Prabhashvara is the color of the aura of Gautama Buddha which was seen radiating from his body according to Buddhist traditions and is depicted on the Buddhist flag. [1]
The prabhashvara means pure or nothingness which cannot be explained in normal languages but there is no other way to convey the message. While it is often referred as six colors, the prahbashvara is the actual spectrum of Buddha's aura consisting of five colors, in Pāli:
According to Purana Kassapa and Makkali Gosala, these six colors could also be interpreted a six species, races, or categories of human beings distinguised by genetic, physical, moral or psychological traits, which no individual can change or influence through his own will. The black color included butchers, hunters, fishers, thieves, and all those who practise curel deeds. The other five categories are on placed on a decreasing scale of perversity and increasing holiness. The white is for the absolutely pure, whose holinness is innate. However, Gautama Buddha opposed this racist classification as according to his teaching, men should not be judged by their birth but rather by their own deeds. [2]
The mixture of those five colors is believed to be Prabhashvara but it is depicted as separate strips of the five colors.
The flag was originally designed in 1885 by the Colombo Committee, in Colombo, Ceylon, in modern day Sri Lanka. The prabashvara was suggested by Henry Steel Olcott to give the Buddhist flag a strong identity more than two thousand years after Buddha's "parinirvana" to represent the Buddhism as a religion. [3]
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was born in Lumbini, in what is now Nepal, to royal parents of the Shakya clan, but renounced his home life to live as a wandering ascetic. After leading a life of mendicancy, asceticism, and meditation, he attained nirvana at Bodh Gaya in what is now India. The Buddha then wandered through the lower Indo-Gangetic Plain, teaching and building a monastic order. Buddhist tradition holds he died in Kushinagar and reached parinirvana.
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Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha, "the awakened one".
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The many different varieties of Buddhist art often show buddhas and bodhisattvas, as well as depictions of the historical Buddha, known as Gautama Buddha.
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