Swaminarayan Museum

The Swaminarayan Museum is a museum presently under construction in Ahmedabad. It will house priceless items of Swaminarayan. Currently the Swaminarayan Sampraday is working on this project, to treasure Swaminarayan's most cherished items of Prasadi (personal items) which can be viewed by all people for darshan. [cite web | url=http://www.swaminarayanmuseum.org | title=Shree Swaminarayan Museum] This is the first ever project in the Swaminarayan Sampraday to create this unity in all of Swaminarayan's Prasadi items from temples all over the world. [cite web | url=http://www.swaminarayanmuseum.org | title=Shree Swaminarayan Museum] This museum had been a long dream of former Acharya Shree Tejendraprasadji Maharaj of the Narnarayan Dev Gadi. [cite web | url=http://www.swaminarayanmuseum.org | title=Shree Swaminarayan Museum] The project is expected to be completed in 2010. [cite web | url=http://www.swaminarayanmuseum.org | title=Shree Swaminarayan Museum]

History

During his lifetime, when Swaminarayan went around village to village, on request from his followers he gave his belongings as ‘prasadi' to his followers. This ‘prasadi' is passed from generation to generation, and is still owned by hundreds of families across the board. [cite web | url=http://www.swaminarayanmuseum.com/purpose.html | title=Purpose of the Swaminarayan Museum] Swaminarayan temples also have their own collection, but items are kept in a jumble. The people who pass through them have no historical information about these items. [cite web | url=http://www.swaminarayanmuseum.com/purpose.html | title=Purpose of the Swaminarayan Museum] Acharya Shree TejendraPrasadji Maharaj endevoured to establish a museum of Swaminarayan 's belongings. He himself had some personal collections of Swaminarayan, and dreamed of gathering the ‘prasadi' from the devotees. He intended to put all this collection, which gave a glimpse of Swaminarayan's life, in the museum. To fulfill this dream he passed on leadership of the Narnarayan Dev Gadi to his son, Acharya Shree Koshalendraprasadji Maharaj in order to give full attention to this project. [cite web | url=http://www.swaminarayanmuseum.org | title=Shree Swaminarayan Museum] He agreed to celebrate His 60th Birthday only on one condition, that all the donation and proceedings given by the devotees will be passed on to the realization of this museum. [cite web | url=http://www.swaminarayanmuseum.org | title=Shree Swaminarayan Museum] This was the founding stone of the museum. [cite web | url=http://www.swaminarayanmuseum.org | title=Shree Swaminarayan Museum]

Collection

The museum will hold items such as Swaminarayan's writing scripts, day to day garments, ornaments, footprints, fragments of his hair, nails etc. [cite web | url=http://www.swaminarayanmuseum.com/highlights.html | title=Highlights of the Swaminarayan Museum] What will make this place unique is that it will house the only existing writing scripts and signature of Swaminarayan. [cite web | url=http://www.swaminarayanmuseum.com/highlights.html | title=Highlights of the Swaminarayan Museum]

References

External links

[http://www.swaminarayanmuseum.com/ Official website of the Swaminarayan Museum]