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Archaeologists in eastern India have unearthed a statue of an elephant they think was carve about 2,300 years ago , when Buddhism was the independent faith in the region .
The statue is about 3 foot ( 1 metre ) high and carve from rock and roll in the same style as other Buddhistic statues of elephant found across the state of Odisha .
Elephants commonly appear in Buddhist art from the period and archaeologists think it is a relic of early Buddhist worship in the region.
HistorianAnil Dhirand other members of an archaeological team from theIndian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage(INTACH ) excavate the statue in April at a settlement on the bank of the Daya River in Odisha ’s Puri District . " We were survey the Daya River Valley to document its inheritance , " Dhir told Live Science in an email . " This domain is copious in artifacts from the ancient Buddhism which flourish here . "
The team found several other buried archaeological relic around the village , let in architectural pieces from a Buddhistic synagogue , he tot up .
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The elephant statue is carved from rock in the style of statues found at other sites nearby from about 2,300 years ago, when the region was strongly Buddhist.
The elephant statue is very similar to one found at Dhauli , also make out as Dhaulagiri , an ancient center of Buddhism about 12 miles ( 19 kilometers ) upstream , Dhir said . That statue has been dated to between 272 B.C. and 231 B.C.
Buddha and Hinduism
Buddhism originated in northern Indiain the 6th or fifth century B.C. and was one of the main religions under Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Empire in the second century B.C. , the historianUpinder Singhof Ashoka University in India wrote in " History of Ancient and Early Medieval India : From the Stone Age to the twelfth Century " ( Pearson India , 2009 ) . The imperium covered most of India , let in what ’s now Pakistan , but not the very south of the subcontinent .
And from the third C B.C. until about the second century A.D. , Buddhism " held sway " throughout much of India and the Odisha region in particular , Dhir say .
But Buddhism ’s influence declined as its practices became assimilated into the myriad tradition of Hinduism and when Islam became more influential in the region after the tenth one C ; and while Buddhism is now widespread in other parts of Asia , it is only follow by about 0.7 % of the forward-looking universe of India , according to a 2011 census . ( The Buddha is worship , however , in some Hindu ceremony , sometimes as an avatar of the god Vishnu . )
A team of archaeologists and historians from the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) discovered the statue in April.
harmonize toa statement by INTACH , the floodplains of the Daya and Mandakini rivers are robust in Buddhistic antiquities .
Records also indicate that a fort was build up at the website in the 16th century , and the INTACH team has obtain remnants of its justificative walls and moat .
Elephant symbolism
Dhir said the elephant was a common motif in Buddhism and could be catch in many Buddhist monument .
The INTACH command enounce the recently excavate elephant statue was found near a pillar of laterite — a ruddy corpse material — and other stone blocks : exchangeable finds were also discovered alongside another elephant statue constitute in the hamlet ofKaima in Odisha ’s JajpurDistrict .
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The archaeologists also found a carved laterite pillar nearby, which is an arrangement seen at other early Buddhist archaeological sites in the region.
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Art historianChristian Luczanitsof SOAS at the University of London told Live Science that elephants were important royal animals in ancient India and symbolized the monsoon rain and natality .
Peter Harvey , a historian of Buddhism and a " religious belief consultant " at York St John University in the U.K. , added that the elephant was also the mythical animal ride by the pre - Buddhistic Supreme Being Indra , who was identified in early Native American Buddhism as a disciple of the Buddha and named Sakka ( also spelled Śakra ) .
The elephant ’s direct connexion to Buddhism came about from a story that the female parent of Siddhartha Gautama — the Amerind prince who would become the Buddha — dreamt after he was gestate that " an auspicious white-hot elephant [ had ] record her womb , " Harvey enunciate .
