Date: April 6, 2023
Location: Central Excavation Tent, Bodh Gaya Dig Site
I can hear chanting again.
It's no longer isolated to the dead of night. This time it started just before sunset, low and guttural, like a voice caught between invocation and suffering. The others heard it too. Devanshi froze while cataloguing relic fragments. Zhang dropped a tray of bronze tablets. Everyone fell silent for a minute, eyes darting—not just out of fear, but recognition.
We've all heard it before, even if we pretended otherwise. Even if we tried to bury it under work and distraction.
But there's no distraction now.
After our last session translating the third scribe, we've pieced together fragments of what may be Bhantaragya's true intent. From what we've gleaned, Bhantaragya—once a monk of high order, possibly tied to the elusive Mahāsāṃghika sect—believed in cutting through the cyclical burden of death by creating Nirvana. Not achieving it through lifetimes of discipline, but by forging a shortcut. A backdoor into enlightenment.
The relics speak in symbols: blood sigils, inverted mandalas, burnt prayer wheels. He devised a ritual—a blasphemy masked as salvation—calling it Punarjāgṛta, a false awakening. It promised the soul liberation by willingly passing through the shadow realm between samsara and nirvana, a place he described as "the bone between God and void."
He did not emerge from that place the same.
It is said he came back chanting
in tongues never heard before. His disciples were the first to die—silent at first, then chanting too, before their tongues were found severed and embedded in the walls of the old monastery.
We also learned that his body was never cremated. It was preserved, buried deep in a chamber surrounded by obsidian lotus seals. That chamber—we now realize—is Chamber Theta.
And we opened it. Days ago.
I cannot undo what's been done, but I can record it, for as long as this diary allows me. Whether for the sake of history, or for the poor soul who might stumble across it in years to come—this must serve as a warning.
We have interns from four different countries, several languages, several beliefs—but none of it matters anymore. Terror levels everything. The core team—twenty of us—are fractured. Among the Indian members (eleven, including myself), some still cling to logic. Others pray. A few have gone quiet. The interns—bright-eyed and full of awe—have begun to avoid eye contact. They sleep in pairs now. Some haven't slept at all.
Tomorrow, we attempt to unearth what we believe is Bhantaragya's final manuscript. The texts say it was carved onto something not of parchment or stone—but something "grown and flayed." Devanshi believes it might be skin. I'm afraid she might be right.
I will not let this spiral go undocumented.
If Bhantaragya does rise, we must be ready
.
—Advait Sen