 |
| Shree Ayyappa |
It was only a few years ago that I first visited South India. I wonder what took me so long. Today I am wishing I had taken a camera with me. All my earlier Indian travels had been in the north, mostly in the Gangetic Plains, Delhi area, and Himachal Pradesh. But I’ve felt an increasing interest in South India that can in some part be explained by my personal liking for some special persons who study the area or who originated there. And all this knits together in an inexplicable way with my interest in Padampa Sanggyé, and the ever-increasing conviction that I may need to know more about South India in order to understand him better.
I believe Padampa lived his young life somewhere in the coastal regions of Andhra Pradesh, probably in the mouth of the Krishna River. My reasons for thinking so are several. The most obvious indications in early sources are that he must have lived quite close to Shri Parvata (Dpal-gyi Ri), by which I understand the Shri Parvata that is in the same area as Dhanyakataka Stūpa in Amaravati (there is this wiki with a map location if you are curious). We also have (less specific) testimony in the frequency of sea turtles in his metaphors, along with the story that his father was a sea captain. A number of early sources say that he was from Be-ta’i Yul. Some have interpreted this to mean the kingdom of Vidarbha, but I don’t believe this is necessarily correct. I think the name Be-ta Country would just mean Coconut Country, as a cover-all term for the entire South Indian region, where coconuts are one of the most important items in the cuisine. Be-ta is the Tibetan word for the coconut palm.*
I believe Padampa lived his young life somewhere in the coastal regions of Andhra Pradesh, probably in the mouth of the Krishna River. My reasons for thinking so are several. The most obvious indications in early sources are that he must have lived quite close to Shri Parvata (Dpal-gyi Ri), by which I understand the Shri Parvata that is in the same area as Dhanyakataka Stūpa in Amaravati (there is this wiki with a map location if you are curious). We also have (less specific) testimony in the frequency of sea turtles in his metaphors, along with the story that his father was a sea captain. A number of early sources say that he was from Be-ta’i Yul. Some have interpreted this to mean the kingdom of Vidarbha, but I don’t believe this is necessarily correct. I think the name Be-ta Country would just mean Coconut Country, as a cover-all term for the entire South Indian region, where coconuts are one of the most important items in the cuisine. Be-ta is the Tibetan word for the coconut palm.*
(*Berthold Laufer’s remarkable work on Loanwords, known to readers of earlier blogs, discusses this on pp. 457-8, but it can be found in quite a few modern English-Tibetan dictionaries under ‘coconut.’ I say this for the benefit of those who might pride themselves on their unwillingness to trust me.)
I’m eager to read Karl Brunnhölzl’s new book Straight from the Heart, supposedly already in the mail. Among many other things, it has what looks like a very substantial chapter on Padampa entitled Padampa Sangyé’s Meetings with Milarepa and the Nun Düdsi Gyi. It can be seen in part at Googlebooks. There (p. 203) he gives the country’s name as Veta and says that it was in a particular part of that land in a place called Carasimha that Padampa was born. With no footnote or other identification, both place names are left drifting across the page as blank signifiers, with not much of a clue as to where we might be, although it does say, without clueing us in on how anybody would know this, that he was a South Indian.
I’m not ready to rule out the Vidarbha idea quite yet. It was more-or-less synonymous with ‘the south’ in the Mahābhārata, but south in those days didn’t seem to go very far on the map. (And nowadays the name Vidarbha is limited to eastern Maharashtra with its population of Marathi speakers — try this wiki.) Anyway, ‘coconut country’ could be equally descriptive of the Kingdom of Vidarbha and of South India as a whole. Still more mysterious is the identity of Padampa’s hometown Tsa-ra-sing-ha. I’ve found some new sources that might shed light on that, but it’s not too relevant at the moment, and would provoke some lengthy technical arguments. Another time, perhaps.
Today I will limit myself to a fairly simple question. What general knowledge did educated Tibetans of the past have about South Indian geography?
No sooner is this simple question framed than the doubts and complications raise their tiny heads to assert their importance. If names are preserved in books, it doesn’t mean that people necessarily knew about them or knew how those names ought to be found on the ground. Let’s keep those tiny hydra heads at bay and try heading for the big picture based on what textual sources we have, in an attempt to avoid being ruled by our overactive imagination.
Butön (Bu-ston Rin-chen-grub, 1290‑1364 CE) was one of the most intelligent among the leading Tibetan historical personages, no doubt about it. Tibetan iconography normally depicts him with an abnormally shaped head, extremely wide at the temples with a huge cranial bump, but narrowing sharply downward to his jutting v-shaped chin. (As you can see, I’m trying to get a job writing art show catalogues.)
I find myself entirely unable to make up my mind whether [1] the cranial bump is an iconographic convention to denote superior intelligence or [2] this way of depicting him his based on his actual physical appearance, which is not to neglect the possibility the answer might be [3] both (see the Heller book).
In volume 24 of the old Lokesh Chandra edition of his collected works (that’s right, he wrote more than 24 volumes of collected works!), at pages 866-7, is one of the most interesting of classical Tibetan lists of countries. This is part of his famous history composed in 1322 CE. I’ll give this list in a moment, with some of the countries identified in parentheses. I believe all of these country names are names of real countries, and No, that really does not go without saying. If a few of them might not be immediately identifiable with real countries, my assumption is that we need to go back to the earlier sources for parts of the list and think harder until we come up with the answers. (That’s right. I’ve got faith. But I feel I have good reasons to have faith.) You will soon see that I give links to Wikipedia articles, which are, you know, sometimes not exactly on the cutting edge... But I believe many will benefit from having the quick reference, on the understanding that no seal of approval has been applied from my side.
First he gives a list of a few places in which gigantic versions of tantras are said to exist:
1. lha’i gnas (divine abodes).
2. Shambha-la (Shambhala).
3. U-rgyan (Oḍḍiyāna), etc.
Then he gives a much longer list of countries where the Buddha-Dharma has spread at some time or another in one form or another:
4. Rgya-gar (India).
5. Kha-che (Kashmir).
6. Bal-yul (Nepal Valley).
7. Li (Khotan).
8. Rgya-nag (China).
9. Rgya-nag Chen-po (Greater China, or China together with Tang Dynasty conquests).
10. Par-sig (Persia).
11. Tsam-pa-ka (Campaka).
12. Spre’u (this being Tibetan for ‘monkey,’ but most likely intending Sanskrit Vānara).
14. Rug-ma, with an added note reading Shambha-la, implying that it is part of that country.
15. Ram-ma.
16. Zangs-gling (Tibetan meaning ‘Copper Isle’), with an added note reading Rgya-gar, ‘India,’ implying that it is part of India. It may be Sri Lanka, a part of Bengal, or a coastal area of Burma. It’s the place Sinhala was when his lamp laughed at him.
17. Sing-ga-la’i Gling (Isle of Siṅgala), with an added note reading Rgya-gar, ‘India,’ implying that it is part of the Indian sphere.
18. Pri-yang-ku’i Gling (Isle of Priyaṅku).
19. Ya-mu-na’i Gling (Isle of Yamunā [River?]).
20. Gser-gling (‘Gold Isle’), with an added note reading Rgya-gar, ‘India,’ implying that it is part of India. Likely to be the Śrīvijaya kingdom in Southeast Asia?
21. Zla-ba’i Gling (‘Moon Isle’). Candra Dvīpa, sometimes identified as an island in the Ganges delta area, or a larger part of coastal Bengal. The Das dictionary says something about it.
22. Ma-kha (Mecca).
23. Kha-sha (Khasa?).
24. Gyi-ljang (a known placename in Tibet, but not well identified).
26. Bru-sha (Burusho).
27. ’A-zha (T’u-yü-hun).
28. Sum-pa (Supi).
29. Za-hor (as the birthplace of Atiśa, although disputed, this must be in area of Bengal).
30. Me-nyag (Tangut).
31. ’Jang-yul (Nan-chao).
32. Yo-gur (Uighur), with a note that says it is in the direction of China.
33. Tho-gar (Tokhar). This ethnonym also occurs in the Hebrew Bible (Bereshith 10:3) according to Jäschke.
34. U-rgyan (Oḍḍiyāna). This repeats no. 3 above.
35. ’Gro-lding-ba’i Yul.
36. Long-ba’i Yul.
37. Tso-la.
38. Ka-lingka.
... etcetera.
You can find a quite old, but not for that reason negligible, English translation of this. If you have on hand a copy of E. Obermiller’s The History of Buddhism in India and Tibet by Bu-ston, look at part 2, p. 171. If you have the recently published book Thuken Losang Chökyi Nyima’s The Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems, The Library of Tibetan Classics series vol. 25, Wisdom (Boston 2009), p. 371, you will find a translation of a later borrowing of Butön’s list with some interesting footnotes, although the translators could have saved themselves a bit of trouble if they had known about the earlier version of the list in Butön’s history along with Obermiller’s translation of it. (I know of another copy of Butön’s list in a much-neglected mid-16th-century history.)
One significant part of our list is copied from a passage in the Vimalaprabhā commentary on the Kālacakra Tantra (chapter 1, part 4). Following the Peking edition of the Tibetan text, these countries are:
[1] Bod (Tibet),
[2] Rgya-nag (China),
[3] Rgya-nag-chen-po,
[4] Pār-si-ka,
[5] Tsam-pa-ka,
[6] Spre’u,
[7] Gser,
[8] Rug-ma, and
[9] Su-ra-ma.
In each of these countries, says the Vimalaprabhā, the teachings of the Buddha have been set down in writing in their own languages (the author saw no reason to mention India here, since that would go without saying... and did; likewise for Butön’s list Tibet went without saying). So I hope it’s clear that nos. 8-15 in Butön’s list correspond exactly in order and very closely in spellings to the earlier Vimalaprabhā list nos. 2-9. Although I have some different ideas than those he arrived at some years ago,* I would like to just send you to John Newman’s unpublished 1987 dissertation on the Kālacakra Tantra’s chapter 1 for further discussion of these particular names (on p. 362 of my UMI reprint). There is nothing better to the best of my knowledge.
(*I’m now of the somewhat supportable opinion that nos. 14-15, Rug-ma and Ram-ma both (or perhaps the latter alone) are somehow concealing the names of the two halves of early Burma Rāmañña (EoB [Encyclopaedia of Buddhism] VII 496) and Maramma ("upper Burma"), the two countries that combined to form that once-blessed country of Burma/Myanmar.)
We could go into a lot of other interesting problems, but I am eager to get to the end of the list. So let me just say, perhaps stating the obvious, that no. 17, the Isle of Siṅgala, could only mean Ceylon / Sri Lanka. But then what is no. 18, Isle of Priyaṅku? I believe I am the first person to identify it as the Piyaṅgu Island known to Sri Lankan sources (EoB VII 421 has an entry). I found in a Singhalese dictionary that piyaṅgu and priyaṅgu are considered variant spellings. It is variously interpreted to mean panic seed or millet (both regarded as poor-people’s foods, known as ‘famine grains’), black mustard-seed or long pepper. Or, a tree with fragrant flowers (?). Pri-yang-ku is even known to Tibetan medicine, which would further perplex us if we were to pursue it now, which we won’t. The conclusion of the EoB entry is just that it was a small island near the northern coast of Sri Lanka. Since anyway the monks mostly had to commute there by miraculous means, especially by flying, I imagine a better explanation may be that it is Pegu. In early times Pegu was a well-known port-of-call (true, not an island, although this doesn’t bother me much) in eastern coastal Burma (preserved in the modern city name Bago, I guess). I would like to find good reasons to verify or reject this idea.
Okay, enough of that. Let’s look at the last four in the list.
35. ’Gro-lding-ba’i Yul.
Translating the Tibetan, this means ‘country of hovering/soaring travel.’ Obermiller gave it in an Indic form as Dramila (a form that actually appears in a few Sanskrit texts). This means the land of Tamil speakers. I haven’t thought of a reason why the Tibetan would be translating the name, have you? But I’m sure that it does translate it, since it appears in this Tibetan Kanjur title:
Dramiḍa Vidyārāja (’Phags pa ’gro lding ba’i rig sngags kyi rgyal po). Tôhoku no. 927 (also, no. 610), Dergé Kanjur, vol. E (101), folios 273‑276. It was translated in late imperial times, or circa 800 CE.
The Tanjur contains a quite lengthy text that would appear from its title to be a Dravidian vase ritual:
’Phags pa drā bi da’i bum pa’i cho ga. Tôhoku no. 3130. Dergé Tanjur, vol. PU (74), folios 129‑244.
36. Long-ba’i Yul.
Translating the Tibetan, this means ‘country of the blind.’ The reason for this is not very difficult to find (and Obermiller found it long ago). Someone at some point in the past dropped the ‘r’ from Andhra, resulting in Andha, which means ‘blind.’
37. Tso-la.
This can only mean the Chola (Cola) kingdom of south India. Tamil in its origins, when the Chola was at the height of its power in around 1050, it controlled most of the eastern India coastal regions as well as the western parts of insular Southeast Asia.
38. Ka-lingka.
Kaliṅga was a very well-known kingdom in the history of southern India. It was centered north of Andhra in what today is Orissa.
The first two of these four would seem to correspond very nicely with the two modern states of Andhra Pradesh, with its majority of Telugu speakers, and Tamil Nadu with its majority of Tamil speakers. The two other modern states of South India, Kerala with its Malayalam speakers, and Karnataka with its Kannada speakers, may not have yet achieved identity as ethnic entities when this list was originally made. In the case of Malayalam, it could in early times have been considered a dialect of Tamil. Kannada, according to linguists, would have split off from Tamil at an even earlier date. There are about 20 more Dravidian languages, but the four I mention are today the major ones.
So at least we know that an early 14th-century Tibetan source appears to know something about the lands of South India. Like other lists incorporated into that list, the list of lands of South India is probably older than the 14th century, reflecting as it does earlier political divisions (for example, the Chola Dynasty ended in 1279). This doesn’t directly bring us closer to finding out where Padampa was coming from. But it doesn’t hurt, either. At least we know that he, just like Nāgārjuna, was from Coconut Country, a place the Tibetan teacher Manlung Guru visited in the 13th century. That's right. A Tibetan actually went there back in those days. But now I’m getting ahead of myself on a story that hasn’t even started yet.
And do I even need to mention that a lot of this requires further work? Please be brave and kind and write to me in the comments box if you want to criticize or discuss any of this.
Ready to read more?
Bu-ston Rin-chen-grub’s history of Buddhism is available on the world-wide web in the Wylie transcription form of Tibetan. I believe there are two versions out there. These digital texts are extremely useful for Tibetan readers, given the ease with which you may locate Tibetan words and names in it. Limited to English? You will probably have to settle for mail ordering an Indian reprint of the 1932 Obermiller translation. The indexing is totally inadequate.
Alain Daniélou, translator, Manimekhalai (The Dancer with the Magic Bowl) by Merchant‑Prince Shattan, New Directions (New York 1989). This is an English version of the only significant Buddhist literary text that survives in Tamil, dating from around the 6th century CE or so. The translation gets mixed reviews. There may be a better one out there.
D. Martin, “Tibet at the Center: A Historical Study of Some Tibetan Geographical Conceptions Based on Two Types of Country-Lists found in Bon Histories,” contained in: Per Kvaerne, ed., Tibetan Studies, Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture (Oslo 1994), vol. 1, pp. 517-532.
John R. Newman, The Outer Wheel of Time: Vajrayāna Buddhist Cosmology in the Kālacakra Tantra, doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin (Madison 1987), in 681 pages. UMI order no. 8723348.
D.C. [Dinesh Chandra] Sircar, Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India, Motilal Banarsidass (Delhi 1971), 2nd edition. This (plus other works by the same author) is my Bible for the historical geography of India. You can get a good look at most of it at Googlebooks.
Japanese readers are invited to download this PDF to find out more about a Tamil mantra in the Lotus Sutra.
On Butön's iconography, be well advised to go and have a look at plates 63 and 64 in Amy Heller's book Tibetan Art: Tracing the Development of Spiritual Ideals and Art in Tibet, 600-2000 A.D., Jaca Book (Milan 1999), with discussion on pages 85-86. The island of Buton, unbeknownst to Butön, is located here.
On Butön's iconography, be well advised to go and have a look at plates 63 and 64 in Amy Heller's book Tibetan Art: Tracing the Development of Spiritual Ideals and Art in Tibet, 600-2000 A.D., Jaca Book (Milan 1999), with discussion on pages 85-86. The island of Buton, unbeknownst to Butön, is located here.
And here is a marvelous passage from the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 2.4.18. In the commentary, notice how the Khasa (the Kha-sha of our list?) are explained as people with stunted hair on their upper lips, and therefore Mongolians and other equally moustache-challenged peoples. Really, I somehow doubt this. The general point of this country listing within its context is to assert that even the most dreadfully sinful foreign cultures can find their full salvation in Vishnu. Are you listening to this out there?
For a discussion on Shri Parvata and surrounding area, since around 1960 submerged beneath a huge reservoir created by the Nagarjunasagar Dam, see this blog at hridayartha.blogspot.com.
For a discussion on Shri Parvata and surrounding area, since around 1960 submerged beneath a huge reservoir created by the Nagarjunasagar Dam, see this blog at hridayartha.blogspot.com.
§ § § § § § § § §
The frontispiece is a popular print of the famous Ayyappa deity image, object of the largest pilgrimages in Kerala. Some believe this deity and its shrine were originally Buddhist. I have nothing illuminating to say on the subject, just to say that it is a fairly commonly expressed idea, that may or may not have a strong basis. You may be the judge. I might be the only one to notice it, but the deity's (iconographically speaking) rather unusual sitting position resembles the Zhijé (not the Chö) form of Padampa. I guess it is only a coincidence. But then their right hands are also displaying the same mudr
§ § § § § § § § §
The hardcore Tibetanists among you are welcome to go and download “50 Geo Texts” HERE at New Tibetological website. I uploaded it a long time ago, but then I forgot to tell anyone it was there. It is supposed to be useful as a search file for answering some kinds of questions about Tibetan geography and geographical knowledge. Its only proper use is as a reference tool along the lines of an index. That means the user should feel obliged to look up the original publications in order to verify that the readings are actually there.
.I imagine this to be a mother-of-pearl representation of Lao-tzu’s journey to the west on a water buffalo’s back. I can’t explain the ears, but I think that's probably a flute he’s holding. It was found in a hidden drawer of a credenza brought home from a furniture auction in the U.S. in the 1980’s.
Success is as dangerous as failure,
hope is as hollow as fear.
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
your position is shaky.
When you stand with two feet on the ground,
you will always keep your balance.
Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don’t see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?
Tao Teh Ching
I also put up an informal listing of titles of Tibetan texts of the typical geographical genres. It includes guidebooks to holy places (gnas), hidden countries (sbas yul), itineraries (lam yig) and the like. It's findable by clicking here.
Posts
