own important place in Chinese religion. He was expected to
speak with the gods on behalf of the Chinese.
In addition to building shrines on already-sacred sites,
people made some sites sacred through rituals and the build-
ing of religious structures. In India people built stupas, origi-
nally tombs of dirt piled in the shape of hemispheres. Stupas
took on great importance aft er the death of Siddhartha Gau-
tama (ca. 563–ca. 483 b.c.e.), who was the Buddha. Parts of
his body were entombed in several stupas. Emperor Asoka
(r. 268–233 b.c.e.) of India had seven of these stupas opened
and their contents divided among 84,000 stupas scattered
through India. Th e most important was the Great Stupa in
Sanchi, north of the Narmada River in Madhya Pradesh in
central India. Over hundreds of years, people added to it,
coating it in brick, surrounding it with a wall, and building
ornate gates alive with sculptures of gods and goddesses.
A stupa typically had a circular crown projecting
around its top. Th e one for the Great Stupa looks like many
fi ngers thrusting out horizontal to the ground. Th e crown
was called chatra, meaning “umbrella.” Th e dome of the
stupa was the garbha, meaning “womb.” Garbha referred
not to a physical birth but to the Buddha’s passing out of the
cycle of birth and rebirth into nirvana, a blissful spiritual
state in which the soul escapes the pain of life in the physical
world. Th e dome was also sometimes called an anda, mean-
ing “egg,” because it symbolized the fi rst egg from which the
universe emerged.
Hindus used the concept of the garbha to create the
garbhagriha, a shrine where a person might be seen by a god.
Hindu shrines and temples oft en had images of gods inside
them, but the Hindus did not believe that the statues were
gods, and they did not believe that gods ever actually entered
the statues. Th e statues frequently were placed in a shadowy
part of a shrine, because it was intended to set an observer’s
mind to thinking about the mysteries of spirituality. It was
this train of thought that could bring a person into touch
with a supernatural being. Th is encounter with a supernatu-
ral being was darshana, meaning “viewing.”
Sacred sites were also built with the intention of inspir-
ing awe in visitors. In India, during Asoka’s reign, people be-
gan carving sacred sites into large stones. At fi rst these were
just caves where a monk could sit by himself and meditate.
Eventually, they became huge temples that are amazing even
today. Th e best may be at Ajanta in western India. From the
100s b.c.e. to the 600s c.e. temples were carved into immense
rocky cliff s. Some temples began in natural caves, but oth-
ers were carved either from the side of a cliff or from the top
down into a cliff. Cracks were hammered into the rocks and
fi lled with wood that was then doused with water, which
slowly widened the cracks as the wood swelled. Rock masons
carved openings into spaces that became rooms and corri-
dors, with columns and statues. Th e detail work was done by
artisans using tools as fi ne as those of jewelers. Walls were
then painted with religious scenes. Th e central shrines were
oft en in shadows, with openings allowing light to highlightstatues representing the Buddha or gods. Both Hindus and
Buddhists carved such temples.EUROPE
BY AMY HACKNEY BLACKWELL
Long before the Celtic peoples arrived, prehistoric Europeans
created sacred sites by arranging giant stones, or megaliths,
in ways that were to them spiritually signifi cant. Th ese stones
remained standing during Celtic times, and the Celts adopted
some of them as their own sacred sites. Celts and Germans
also found spiritual power in many natural formations, such
as groves of trees, mountains, caves, and islands.
Hundreds of megalithic sites remain throughout Eu-
rope, from Ireland to the eastern Baltic area, containing stone
structures and graves erected between 4500 and 2000 b.c.e.
Many megalithic sites were tombs, and human remains have
been found in some of them. Others reveal no obvious pur-
pose, consisting only of upright stones arranged in a pattern
but without burials. Th e most accepted explanation is that
megaliths had religious or ceremonial signifi cance. Many of
them are aligned in such a way that they catch the sun on spe-
cifi c days of the year, which may be evidence that prehistoric
peoples used them in sun worship.
Th ere are several common types of megalithic structures.
A menhir is a single standing stone. Some standing stones are
arranged in circles or rows, called alignments. A dolmen is a
tomb made of several large upright stones supporting a fl at
stone roof, while a passage grave consists of a corridor lined
and roofed with large stones leading to a stone burial cham-
ber. Many megalithic tombs were once covered with mounds
either of earth or of small stones. Th e earthen mounds are
known as tumuli; the stone mounds are called cairns.
Most surviving megalithic sites are in northwestern
France, Britain, and Ireland. Th e largest known menhir, the
so-called grand menhir brisé (“great broken stone”) in Brit-
tany, France, stood about 67 feet high before it was broken in
an earthquake in 1722. Carnac, another site in Brittany, con-
tains over 3,000 standing stones arranged in straight lines, all
erected between 4500 and 3300 b.c.e. Carnac also has several
tumuli and several dolmens. Gavrinis Island off the coast of
Brittany holds a huge megalithic cairn that dates to about
3500 b.c.e. Inside the cairn a passage leads to a grave chamber
constructed of large granite stones. Th e walls of the passage
and chamber are elaborately carved with spiral decorations.
Ireland is home to several similar tombs, the most famous
of which is Newgrange, built about 3200 b.c.e. Newgrange
is especially notable for the way the rising sun of the winter
solstice shines directly on a design in the main chamber.
Perhaps the most famous sacred site in prehistoric Eu-
rope is Stonehenge in England, which was built in several
stages between 3100 and 1600 b.c.e. Stonehenge is a complex
monument, and the standing stones that are visible today
are only the most recent version of it. Moreover, it was at the
center of a landscape of monuments that all had some sort902 sacred sites: Europe0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i902 902 10/10/07 2:30:22 PM