Removing The Sheen From Buddhism

[Husky]

Another spam-series, directly related to the previous, following on from it. But like a sequel.



Post 11/?



Wanted to provide a link for how Podigai Malai=Agastiar Malai (and in particular Agastyakoodam).

This led me to the following wackypedia entry. Which is the subject of this next spam session.



1. Good to archive the contents of this wacky page before neo/Buddhists, ur-Shramanism peddlers and beliebers in dravoodianism deface this page with their interminable neo/Buddhist inculturation too:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pothigai

Pothigai

Pothigai Hills



Elevation 1,866 m (6,122 ft)

Location

Location Thiruvananthapuram district, Tirunelveli district, Kanyakumari district, India

Range Anaimalai Hills

Coordinates 8°37'00.09?N 77°14'46.50?E? / ?8.6166917°N 77.2462500°E? / 8.6166917; 77.2462500



The Pothigai Hills, also known as the Agasthiyar Malai are in the Ashambu Hills, part of the Anaimalai Hills in the southern part of the Western Ghats of South India. Legend says that the sage Agastya (also written as Agasthiyar or Agathiyar) is said to have provided the grammar for the Tamil language. This grammar was further fine tuned by one of his disciples in the Tolkappiyam.



Geography[edit]

The western slope is located in the Thiruvananthapuram District of Kerala state, eastern slope of Pothigai hills is in the Tirunelveli District, southern slope is located in Kanyakumari District of Tamil Nadu. At 1,866 meters, it is the highest peak in the rugged Ashambu hills, which have one of the richest concentrations of biodiversity in the Western Ghats.[1] The area is known for its spectacular views, beautiful forests and waterfalls, ancient temples, and the river Tamirabarani, the lifeline of the region.



Legend[edit]

According to the Mahabharata, Lord Shiva sent the two saints (or sages) Vyasa and Agastya, down to Earth, to create the divine languages, Sanskrit and Tamil. Agathiyar came to Pothigai and established the Tamil culture.

(Puranas combined with Sthalapuranas and old Tamil Hindu texts and tradition document this in detail.)



After establishing the Sidhar Gnana Koodam center for scientific research, and later traveling throughout the world, spreading the knowledge gained, Agathiyar returned to a spot in the Pothigai hills, where he merged into the cosmos. A temple has been built for him at this spot, close to the Papanasam Falls on the banks of the Thamirabarani River. It is said that Sage Agathiyar occasionally gives appearances to sincere aspirants and devotees.

So, although Potiyil certainly does not match the Avatamsaka Sutra's Potalaka (which description is very different and is a spiritual place of Buddhist cosmology), it can match some distinctive features of the real-sounding place that Hsuan-Tsang was relaying from hearsay.

To stress:

- The potential match with 7th century Hsuan-Tsang's transmission of hearsay from his day simply takes into account 1. the geography he wrote about AND especially 2. the mention of the "Ishwara/Maheshwara", "PAshupata Yogin" (i.e. Shaiva=Hindu Yogi) which his sources said made appearances to sincere devotees,

- But NO speculations are required on the place name Potiyil or to force its etymology to fit a Bauddhified narrative.

- And of course, the parts of his description that claimed to tie Buddhism with the PAshupata Yogin's appearance (or the Ishwara of the region) are an entirely different matter.





For supporting data that Vedic Rishi and Shaiva Siddha Agastya is called Potiyil Muni, as I had claimed in an earlier post above, see

- temple.dinamalar.com/news_detail.php?id=17686

Page is in Tamil. Where "Potiyil Munivan" is mentioned in paripadalgal featuring Muruga. It refers only to Agastya.

- Or even the title of the page:

ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/பொதியில்_முனிவன்

which of course refers to Agattiyar (அகத்தியர்), which is a Tamil rendering of Agastya



Everyone probably knows (or should know) better than me, but never mind:

+ Two Rishis were born of Urvashi and Mitra-Varuna: VasiShTha and Agastya born from a kumbham. (Both may be kumbhodbhava?) The Vedas are generally the first reference given for the mention of their descent from Urvashi. Ramayanam refers to both Rishis again. Etc.



+ References to Potiyil's association with the Vedic Rishi Agastya are found in Puranas* and in early Tamil Hindu literature, including for example also Silappadikaaram**, which repeats Hindoo Pauranic accounts on Agastya [e.g. sourced to Vayu Purana] - which makes it clear that it is the Vedic Rishi Agastya - besides Silappadikaaram also referring to Agastya as the muni dwelling at Podiyil in the very same breath as stating his direct affiliation with Shiva of the Vedam (thus repeating Puranas and the ancient local Hindu tradition to this effect***). Note that in this last, Shiva really IS explicitly mentioned with reference to the Vedam; not to any unVedic Buddhist clone.



* E.g: the MBh already mentioned Agastya going south of the Vindhyas permanently - and Devi Bhagavatam apparently explains how this event is associated with his name - the Skaandam recounts Agastya's settling in the south as being in accordance with the request of Uma-Shiva, and the Srimad Bhagavatam has Balaraama worshipping Rishi Agastya at Potiyil. Etc.

** Will paste English translations from Silappadikaaram in a post further below.

*** Vedic Rishi Agastya is the first of the line of Shaiva Siddhars in Shaiva Siddhaantam.



+ Both Shiva and Murugan were the driving force behind Agastiar's Tamil work as well as his work in Siddha medicine etc.



There are of course many Hindu temples to the Gods in the Western Ghats including the Podighai mountains (and no doubt Buddhists and Jains had made there way there in time too to set up camp there).

But as we're particularly interested in a "PAshupata Yogin" and "Ishwara/Maheshwara" associated with the Potiyil Malai and making appearances there, in order to conform as closely as is possibly with anything Hsuan-Tsang was talking about, this restricts the topic to the Hindu Gods most closely associated with Agastyar in TN/Kerala: Shiva and Murugan.



a. Since very ancient times, Potiyil has been one of the sites of the Dakshinaamoorti-Shiva. Such that Tirumantiram's Tirumoolar - another of the famous Shaiva Siddhars and supposed to have come to the south from Kashmir to meet up with Agastya - and other Hindu Shaiva literature of TN (like TiruvAchakam) refer to Dakshinaamoorti-Shiva.



sriagathiyartemple.com/sri_agathiyar.html

This page is unavailable, but search using *Bing* for the phrase "Sage Agathiyar on the instruction of Lord Murugan originated the Tamil language" and you get the cached page, which contains a line I want to use as supporting evidence:

After satisfactorily completing their mission of propagating the said teachings the sages (Shaiva Siddhars) went into 'Samadhi' merging themselves into the cosmos. Kandan went into Samadhi in Thorana Malai, Bhogar in Palani, Thaeraiyar, Pulipanai and Yugimuni in Kantha Malai, and Agathiyar himself choosed to come back to Courtalam. He chosed a spot called Dhashina Meru in the Pothigai Hills. This spot is also the abode of Lord Siva as Dhashina Murthi.

(Dashina/Tatchina etc are a Tamil way of writing dakShiNa.)



The following is also very useful as it translates an old Tamil text that documents a native Potiyil chieftain's devotion to Dakshinaamoorti:



list.indology.info/pipermail/indology_list.indology.info/1999-June/017468.html

Coming to the prevalence of dakSiNAmUrti on the west coast of Tamil country,

there is a mention in the CT text ciRupANARRuppaTai about dakSiNAmUrti as

follows:



.............................................kaligkam

Al amar celvaRku amarntan2an2 koTutta

cAvam tAgkiya cAntu pular tiNi tOL

Arvam nal mozi Ayum.... (ciRu. 96-99)



Here the chieftain Ay of potiyil region is described as giving a fine cloth

to dakSiNAmUrti (Al amar celvan2). The jurisdiction of Ays extended from

Nagarkoil in the south to Tiruvalla in the north according to Sreedhara

Menon.



As for his [dakShiNAmUrti's] nature of teacher or creator, CT texts call him "kaTavuL" and even

"ton2mutu kaTavuL". Moreover, we have the following tEvAram of campantar:



paNTu nAlvarukku aRam uraittu aruLip pal ulakin2il uyir vAzkkai

kaNTa nAtan2Ar ................................................

(tEv. 2.107.7)



So he is definitely god-creator too.

"CT texts" - is this a reference to "Sangam (Cankam) Tamil texts"?



Wackypedia at present dates "ciRupANARRuppaTai" to 1st century BCE to 1st century CE:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirupanarruppatai

Cirupanarruppatai,(Tamil:சிறுபாணாற்றுப்படை) is a Tamil poetic work in the Pathinenmaelkanakku anthology of Tamil literature, belonging to the Sangam period corresponding to between 100 BCE – 100 CE. Cirupanarruppatai contains 269 lines of poetry in the Achiriyappa meter. The poems were written by the poet Nathattanaar in praise of a minor Velir chieftain named Nalliyakkotan, a Nāka king of Nāka Nadu (ancient Malabar North Ceylon). Cirupanarruppatai belongs to the Pattupattu collection and follows the Arruppadtai style, a device used by most of the books in the Pattupattu collection.

Clearly, for a Chieftain of 100 BCE-100 CE to have been attached to Dakshinamoorti-Shiva means that he didn't just discover the God at that very moment, but that the knowledge of the presence of this Hindu God there by the local people (Hindus) must have been established for some time. That is, it is likely that the Potiyil Chieftain's ancestors knew about Dakshinamoorti-Shiva in the region too. And for who knows how many generations.



b. As for Murugan's close association with Agastiar and Potiyil:



temple.dinamalar.com/en/new_en.php?id=997

Tamil language, Sage Agasthya and Lord Muruga are inseparable according to both history and the scriptures.



When Agasthya came to Pothigai, he created the river Tambaraparani. He stayed in a Muruga temple in the place close to a waterfall. In course of time, this temple came to be known as Agasthya Temple. According to researchers, Agasthya wrote the Tamil Grammar Agathiyam from this temple.

+ Is the waterfall mentioned above the Papanasham falls? Because wikipedia's Podigai entry, pasted at the top of this post, said that Agastya's Samadhi Kovil at Podiyil is "close to the Papanasam Falls on the banks of the Thamirabarani River". Papanasham falls may have been named so not only since waters are divine to Hindus, and this particular fall probably does as its name says (since even the wind from Potiyil has since ancient times been said to have beneficial properties), but perhaps also because the activity is associated with Shiva, who makes Harohara out of all paapam (and so this is featured in many stotras to him, e.g. ShivaaShTakam: "mahApApanAsham").



+ River Tamraparani (also called Porunai, Podhigai/Podikai, see e.g. below) finds its origins around/near Agastyar Malai, the way River Vaigai/Vaikai finds its origins in Periyar plateau, also in the Sahyadris/Western Ghats. The sacred Sahyadris are the origin of a great many sacred rivers of southern India.

Ammaiappan: Thamiraparani River...

ammaiappan.blogspot.com/2008/08/thamiraparani-river.html‎Cached

8 Aug 2008 ... The river has also been historically known as Podhigai. ... peaks of Aduppukkal

Mottai, Agastya Malai and Cherumunji Mottai. ... Mythology: The Tirunelveli

Sthalapurana associates the origin of the river with sage Agasthiyar.

ammaiappan.blogspot.com/2008/08/thamiraparani-river.html

Spelt differently as Tampraparani, Tamraparni, Tamiravaruni, etc., the river is mentioned as the Porunai nathi (nadi, i.e. river) in Tamil poetic literature. It gets recognition and is referred to as the renowned one in Sanskrit literature references which are as old as that of the Puranas and Epics. The river has also been historically known as Podhigai.



It originates more than 2,000 metres above sea-level in Agasti Hill[Periya Pothigai hills], a part of the Aanamalai range on the eastern slopes of Western Ghats above Papanasam in the Ambasamudram taluk of the Tirunelveli district in Tamil Nadu, near the peaks of Aduppukkal Mottai, Agastya Malai and Cherumunji Mottai. It flows roughly east and enters the Gulf of Mannar of the Bay of Bengal near at Punnaikayal in Tiruchendur taluk of Thoothukkudi district. At 130km it is a relatively short river.