In Buddhism, the Dharma Chakra is widely used to represent the Buddha’s Dharma (Buddha’s teaching and the universal moral order), Gautama Buddha himself, and the walking of the path to enlightenment, since the time of Early Buddhism. The symbol is also sometimes connected to the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and Dependent Origination. The pre-Buddhist dharmachakra is considered one of the ashtamangala (auspicious signs) in Hinduism and Buddhism and often used as a symbol of both faiths.
Below is an original Wheel of Law at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the description:
“The Wheel of the Law (dharmachakra) is the single most important symbol of Buddhism, denoting the Buddha’s First Sermon in the forest at Sarnath, where he set Buddhist Law (dharma) in motion. The wheel elevated on a pillar (dharmachakrastambha) is unique to the Mon territories of Thailand, and inscriptions from the Pali canon explicitly link them to the Four Truths of the Noble Ones—the subject of the First Sermon. The immediate prototypes for the Mon dharmachakrastambhas were those of Andhra Pradesh, southern India; enigmatically, there is no trace of such large pillar-mounted wheels having existed elsewhere in Buddhist Southeast Asia.”
The Metropolitan Museum has another example titled Railing Pillar Medallion with the following text:
“The Dharma-wheel, the symbol of the Buddha’s teachings—here celebrated as a gift by its donors—has been central to Buddhist practice from its beginnings. The Lalitavistara, an early Sanskrit text recounting the life of the Buddha, describes its veneration: “It was an exquisite wheel adorned with all kinds of jewels. . . . It had a hub, a rim, and a thousand spokes. It was adorned with flower garlands, lattices of gold, tassels with bells[, and] various marks of auspiciousness, beautifully wrapped in divine fabrics and dyed in different colors. It was strewn with flowers of the heavens . . . and rubbed with perfumed ointments”
King of Kyiv Rus Yaroslav the Wise (978-1054) is famous for the codification of legal customs and princely enactments which resulted in the compilation of a book of laws called ‘Pravda Iaroslava’ (Yaroslav’s Justice). It constituted the oldest part of the Ruskaia Pravda (with a single ‘s’ and it is a difference akin to Roman or Romanian. Modern-day ‘Russia’ has nothing to do with it since Moscow would not exist for another 200 years) a collection of Kyiv Rus’ laws. That is the reason why Yaroslav the Wise is viewed as Yaroslav the Lawgiver. http://Wheel of Justice at Met Museum
Thus said, could anyone dare to state that Yaroslav himself or his nearest relatives chose a sarcophagus for his resting place with some foreign symbols? Could anyone truly believe that the central symbol on the sarcophagus of one of the leading figures of the European realm of the time would be just some empty decoration? Or are we to believe that the symbol that resembles the Wheel of Law accidentally appeared on the sarcophagus of a man titled a Lawgiver?
But how did the Buddist Symbol and Yaroslav the Wise can be linked? Here is one possible connection:
King Kanishka of Kushan Empire and Gandharan Buddism >
“Gardariki, Ukraine” ebook provides more facts in this regard. It shows the ways how Muscovy made deliberate efforts to mess Kyiv Rus history.
< Sarcophagus of Yaroslav the Wise and his wife Queen of Sweden
Little-known details of marriage of Yaroslav the Wise and Ingegerd are in the “Kyiv Rus in Heimskringla Sagas and Byzantine Texts” book.
