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Showing posts from November 10, 2006


Foreigner builds a New Jagannath Temple in Orissa

The 35-foot- high temple is located at Kuansh village near Bhadrak town in Orissa. Julian Parker, who hails from Los Angeles, built the temple at an estimated $56,500. More than half of the money was contributed by Parker himself. Rest of the money was donated by devotees of ISKCON, foreigners and others. Why the new temple? Because foreigners and non-hindus are not allowed into the Jagannath Temple at Puri. The three idols - Jagannatha, Baladeva, Subhadra - in the new temple are seven feet tall. Daily schedules and rituals are similar to the temple at Puri. Parker has rechristened himself as Jahnava Nitai Das after becoming a devotee of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). He has also founded the Bhaktivedanta Ashram .

A Book on Hanuman for Chinese Readers

The book, titled The Divine Anjaneya, is written by Rama Bhat, who is Associate Dean, Graduate Programs and Research, in the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science in Concordia University , Montreal Canada . Barbara Black writes in Concordia Journal: Bhat relates in his introduction, he went to Nanjing in 2001 with his colleague in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, Ming-yuvan Chen, who subsequently gave him a book on Chinese mythology called Journey to the West . A mythological novel written in the 16th century, it tells of a Chinese Buddhist priest who travels to India during the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) to acquire Buddhist scriptures.   Bhat was intrigued because of the resemblances of the Indian figure Anjaneya to a Chinese monkey-god called Sun Wukong. He decided to write his book in English, and another colleague, Professor Chun-Yi Su, is having it translated into Mandarin.   The Divine Anjaneya is about the divinity i