All his life, Buddha kept speaking about the impermanence of all things and the relationship of desire and sorrow. So it was ironical that after he died, his relics such as bone, tooth and hair, were placed under mounds of clay and cow dung, which were decorated with parasols and garlands of flowers and transformed into a stupa. People did not want him to go; they wanted the permanence of the Buddha, if not the person then at least the idea. They walked around this stupa in reverence. This act of circumambulation came to be known as the parikrama — going around the perimetre, the circumference of the stupa. This ritual movement of reverence gradually came to be explained metaphysically. For it mimicked the action of the cosmos: all things go around to come around. Everything is cyclical, like the seasons.

Illustration/ Devdutt Pattanaik