The gods were astronauts by Erich von Däniken

Author:Erich von Däniken [Däniken, Erich von]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Divulgación, Otros
Publisher: ePubLibre
Published: 2011-05-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3

Entire Forests of Stupas

"There is no customs duty on thoughts, but you still get a lot of hassle."

---KARL KRAUSE

THE road lay in semi-darkness. Everywhere the little fires of hot-food stalls flickered in the gloom. The place was teeming with brown people, all sitting on tiny stools that were only about 15 cm high, and even the little tables seemed made for dwarfland. Was I among Lilliputians? No, the people around me were normal sized, although the height of the tiny stools made their knees come up to their chests. I actually felt rather lost at the thought of having to sit there like that, a bit like a giant in kindergarten---and I myself am only 1.68 m tall. A wide variety of odours penetrated my nose, like little flags of different colours, from sweet to sour, rancid to burnt, every imaginable smell.

The next crossroad in this chessboard pattern of the town’s streets brought me to the main arterial road. Now all the cooking smells became mingled with the stink of traffic exhaust fumes. Even the edge of the main road was cluttered with hundreds of little tables and stools. In between them, laid out on the ground, were masses of goods: plastic kitsch for the little ones, sandals and shoes beside shirts and bolts of fabrics in all colours, and then, in a line about 60 m long, a stretch of spectacles, for any face or nose on this earth. I had trouble trying to avoid treading on anything.

Asia’s cities and towns all look the same; they taste alike and, superficially at least, the people seem to be the same too. Yet the town I was walking through was completely different.

Right in front of me, less than 300 m away in the centre of the crossroad, what appeared to be a multiphase space rocket pointed towards the sky. It was illuminated by numerous spotlights and was covered from its base to its tip with pure gold. An extremely awe-inspiring sight. I felt respect in the face of this stupendous accomplishment in the name of religion. What looked like a rocket was just one of several thousand pagodas in a land of golden stupas---bell-shaped structures, each of which end in a narrow tower. Years ago, the country was called Burma. Today, this country, situated between Thailand, China and India, is called Myanmar. The city I was exploring is called Yangon (formerly Rangoon). The place is teeming with indescribably splendid pagodas, even in the midst of all the activity of cars, shops and pedestrians and along the bank of the Ayeyarwady river. Only the Buddha and the government are wealthy in this country. Nowhere else in the world is the Buddha revered so much as in Myanmar. For millennia, year after year, the believers have sacrificed tons of gold leaf and precious gems to adorn the pagodas and to attain some form of relief in this life or the next. I was standing in front of the Sule pagoda, which is also called ‘the Heart of the City’.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.