Religion in Culture Lecture

At 2 pm on November 5, 2003, Prof. Jim Apple delivered a public lecture entitled, "The Stone Mandalas of Bodh Gaya." The lecture and slide presentation was attended by 40 people, including students, members of the local community, as well as faculty from other Departments.

Prof. Apple, who has been a member of the Department's faculty for all of 2003 and who studies the history of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, spoke on the presence of large, circular, stone carvings, inscribed with complex designs, that are known as mandalas and which are roughly one thousand years old.

Although mostly known in the U.S. as complex geometric designs that are made by monks using colored sands (picture above) and used as an aid in meditation, the mandala examined by Prof. Apple was carved from one solid piece of black stone (quarried nearby) and is 11 inches thick, 68.5 inches in diameter (approximately 6 feet), and 214 inches in circumference (pictured to the right).

While in Bodh Gaya examining one of the mandalas--as part of Antioch College's Buddhist Studies Abroad Program--Prof. Apple spoke of how he and others uncovered a second mandala almost equal in size, previously unknown by local people and pilgrims alike. Covered with earth and bark, it appeared that it had been moved into a large tree.

Found in the northeastern Indian village of Bodh Gaya--a city known in the history of Buddhism as the site where Siddhartha sat beneath a tree and "woke up" (10th century eastern Indian stone carving, on left, of the Buddha beneath the bodhi tree)--these two large stones provided Prof. Apple with the opportunity not only to decipher their meaning and also their history and age, but also the chance to study the ways in which differing groups use cultural artifacts. (Pictured on the right is the Mahabodhi Temple, at the site where Siddhartha is said to have been enlightened in Bodh Gaya.) For example, these mandalas, which are likely Indian Buddhist in origin and have long been a pilgrimage site for Tibetan Buddhists, are also used by local Hindus as a site for making their own offerings to the local goddess Bagdevi.

Since the function of these stones is presumably to have marked political territory as well as provide a focal point for meditation, Prof. Apple concluded that, much like the current controversies over the stone monument of the Ten Commandments here in the state of Alabama, these stone mandalas are one site where the intersection of religion and politics can be studied, demonstrating the intermixing of sacred and secular.

After a series of questions, a reception followed the event.

For more information on the place of Bodh Gaya in the history of Buddhism, click here.

The "Religion in Culture" Lecture Series is made possible through the generosity of the College of Arts & Sciences' Anonymous Lecture Fund.

For a list of upcoming public lectures sponsored by the Department, please visit our Events page.

Prof. Kurtis Schaeffer introduces Prof. Jim Apple



Prof. Jim Apple delivering his Religion in Culture lecture in Manly Hall 207



One of the stone mandalas in Bodh Gaya examined by Prof. Apple in the Fall of 2001. The coloration is the result of offerings of flowers and powders made by local Hindus



Profs. Tim Murphy and Steve Jacobs



Guy Cutting and John Parrish, REL majors; Prof. Kurtis Schaeffer (background)



Prof. James Apple with his wife, Dr. Shinobu Arai Apple, both of whom earned their Ph.D.s at the University of Wisconsin, Madison



Prof. Steve Jacobs and Guy Cutting, at the post-lecture reception on the balcony of Manly Hall



Betty Dickey, Senior Office Administrator for the Department, and Prof. Tim Murphy



Vegetarians gotta eat too; REL major Josalyn Randall



Prof. Apple, center, with Josalyn Randall and Prof. Steve Jacobs during the reception

Photos thanks to Donna Martin and Russell McCutcheon