Flemish Beguines hold the ancient world history and the history of ancient migrants in such magnificent portrait of their divine identity that archaeologists’ tools cannot read the meaning of the term through the fragments of stones;

palaeontologists cannot explore the past to which Beguines belongs; neither the Geneticists nor the scientists searching for the life outside earth can possibly reach at their time by using the radio telescopes; the sacred sisters and mothers who lived here in these 13 heritage sites long ago after being driven by natural disaster from their original homes tell the story of their times which etymologists cannot get from the wrong English translations of their names.

This Unesco heritage site reads it history like this: ‘the Flemish béguinages are a series of 13 sites in the Flanders Region of Belgium. They bear extraordinary witness to the cultural tradition of the Beguines that developed in north-western Europe in the Middle Ages. These Beguines were either unmarried or widowed women who entered into a life dedicated to God, but without retiring from the world. In the 13th century they founded the béguinages, enclosed communities designed to meet their spiritual and material needs’.

This Flemish cultural region of history does not speak of anything other than their ancient identity. The term ‘Beguines’ originated from ‘Bhaginis’ means ‘Sisters’ which relates itself to biblical ‘Virgins’. English translation of ‘Beguines’ as ‘Sisters’ is not right; Pali ‘Bhikshunis’ and Indian ‘Yoginis’ explores some of the divine qualities they were then endowed with because of their special status in the society. They were not priestess though some of them were engaged in temple services. Biblical Commentators have termed them as ‘sacred prostitutes’ ; Indian puranic tradition knows them as ‘Mothers’.

It is really astonishing to see their second homes in Belgium where they reached after the great ancient migration due to Flood and volcanic eruption that buried their original homes.

The term Beguibages is different from the term Beguine in that the former specifies the ‘Bhaginis’ from the ‘Naga’ or the Serpent Community.  Many wonderful stories relating to Serpent Women are preserved in historical literature. Indian temple sites are filled with their stone images. No temple architecture is complete without their depiction at the body of the temple mostly at the ‘Front Gate’ and at the north side of the temple. Solomon’s Song of Songs is the heartfelt song of a Monk King(Sramana) who cried at the death of  Bhaginis or the Bhikshunis in a volcanic eruption.

Begunia is also name of a place, and name of a ‘tree’.