Showing posts with label Andhra Pradesh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Andhra Pradesh. Show all posts

Sunday, October 03, 2010

South India in Tibetan Geography




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.* 

(*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 Mahābhāratabut 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).
13. Gser-mig (This being Tibetan for ‘gold eye,’ but probably a misreading of Skt. Suvarṇākhya as Suvarṇākṣa; to simplify, this just means the ‘Gold Country’ or the country known as ‘Gold’.)
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).
25. Zhang-zhung (Zhangzhung kingdom of western Tibet).
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.

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.




§ § §   § § §   § § §




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 mudrā...  Hmmm...  I would also invite you to pay attention to the small detail of the coconuts in the offering tray. A gentle reminder that you are in coconut country.



§ § §   § § §   § § §



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.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Padampa's Animal Kingdom — Part One


In this and upcoming blogs, I will attempt what I’m hoping will be an interesting experiment.  No, I mean for you, not for me. Yes, of course I have been interested in Padampa and the Peacemaking Collection*  for about 25 years. When I first saw those five volumes on the library shelves I wanted more than anything to read and understand what was written in them.  But my attempts failed rather miserably.Meanwhile I did quite a bit of reading of 11th-12th century Tibetan texts, familiarizing myself with early Tibetan vocabulary (the myth of Classical Tibetan's unchanging nature being little more than what I just called it, a myth). Over the years, each time I went back to the Peacemaking Collection it made more sense to me. This gradual process of finding more sense in it still continues today. Someday I hope to report my complete success. But you know what they say, don't you?  "Hope [not hair] sprouts eternal."
*My name for it.  'Peacemaking' translates Zhijé (Zhi-byed), name of a school of Tibetan Buddhism that preserved Padampa's teachings.
Padampa was a lot more complicated and interesting person than has been generally recognized, even among the experts.  Much of what we think we know proves only partly right or entirely mistaken.  We do get startlingly clear glimpses from time to time of who he was and what he was up to, so long as we stick with the earliest sources. He is best remembered in both Tibet and the world as author of the Tingri Hundred (Ding-ri Brgya-rtsa), a set of couplets that has survived in collections of various length and content.  Its English translation was edited and published long ago by an Oxford-educated American by the name of W.Y. Evans-Wentz.  

We say Padampa died in 1117 CE, but this consensus is based on unexamined faith in the Blue Annals coupled with ignorance of other sources like the Gya Pö Yigtsang, which seems to give the date 1108.  These days I'm thinking that it ought to be either this or  1105 (one 12-year cycle earlier, this date actually occurs in one chronology), since a somewhat earlier date makes better sense in light of his contacts with western Tibetan kings.  

Usually we just say Padampa was an Indian and leave it at that. True, he was born in South India, probably in coastal Andhra, son of a brahmin sea captain (I know, I know, brahmins aren't ever supposed to leave Mother India...). But he was also a great traveler. He traveled the entire length and breadth of India. During his three extended periods of residence in Tibet he became so proficient in the local language that his followers could state proudly that, unlike teaching sessions with other Indian masters, "none of the fuzzy approximations of translation intervened."  He was Indian, but he could have taken Tibetan citizenship, no problem, although he didn't place much store in such things as societies and kings.

For today, I would like to concentrate less on the author and more on the metaphors. First of all, I use the word 'metaphor' only for convenience, in a *very* broad sense. Padampa often spoke in statements what may often seem, at first, cryptic without good reason.  Some look like insoluble riddles, others brief allusions to lengthy parables. Eventually, if understanding comes at all, one begins to recognize that these are usually more and less extended analogies for such things as: the teacher-student relationship, the value of renunciation, meditative experiences, and ways of dealing with the afflictive mental events that Buddhists call kleshas.  I think these topics cover the majority, perhaps as much as ninety percent.  I doubt this will be clear to anyone upon a first reading of the Root Text.  So let this be a hint.


There are two sources that I will be using for the animal metaphors.  The first, which I will call for simplicity the Root Text is what we will look at today.  The second can wait awhile.  Both are preserved in what I call the Peacemaking Collection, published with a preface by Barbara Nimri Aziz. A few years ago I received via the National Archives in Kathmandu a microfilm of the manuscript that was used as the basis of that publication. In general I feel I have successfully dated the scribing of the manuscript to within a decade of the year 1250, and identified it as a copy, probably very nearly identical in its title content, of an unavailable ‘golden’ (gold ink) manuscript scribed between the years 1207 and 1210 CE. (The argument is complicated, but I'd gladly post that paper for you if you wanted me to.)

My instructions for you, if you choose to follow them, are marvelously simple.  Go ahead and do your best to figure out what Padampa is expressing in his animal metaphors. If you can read the Tibetan original text (here unfortunately supplied in tiny Roman letters) you might have a slight edge over others, although I'm not completely sure of it. Once you have read them through a time or two,  go to the very bottom of the page and open the attachment you will find there. A file should open up for you. This contains the same set of animal metaphors, only this time supplied with footnotes that may aid comprehension of a certain number of the metaphors.  How are you at untying knots?

If this doesn't work for you at all, well, not to put it too bluntly...  It isn't for everyone. You have to have the taste for it.  You have to have the drive.  Don't worry about it.  In any case, I'd be happy if you would let me know how it goes.





Things to read if you can (be sure that a bigger bibliography is on its way):


W.Y. Evans-Wentz, ed., “The Last Testamentary Teachings of the Guru Phadampa Sangay, according to the Late Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup’s English Rendering,” contained in: The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, Oxford University Press (Oxford 1970; first published in 1954), pp. 241-252.




The Hundred Verses of Advice from Padampa Sangye to the People of Tingri Explained by Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, translated from the Tibetan by the Padmakara Translation Group, Shechen Publications (Kathmandu, no date).  Most highly  recommended!
NOTE:  Some Sufi felt free to hang the verses up on his internet site, but I recommend getting the inexpensive book, which contains the explanations of the verses by the late Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.  So does the Sufi.


Rudolf Kaschewsky, Die Lehrworte des Pha-dam-pa, contained in: R. Kaschewsky, et al., eds., Serta Tibeto-Mongolica (Wiesbaden 1973) 171-204, with the text in the form of a photocopy of a woodblock print at pp. 174-183.




Neldjorma Seunam Ouangmo, translator, Le Testament Spirituel: Les cent préceptes de Ding-Ri, Dernières recommandations de Pa Dampa Sangyé, Editions Yogi Ling (Evaux-les-Bains 1997).


Kurtis Schaeffer, Crystal Orbs and Arcane Treasuries: Anthologies of Buddhist Tantric Songs from the Tradition of Dampa Sangye, Acta Orientalia, vol. 68 (2007), pp. 5-74.

David Molk and Lama Tsering Wangdu Rinpoche, translators, Lion of Siddhas: The Life and Teachings of Padampa Sangye, Snow Lion (Ithaca 2008).


These Padampa blogs are dedicated to S.R.A.  She knows who she is.




Everybody knows that ice is water.  Still, we often forget that before it can do what water does it has to melt.  
(— A Padampa paraphrase)
 
Follow me on Academia.edu