerities and death of Sreyansanath, the eleventh Tirthankara.

Sarnath - after Buddha

Two hundred years after Buddha’s enlightenment came Ashoka, the great Mauryan emperor, who is famous in the history of Buddhism. The Kalinga war of 261 B.C. in modern day Odisha was a turning point for Ashoka. After witnessing the unimaginable loss of human life, he renounced violence and adopted a doctrine of welfare to the common people, promoting Buddhism across ancient Asia.

The reborn Ashoka almost immediately went on a pilgrimage to all the places associated with Buddha, and raised tall pillars and other monuments such as stupas to memorialise Buddha and his teachings. Owing to the sanctity of the site, Sarnath rapidly became one of the leading pilgrimage places of Buddhism.  The ruins that can be seen at Sarnath today are from the time of Ashoka through to the 12th century A.D.

 Sarnath at that time was a large Vihara with thousands of monks residing there. Evidence of this can be seen from

• the Mahavamsa, where it is stated that around 2^nd century BCE, at the foundation ceremony of the Mahā Thūpa in Anurādhapura, twelve thousand monks had been present from Isipatana, led by the Elder Dhammasena.
•  Xuan Tsang found, at Isipatana, fifteen hundred monks studying the Hīnayāna. In the enclosure of the Sanghārāma stood a vihāra about two hundred feet high, strongly built, its roof surmounted by a golden figure of the mango. In the center of the vihāra, a life-size statue of the Buddha turning the wheel of the Law stood. To the south-west, was the remains of a stone stupa built by King Asoka. 

 Buddhism flourished in Sarnath, in part because of kings and wealthy merchants based in Varanasi. By the third century, Sarnath had become an important center for the arts, which reached its zenith during the Gupta period (fourth to sixth centuries CE.). In the seventh century, by the time Xuan Sang visited from China, he found thirty monasteries and 3000 monks living at Sarnath.

 Sarnath became a major center of the Sammatiya school of Buddhism, one of the early Buddhist schools. The presence of images of Heruka and Tara indicate that monks practiced (at a later time) Vajrayana Buddhism here.

 At the end of the twelfth century, Turkish Muslims ransacked Sarnath, and the site was subsequently plundered for building materials. 

Archaeological Excavations

The archaeological significance of the place was first brought to the notice of modern world by Mr. J. Duncan in 1798 who gave an account of the casket of green marble inside a stone box exposed by the workmen of Jagat Singh, the Dewan of King Chet Singh of Benaras while dismantling the Dharmarajika stupa to exploit building materials. 

 Excavations carried out by Archaeological Survey of India on large scale from time to time has revealed a number of monasteries, stupas, temples, inscriptions, sculptures and other antiquities ranging in date from 3rd century B.C. to 12th century A.D

The first formal excavations at Sarnath commenced in 1815 by Colonel Colin Mackenzie, although these were relatively unsuccessful. Major Markham Kittoe also worked here in 1851/52 but he had an untimely death and details of his excavations were never published.

The most significant early archaeological excavations at Sarnath were conducted by Alexander Cunningham from 1834 to 1836. He excavated the main stupas here along with exposing the remains of monasteries and temples. Both Kittoe and Cunningham collected a large number of statues, inscriptions, votive stupas, and sculptured panels, many of which are displayed in the nearby Archaeological Museum.

The religious centre of the complex at Sarnath was discovered by Friedrich Oertel, who excavated the Main Shrine in 1904-05. It is here that some of the most wonderful works of art and historically important artifacts were uncovered, such as the Ashokan Pillar with its world famous Lion Capital, the famous 5th century preaching Buddha, and the Bodhisattva statue with umbrella and stand dated to the year 81 A.D. In total Oertel recovered 476 pieces of sculpture and over 40 inscriptions. All these are stored in the Archaeological Museum, Sarnath.

Sir John Marshall’s excavations in 1907/08 opened up a large area of the site and exposed the remains of 3 monasteries, some underlying the remains of later structures, in addition to finding the remains of a co-called “hospital” near to the Main Shrine.

The last major excavation work was conducted by Daya Ram Sahni and commenced in 1921. He exposed structures between the Dhamekh Stupa and the Main Shrine as well as discovering an underground passageway between Monastery I and Monastery II. Totally there were five seasons of excavations.

As of Today…

The remains of structures that can be seen today at Sarnath date from the 3rd century B.C. to the 12th century A.D. In many cases buildings have been erected over the top of the remains of earlier structures.

 

Some of the important buildings that we saw included

The Dhamek (Commemorative) Stupa ...

The Dhamek Stupa

Standing over 40m tall, the Dhamekh Stupa dominates the Buddhist complex at Sarnath. This solid cylindrical tower consists of a circular stone drum sitting on a rectangular basement. Supposedly each layer of stones  is bonded by iron clamps. This tower is about 28.5 mts in diameter at base and is veneered with sand stone upto the height of 11.20 mts and provided with niches in eight directions which must have once held images. Below the niches runs a broad course of beautifully carved elaborate ornamentation which represents high skill of workmanship on stone during Gupta period.

Dhamek Stupa marks the precise location where Buddha preached his first discourse to his first five disciples. While the Basement has survived from Ashoka's structure, the stone facing displaying delicate floral carvings is characteristic of the Gupta era. The wall is covered with exquisitely carved figures of humans and birds, as well as inscriptions in Brahmi script. Above the stone drum is a cylindrical tower made from red bricks.

The stupa was enlarged on six occasions but the upper part is still unfinished. While visiting Sarnath in 640 CE, Xuan Sang recorded that the colony had over 1,500 priests and the main stupa was nearly 300 feet (91 m) high.

Carvings on the walls

The area to the east of the stupa is grassed, and is one of the focal points for those visiting the stupa to worship, meditate, or just sit and be for a while. When Cunningham was excavating here, he dug a vertical shaft down through the centre of the stupa to the foundation layers. There at a depth of over 90m he found a slab with the Buddhist creed in script attributable to the 6th-7th century A.D. which must have been inserted at a later date. His excavations also revealed an earlier brick-built core to the stupa, indicating that this stupa was also enlarged over the centuries and was orginally much smaller. The scale and elaborate stonework of the Dhamekh Stupa suggests that this is the most important and sacred structure in the complex.  The Dharmarajika (Relic) Stupa ... This is the stupa that was largely destroyed by Jagat Singh in 1794. It is thought that the original stupa was built by Ashoka in the 3rd century B.C. and was then subsequently enlarged at least 5 times. It is known as The Dharmarajika stupa, after the 10th century inscription.  It is referred to in the texts that after dividing the ashes of the Lord obtained from reopening seven of the earlier stupas, Asoka got many stupas constructed at Buddhist sites with the same name- Dharmarajika. That he also had constructed a stupa at Mrigadaya is recorded in the Buddhist texts. Xuan Sang further confirms this. The Dharmarajika stupa of Sarnath is said to have had five constructional phases, dating between Mauryan and the early medieval periods. The original stupa, according to Marshall and Konow, date back to the time of Asoka. The anda or the dome of this stupa, a loosely constructed masonry, measured 44'3" (approximately 18m), and was composed of bricks (measuring 19½" x14½"x2½" and 16½"x12½"x3½"), mostly wedge- shaped , “the smaller end being laid nearer the centre of the stupa; but no effort made to bond the courses together”. The stupa was also covered with a thick layer of concrete. The cylindrical green marble relic casket containing a circular stone box, which was recovered from this structure during the eighteenth century, was found at a depth of 18 cubit below the surface, perhaps kept in the centre of the dome constructed during the time of Asoka.  Along its circumference was 4.5-4.8 meter (15’-16’) wide ambulatory floor, which was also a brick construction. The width of this passage was 15’-16’, and it was encircled by a brick wall (4’5’’ high and 3’4’’thick), with four openings at four cardinal points. The excavators state that this: ‘’is the first example that we have in India of a Pradakshina closed in with a solid wall; instead of an open railing’’  As of now, only the foundations remain. The rest of the Dharmarajika Stupa had been removed to Varanasi as building materials in the eighteenth century. At that time, relics found in the Dharmarajika Stupa had been thrown in the Ganges river Two outstanding images were found here, that can be seen in the museum; the red sandstone Bodhisattva dated to 81 A.D. and the image of Buddha in the preaching attitude. The Main Shrine ... Approximately 20m north of the Dharmarajika Stupa is the Main Shrine, the remains of which are a shadow of what once stood here. The famous Chinese Buddhist monk-scholar Xuan Sang traveled extensively throughout northern India between 634 and 645 A.D, and noted that the main shrine here was over 60m high. Although mostly built of red bricks it also incorporates carved masonry from earlier structures. Below the foundations of the shrine Oertel discovered plain polished monolithic Ashokan railings which it’s assumed were once part of the nearby Dharmarajika Stupa Excavations below the path around the Main Shrine uncovered votive slabs dating to the 1st century B.C. The Ashokan Pillar ... Immediately west of the Main Shrine stands the remains of the Ashokan Pillar behind glass, the lowest part of the pillar still in-situ.The pillar once stood to a height of 5.25m and was crowned by the famous Lion Capital which was adopted as the official emblem of India after independence in 1950. The "Lion Capital of Asoka" is presently on display at the Sarnath Museum. It was broken during Turkish invasions, yet the base still stands at the original location. The pillar bears three inscriptions, the earliest is an edict of Ashoka (known as the Schism edict) in Brahmi characters, where the emperor warns the monks and nuns against creating divisions in the sangha.

The Votive Stupas...

Sarnath had developed as an important Buddhist pilgrimage centre. To get universal beneficial joy, the devotees had constructed numbers of votive stupas from time to time within the premises of Sarnath Ruins. 

These votive stupas are situated on three sides of ancient Mulgandh Kuti Vihara (Shrine). Altogether 172 votive stupas are situated towards north-east, 72 votive stupas are situated towards north-west and 115 are towards south-west.
These clusters of votive stupas were constructed as well as renovated from Pre-Mauryan Period to 12th century A.D.

They are built by devotees, either as their Relic stupas or as platforms for meditation.

The Mulagandhakuti Vihara...

The ruins of the ancient Mulagandhakuti Vihara mark the place where the Buddha spent his first rainy season. This was the main temple marked by the presence of the Ashokan pillar at the front. The 5th-century CE sandstone sculpture of Buddha Preaching his First Sermon was found in the vicinity.

The Rectangle Court ...

Between the Dhamekh Stupa and the Main Shrine is a large rectangular court and courtyard. A large number of brick built ruined shrines reside here, along with some votive stupas. Clearly this was the original route one took from the Main Shrine to the Dhamekh Stupa

The Panchayatana Temple ...

Located immediately south of the courtyard is a curious sunken brick built shrine with a modern roof cover. Dating to the Gupta period, in plan this looks like small Hindu Panchayatana Temple. Although its true origins are unknown, in the Theravada Buddhist tradition it is a revered building, and recognised as the place where the merchant Yasa converted to Buddhism after the first sermon.

The Miniature Sculptures ...

Many of the brick structures had stone panels with miniature Sculptures of amazing beauty and detail.

These were probably recovered from ruins and haphazardly laid out. Yet they reflected the high level of artistic skill that existed during the Gupta period.

What we could not see at Saranath included the  Chowkhundi Temple (under renovation), the Monasteries and the Museum, since we visited on a Friday, which was a Holiday for the Museum.

The serenity and calmness found in the place as well as the amazing sense of planning and order felt, even amongst the ruins, made Sarnath, one of the most memorable sites visited during this trip.

The Master planning of this large complex and design of individual buildings, complete with their detailing and ornamentation, all done almost 1500 - 2000 years ago leaves one wonder struck at the skill level and visualisation capacity of our people.