The first part of Xuan Zangs journey in his book Si-Yu-Ki volume two.
(a) Shi-lo-fu-shi-ti/Garethi
Gurudutta Sing: (Si-yu-ki- pages 1 to 13) Xuan Zang starts his epic journey in his book "Si Yu Ki Buddhist Records of the western world" volume two from Garethi. Alexander Cunningham identified Huen
Tsangs ‘Shi-lo-fu-shi-ti’ as the modern day Sravasti. He was totally wrong and
went off course by 90 km north east of the actual spot. He did this because of
archaeological finds in Sahet Mahet villages. British historians were in a
habit of finding swanky ancient brick archaeological structures with which they
sensationalized their find. They had little knowledge of Indian culture and the
local languages and couldn’t decipher village names as I am doing. So they
concentrated on searching for brick structures to identify lost cities in the
lost Buddhist story. On searching and studying the area around where Huen Tsang
started his tour in volume two of his book, “Si-Yu-Ki Buddhist Records of the
Western World,” his ‘Shi-lo-fu-shi-ti’ has verbal resemblance to Garethi
Gurudutta Sing. This is now a tiny nondescript village on the eastern banks of
the Ghaghra river. Wikipedia says about Sravasti, “the city was called Savatthi because the sage Savattha lived here.” The
places name today is Garethi Gurudutta Sing. Wikipedias ‘Savatthi’ certainly
has a verbal resemblance with ‘Garethi’ and the sages name ‘Savattha’ resembles
‘Gurudutta Sing.’ The latter may have been the sage. We must remember Buddhist
names were totally wiped out of India. The entire vocabulary of words disappeared.
These words or the entire vocabulary of Buddhist words came back with foreign
Buddhists with foreign mispronunciations of what they thought the original word
was. And most of the mispronounced words were further mispronounced by British
historians and archaeologists who created new words thinking they were
correcting the mispronounced ones. This resulted in a double whammy of
mispronunciations. I realized after Huen Tsang showed me the correct sites, the
correct original Indian names were also waiting to be discovered. This will be
of interest to Buddhists. Wikipedia goes on to say the place was named Savatthi
(Sravasti) because ‘Savattha’ lived here. ‘Savattha’ certainly has a verbal
resemblance with ‘Gurudutta’. The ‘vattha’ of ‘Savattha’ sounds similar to
‘dutta’ of ‘Gurudutta’. We must remember that Savattha and Savatthi aren’t
Indian words though they verbally sound Indian. Savattha and Savatthi are
definitely foreign Buddhist mispronounced words of the original ‘Garethi
Gurudutta.’ All the places Huen Tsang mentions are found near here exactly
according to the Chinamans bearings. Today villages have settled on stupas, and
by doing so, they have kept the names alive. The names just need deciphering.
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