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WHEN ANCIENT BUDDHISTS SAILED WEST-by Bhante Dhammika of Australia Source:Island One of the most isolated and little-known places in the world is the island of Socotra. Dry, barren and with only a small population, it sits some 380 kilometres off the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula and the eastern tip of Somalia and is now administered at part of Yemen. Although on one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes it has no port facilities and gets almost no visitors. Nonetheless, it has recently become one of the most important and unexpected archaeological sites for those interested in Indian and particularly Indian Buddhist history. In the year 2000 a group of Belgian speleologist (Speleology is the study of caves) visited a large cave on Socotra known by the locals as Hoq and made a series of remarkable discoveries. The cave itself is on the northern coast of the island facing ...