Get to know the unknown
Almost all of us have seen statues or pictures of Lord Buddha. But have you ever noticed that the round objects on the head of the Buddha? This question may not have occurred to many of us or we have come to know that this is the image we have seen since childhood. Let's find out what it literally means.
We should keep our body and mind clean for realizing and acquiring knowledge. This is why we often see Buddhist monks shaving their heads. It is even known from history that Gautama Buddha shaved his head when he left home to acquire knowledge.
But when we look at various statues of Lord Buddha and other forms of art, we see small round curly hair on the head of the Buddha. Short ringlet curls like 108 rings can be seen on the head of Buddha. So, one might wonder why artists have always painted Gautam Buddha with short ringlet curls! There are numerous rumors about this, according to one belief, that the hair on the head of Gautama Buddha is not actually hair, these are actually 108 snails.
108 The story of the snail:
One day Lord Buddha was meditating under a tree and was so engrossed that he did not look at the time. The sun was just overhead, and the earth was warming up. Since Buddha had a shaved head, the rays of the sun were falling directly on his head. At this point a snail was passing through that place. The snail noticed that Lord Buddha was meditating in this heat. Although he was sitting under a tree, the sun was shining on his head as the sun was just above his head. The snail thought, With so much sun falling on the head, the mind will be disturbed and soon the Buddha's meditation will be broken. And without thinking for the second time, the snail fell straight on Buddha's head. The touch of her wet body where the snail was sitting was cooling the smooth and soft skin of Buddha's head. Seeing the first snail, the other snails also fell on the meditative Buddha's head and created a cool covering over the Buddha's entire head. The cool and damp bodies of a total of 108 snails help maintain the Buddha's meditation for an extra few hours. Then the snails dried up and died.
When Buddha got up in the evening to meditate, snails fell from his head to the ground and he realized that he had a lining of 108 snails on his head. These snails gave their lives to make the path of enlightenment of the Buddha smooth and unobstructed. Since the snails gave their lives for the Buddha, they are honored as martyrs and 108 snails are engraved on the Buddha to remind them of their sacrifice.
