In New Delhi, National Museum Director‑General Gurmeet Singh Chawla and a team of 11 senior Indian monks went to Russia’s Kalmykia Republic on Saturday. They opened a week‑long Buddhist exposition by offering prayers to the sacred relics of Gautam Buddha before heading to Elista, the republic’s capital.
The event, organized by the Ministry of Culture with partners the International Buddhist Confederation, the National Museum, and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, runs from October 11 to 18. The relics, preserved in New Delhi’s National Museum, arrive in Elista to be displayed at the Geden Shedrup Choikorling Monastery. The monastery, often called the Golden Abode of Shakyamuni Buddha, is a major Tibetan Buddhist center opened to the public in 1996 and sits amid the Kalmyk steppe.
Kalmykia’s Buddhist leaders—Shajin Lama, Geshe Tenzin Choidak, and Republic head Batu Sergeyevich Khasikov—welcome the relics. Local devotees and the region’s Buddhist Sangha will be blessed and served by the visiting monks.
In addition to the relics display, the delegation—including Deputy Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Keshav Prasad Maurya—will host teachings, discourses by His Holiness the 43rd Sakya Trizin Rinpoche, and the presentation of the Holy Kanjur, a set of 108 Mongolian religious texts originally translated from Tibetan. The International Buddhist Confederation will donate the Kanjur to nine Buddhist institutes and a university, supported by the Ministry of Culture’s Manuscripts division.
This first‑ever exposition of Buddha relics in the Russian Republic highlights the growing cultural ties between India and Kalmykia, and strengthens the Buddhist community’s presence across the region.
Source: aninews
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