The life of Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha, "the Awakened One," at the age of 35, is well documented in the Pali language texts: In some of his sermons to his monks, the Buddha even describes his own journey. However, only ruins remain of the places he lived in northern India, partly because the original structures were made of perishable materials like wood and clay, and partly because later reconstructions in stone were destroyed by religious opponents, most radically in the 12th century by Muslim fanatics. Since the 13th century, the teachings of the Buddha have been displaced from the land of their origin but continue to thrive in countries around India. In India, the Buddhist ruins remained abandoned for centuries, allowing builders to freely take stones for their construction projects. It was not until the 19th century that...