Date: March 26, 2023
Location: Temporary Command Tent, Site Theta – Bodh Gaya
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I haven't slept.
And I don't think I need to anymore.
Sleep implies rest. But how can you rest when the very air you breathe hums like a broken prayer wheel, always spinning, always whispering?
I've spent the entire night decoding the fragments.
With help from Chandrika (our Sri Lankan historian), Zhang (our Chinese linguist), and Ravi (epigrapher from the Pune archives), we compiled and cross-referenced all surviving rubbings, digital scans, and voice records Kazuo made before the… accident.
Together, we've begun to construct a timeline.
We now believe that Bhantaragya—the name repeatedly scrawled across stone and scroll—is not merely a monk.
He was a revered monastic philosopher from an unrecorded splinter sect in the early centuries of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Based on relic dating and the hybrid Prakrit-Sanskrit dialect used in the inscriptions, we place him roughly between 150 to 300 CE, though the style seems even older in places.
But what he sought was not enlightenment.
No—Bhantaragya sought to hack it.
To cut a hole in samsara itself.
From what we've deciphered, he believed the Path to Nirvana was needlessly long and riddled with illusion. To him, even meditation and compassion were "crutches of the transient." Instead, he envisioned something he called:
> "The Spiral Door."
Kaala Moksha Srota — the "stream of liberation through time inversion."
At first, his writings are filled with radical insights—sound familiar to esoteric Buddhism: confronting death, obliterating self, total detachment. But then… the tone changes.
In a later scribe, translated partially by Zhang and Mira, Bhantaragya writes:
> "The spiral opens when the soul no longer recognizes its name."
"When silence hums louder than thought, the gate stirs."
"They who listen to the other rhythm—will find the shortcut."
We found something else: a forbidden mudra, scrawled over and over—a spiral with an eye at its center. Exactly like the mark that appeared on Anoma. And Tanmaya.
The texts describe "Anta-Vaana"—a concept that seems like an anti-nirvana. A false awakening. A liberation that is in truth a prison. A beautiful lie. The soul does not dissolve—it becomes a voice within Bhantaragya's cycle.
As per what Chandrika found in one manuscript:
> "Those who reach Spiral Door see the truth beyond Maya… and scream until they echo."
"The echo becomes them."
"Bhantaragya listens."
This isn't just metaphor.
Bhantaragya may have succeeded.
We believe he opened the Spiral Door.
But instead of liberation, he found something that devoured him.
And now he is both the gate… and the gatekeeper.
His body was never found.
But the writings suggest he merged with the very scribe he created. Bound his soul to ink and blood, to symbols and chants. Living scripture.
And we've been reading him.
Inviting him.
Every whisper. Every spiral on the wall.
Every mark on the bodies of the dead.
He is growing louder.
Today, the relics near Chamber Theta began vibrating.
Literally.
One of the bronze bells began ringing—on its own.
A stone slab shifted without touch, revealing another page tucked beneath it. On that page was a single line—fresh:
> "You are almost ready."
Kazuo collapsed again. He's lost in gibberish now. Sometimes he chants. Sometimes he scratches the symbol onto the floor with his nails.
He was trying to guide us here.
Now I believe Bhantaragya wants more than just an audience.
He wants a vessel.
I'm going to keep going. Log every piece we uncover.
We are preparing a full chamber clearing tomorrow. I'll lead it myself. And I will document what we find in the next entry.
If I stop writing—
Check the ink.
See if it's mine.
— Advait Sen
Senior Archaeologist, ASI
Living inside the Spiral now.