Yesterday there was a news on the discovery of a linga in Vietnam in the Cham community. The first religion of Cham was Shaivite Hinduism.

In the midst of modern day Vietnam, some distinct touches of India remain. These are artefacts of the Cham civilisation that flourished in central Vietnam from the 2nd to 15th century AD. Indian influence in Vietnam spread through its linkages with this dynasty.
The Chams became Indianised through commercial links with India – they adopted Hinduism, employed Sanskrit as a sacred language and borrowed heavily from Indian art. The effects of these are evident in the Cham monuments in the Quang Nam province, 700 km from capital Hanoi.
The Chams battled constantly with the Vietnamese in the north of their kingdom and the Khmers (in modern Cambodia) in the west. The Chams threw off Khmer rule in the 12th century but were entirely absorbed by Vietnam in the 17th century. One of the greatest Cham sites, My Son, is considered the equivalent of Angkor Vat, Cambodia, in terms of archaeological importance. It became a religious centre under King Bhadravarman in the late fourth century. Most of the temples were dedicated to Lord Shiva.
The Vietnam war destroyed My Son – the temples and ruins bombed to bits. Today they require extensive restoration work. A proposal for cooperation between India and Vietnam for restoration and conservation of Cham monuments is being considered by the Archaeological Survey of India. The Cham monuments of My Son have been declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco. The greatest collection of the Cham ruins is at the Cham Museum in Danang. [India lives on in ancient Vietnamese ruins]

Cultural officials have recently found a linga (phallic symbol) of the Cham ethnic minority people at Van Tuong village, Nghia Dung commune in central Quang Ngai province.
The 35-cm-high linga made from sandstone weighs around 100 kg. It is the second found in Quang Ngai province, providing a link to a cluster of towers of the Cham ethnic minority people in the locality. Archaeologist Dr. Doan Ngoc Khoi said the discovery of linga in Quang Ngai reflects the diversity of the Cham Pa culture of the Cham ethnic minority people in Quang Ngai.
Quang Ngai is home to two ancient citadels, namely Chau Sa at Tinh Chau commune in Son Tinh district and Ban Co at Nghia Phu commune in Tu Nghia district, and around 40 towers of the Cham ethnic minority people scattered around the area that have so far been ruined by the climate. Around 80 years ago in 1924, the French found a linga and a yoni during an excavation in Chanh Lo, Quang Ngai township, and these are now exhibited at the Cham museum in the central city of Da Nang. [New linga found in Quang Ngai province]

There is no picture of the linga and hence we don’t know if it was influenced by the Siva Linga worshipped by the Hindus.

Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code generated lot of controversies regarding the marital status of Jesus. To find more about this ABC News sent a reporter to various places mentioned in the book and interviewed people like Dan Brown, priests, art and historical scholars for the documentary ABC News Presents: Jesus, Mary and DaVinci
The first issue was if Mary Magdalene was a prostitute as popularly known. In this case everyone unanimously agreed that nowhere in the Bible it is mentioned so. There is one tale about a prostitute and immediately following that Mary is mentioned. So it could be be association that Mary was turned into a prostitute. Also to speed things up Pope Gregory gave a sermon in 591 AD in which he said that Mary was a prostitute. The Vatican corrected it later in 1969, 1378 years later.
In the novel it is mentioned that Jesus was married. But in the Bible it is not mentioned that he is married. It is not mentioned that he is unmarried too. The opinion of various people was that his marital status could have been either.
Dan Brown then mentions that he was taking some classes and his teacher showed him Da Vinci’s Last Supper. The teacher then asked them to find the cup from which all of them drank and it was then that he noticed that there was no cup. Then it was mentioned that the holy grail was in the painting and it was the person sitting next to Jesus.
But there were some art historians who disagreed with this and said that it was actually male and not Mary. Dan Brown adds that during the time of Da Vinci it was not wise to disagree with the Church and he used his art to convey his belief.
Another point in the novel was that Jesus and Mary had a child who grew up in France. In this documentary they could not find any evidence of this.
While the church accepted certain gospels, some of them were rejected as well. But one of them survived in Egypt and is called the gnostic gospels. In the gnostic gospels, it is mentioned that Jesus kissed Mary and they were very close. Even after resurrection, it was Mary who saw Jesus signifying that she was the favourite.
Finally the documentary concludes that they could not find evidence that Jesus was married and had children. But they found that Mary was much closer to Jesus that is known.

While we only have seen pictures of the two Bamiyan Buddhas, archaeologists have been looking for a missing third reclining Buddha. Now they seem to have uncovered the long-missing statue’s foot.

Two years ago, a French team led by the Afghan-born archeologist Zemaryali Tarzi of Strasbourg University began excavations for the 985-foot-long reclining statue representing the Buddha in a state of “Mahapari nirvana,” or ultimate enlightenment.The dig finally may have yielded something promising. “Professor Tarzi has found a structure which has still to be properly identified but which could be part of the foot of the Sleeping Buddha, maybe the toe,” said Masanori Nagaoka, UNESCO’s Kabul-based culture consultant. “Alternatively, the structure could be the platform on which the giant statue reclined,” he added. [Find stirs Sleeping Buddha talk]

And at the same time the Kiwis are helping to piece back the two statues that were destroyed.