What's New (Version 31)

Things are slowly being improved. I'm going back through and editing my sloppy descriptions to make them more informative, and perhaps more suitable for people who don't know anything about Siddhartha Gotama's life or Buddhism in general. Really my original descriptions were pretty poor and most consisted mostly of stuff quoted from various sources including somewhat questionable things like Wikipedia.

Dhammajoti Bhikkhu has been extremely helpful, sending me more placemarks than I know what to do with yet, but I'll eventually get them all in and organized properly.

I recently added some lines which mark the approximate path between the Buddha's initial "going forth" and his return to Rajagaha after becoming enlightened. Please let me know if these lines are helpful or if they're just distracting.

BTW, in case anyone is curious how to find the version number and the date when the content was last updated, this can currently be found by clicking the name of the Siddhartha Gotama folder (which looks like a link). This will display a text box containing some info including a line that looks like this:

$Id: FOTB.kml 31 2008-06-01 21:54:57Z Robert $

That number "31" just before the date is the version number. The date and time is the date and time that the content was last updated. (For the programmers out there, you may notice that this is the $Id$ tag generated by Subversion, which is what I'm using for revision control.)

Some things that are coming up in the future:

• Billions of new placemarks, mostly from Dhammajoti Bhikkhu
• Better descriptions for places and segments of the Buddha's journeys.
• Better organization of the placemarks into folders.
• KML Regions which hide certain placemarks when zoomed way out. This will hopefully keep the view of the whole map much less cluttered when viewed from a distance.

Placemark Icons

I'd sort of like to improve the icons used to mark various places, but I haven't found any good ones yet. For example, it would be nice to have a good dhammacakka (dhamma wheel) icon to mark the main four pilgrimage sites, some icon (maybe a golden Buddha statue) to mark other sites that the Buddha visited, and some other icon for various temples and other things.

I may just have to create these myself. If anyone knows of any good existing free icons like this, please let me know.

New browser plugin version available

Look what I just threw together: an in-browser version of FotB for use with the new Google Earth browser plugin.

This version has the advantage that you can get an easy guided tour by just clicking some buttons. Once you install the Google Earth browser plugin it's extremely easy to use. Unfortunately the plugin is only available for Internet Explorer and Firefox on MS Windows, and the size of the viewing window is pretty small, so installing the full Google Earth application and viewing FotB in that is still recommended.

Names of kingdoms and more (Version 20)

Names of kingdoms have been added, along with the location of the bamboo grove in Rajagaha and King Bimbisara's Jail. Added some stupas and fixed the location of Kusinara. Thanks to Dhammajoti Bhikkhu for his assistance! I've added his name to the credits on the main page.

I've noticed that various maps that I've found which all claim to show "India at the time of the Buddha" seem to be contradictory and I'm unsure of which ones to believe. If anyone has any suggestions on which one is the most credible one to use, please let me know.

Also, if you like the idea of FotB please let people know about it! If you have a web page, please link to the main site http://footstepsofthebuddha.googlepages.com/. I could really care less about becoming famous, but the more people who know about the project the more help I'm likely to get, which is something I do care about.

Lots of updates (Version 19)

I just made a bunch of updates last night. (Please refresh the FotB folder if you haven't already.) A special thanks goes out to Ven. S. Dhammika for his personal assistance!

Some of the things added or changed:

• Place markers that were associated with general locations (like cities) no longer have an icon so that the name just appears in the middle of the area. These places still have descriptions which can be viewed by clicking on the link in the Places pane.
• I can't seem to figure out where the "Sujata's bowl" thing comes from, and there's no valid specific location where this is known to have occurred anyway (I had just picked a random spot), so I've removed this story and replace the placemark with a line that just indicates that the Buddha crossed the river after taking food. Honestly I'm not even sure where Sujata comes from. One story I found says the Buddha ended his self-mortification by taking food from Nanda, the daughter of a cowherd. Another says it was Sujata who is a grown woman with kids.
• Nigrodharama (Kudan) was added. This was a famous place where the Buddha stayed among the Sakyans (his own people).
• Asokarama in Pataliputra added (unsure of exact location).
  
• Regions and Paths: A new folder for things like the outline around Jeta's Grove.
• Modern Features: I started marking some modern features in the area of the historical sites. The names of these features will stay very subdued (smaller and semi-transparent) to keep them out of the way.
• I removed the logo altogether. It's just annoying, especially if you have other KML files active that also have logos. The screen starts to become a mess of logo overlays.
  

I have indicated some places that I'm not confident in the exact location of using this question mark in a circle icon. If you can provide me with the exact location of one of the places marked with this icon, I'd greatly appreciate it. Here's the full list:

• Indasala Cave
• Kosambi
• Mankula
• Ancient Rajagaha
• Capala Cetiya
• Sattapanna Cave
• Site of the 2nd Buddhist Council in Vesali
• Asokarama

I'd also like to add other sites in the Rajgir/Rajagaha area but I can't for the life of me figure out where they are. These include the bamboo grove, the cave near the hot springs, king Bimbasara's prison, Ajatasatu's fort, and anything else interesting.

The web site was also updated to add a bibliography of books and other sources used for FotB and a list of contributors.

Logo Annoying?

I just made the overlay logo much smaller and it's hidden by default.


Really the logo doesn't add too much value, except maybe remind you that the "layer" is active. I just added it because other similar KML files have logos and I was trying to make this look "professional" but these things tend to clutter the screen so maybe I'll just remove it altogether.

Important New Version

I just reimplemented FOTB using the "network link" feature of Google Earth. This means that if you delete Footsteps of the Buddha from My Places in Google Earth, then go to the new web page and re-download FOTB then you will get automatic updates from now on!

Automatic updates will occur once a day, or if Google Earth isn't running then they should happen whenever you launch it and it's been more than a day since the last update. You can also force an update by right-clicking on the main folder and selecting Refresh.

I plan to keep updating this every so often, including perhaps adding geo-biographies of famous disciples and other things. The automatic update feature should save you a lot of trouble as I may update the locations quite frequently.