Gaya
— — two faiths, the same river, the same prayer for the dead.
Not only on a wall.
“A city on the west bank of the Falgu, in southern Bihar, the kind of place where two world religions both keep an address. At the Vishnupad Temple, families come to perform pinda dana — the offering for ancestors that Hindus have made here for centuries. Twelve kilometres south, at Bodh Gaya, sits the descendant of the tree the Buddha sat under the night he became the Buddha. The river runs sandy and shallow most of the year and the two pilgrimages share its banks without quite meeting.
Gaya, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Gaya sits on the west bank of the Falgu River in southern Bihar, about 100 kilometres south of Patna and 12 kilometres north of Bodh Gaya. The city is the administrative seat of Gaya district and sits at roughly 111 metres of elevation, on the edge of the Chota Nagpur plateau. Its population is around half a million. Gaya is one of the holiest cities in both Hinduism and Buddhism: Hindus come to Vishnupad Temple to perform pinda dana for ancestors, and Buddhist pilgrims pass through on the way to the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya, inscribed by UNESCO in 2002.
The Falgu — known in scripture as the Phalgu or Niranjana — runs north past Gaya from the Chota Nagpur hills toward the Ganges plain. Most of the year it is wide, sandy, and only a few centimetres deep, and pilgrims walk across the bed to reach the ghats. During the monsoon, between July and September, it floods. The river is the working centre of the Pitru Paksha Mela, the fortnight each autumn when as many as a million Hindus arrive in Gaya to perform pinda dana for departed family members; it is also the river the Buddha bathed in before walking to the Bodhi Tree.
Gaya is reached easily by rail from Patna (about two hours) and by daily flights into Gaya International Airport, which mainly serves the Buddhist pilgrim circuit from Thailand, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Japan. The Vishnupad Temple at the river's edge is open to Hindus and is the centre of the city's ritual life. Bodh Gaya, 12 kilometres south, holds the Mahabodhi Temple complex around the descendant of the original Bodhi Tree and is open to visitors of all faiths from dawn until about 9 p.m. The cool, dry months from November through February are the standard window.