Post 2/?
I'll be going over the "three sources" of the 'research' - or rather speculations - that Rajeev attributes to his friend Devakumar Sreevijayan. Though one can't help notice that all 3 sources are actually those that Lokesh Chandra traced his speculations to, thus reducing the source of Srivijayan's "research" into just 1: Lokesh Chandra's book.
rediff.com/news/dec/31rajeev.htm
All three sources plus the fourth of Lokesh Chandra's book are inadmissable as evidence, and each has contributed further speculations/mythmaking to the Potalaka myth. I'll provide sources for the following arguments in subsequent posts, but the main points are (the short-short version):
1. In the Mahayana Buddhist "Avatamsaka Sutra", Potalaka is a spiritual Buddhist place
- The Avatamsaka Sutra (its Gandavyuha Sutra section) is the primary, originating source of the Potalaka myth. It takes place in the spiritual Indian Buddhist cosmological plane (where the multiple Buddhas of Mahayana like Maitreya, Manjushri etc were to be met) not in the physical geography of India.
- The main character, Sudhana, visits a lot of spiritual Buddhist characters, some living in fantastic places (very bejewelled). Among the significant number of 53 characters he meets are - besides Avalokiteshwara - the Maitreya and Manjushri Buddhas and (anachronistically) Gautama Buddha's mother.
- Avalokiteshwara's Potalaka is actually very bejeweled too (giant jewel rocks and in the verse-section, mountain Potalaka is made of jewels). So it doesn't "just" have an earthlike natural setting, as people claim.
- All of them advise Sudhana on how to proceed to the next stage in his quest for bodhisattvahood. In other words: they all interact with him. Including Buddha's mother. So why isn't everyone trying to find their locations and only Avalokiteshwara's Potalaka?
- Clearly the Sutra is a spiritual text for meditation, on how to attain Bodhisattvahood, where the Buddhist takes the place of Sudhana and learns what the character learns. The text is not meant to be literally - geographically and historically - true. Just like the magic deer in IIRC the Heart Sutra (was it?) was not meant (nor taken) as historically, literally true, even though set in India.
2. Second stage: Potalaka is assumed to be real geography
- It is Hsuan-Tsang, the Chinese Buddhist visiting India, who taking the Avatamsaka Sutra literally, assumed it to allude to real geography and moreover that this was in India, and hence also sought Potalaka in India. (Avalokiteshwara/GuanYin's growing fame in China may have further compelled his interest in Potalaka.)
- However scholars have surmised that Hsuan-Tsang never visited the place that he choice to identify as Potalaka, but that he got the descriptions from hearsay.
- Further, his descriptions admit to no more than Shaivam (only sightings of Shiva [or Shaiva Yogins] are attested: as Ishwara and a PAshupata Yogin) which HT nevertheless chose to interpet as Avalokiteshwara instead, and which apologists are trying to argue away as "but Avalokiteshwara was based on Ishwara so maybe it was a reference to syncretism", except that all the syncretism is HT's interpretation, and all the Shaivam is from the actual descriptions from persons which he's relaying.
3. Third stage: based on the assumption of Potalaka being real geography, various people have tried to locate it, variously.
Resulting in a wide range of speculations.
- Lokesh Chandra subscribes to HT's speculation that Avatamsaka Sutra's Potalaka at least must be real geography. He further believes HT's description to be of the actual Potalaka (though others have sought Potalaka in other parts of Asia, also because Jambudvipa didn't/doesn't necessarily refer to India). Lokesh further chooses to interpret HT's descriptions of Potalaka as referring to Shabarimala and chooses to infer from the 3 source texts in just such a way as to fit his conclusions.
- However, other scholars (like the Japanese Shu) - also working on the assumption that Potalaka is real geography and located in India and that HT must have described the real Potalaka - have used the same sources to identify a different site (in Shu's case, a Hindu site in TN) as the Potalaka described by HT, and have consequently made different inferences from the same source texts such as to come to their own different conclusions. Both Lokesh and Shu widely vary in their derivation of the etymology of Potalaka, again so as to fit their conclusions. Clearly, HT's descriptions are not unambiguous, because they give rise to widely varying speculations on the location of Potalaka, with widely varying conclusions.
[Next to that, neo-Buddhist circles from some distant part of India had claimed that Tirupati is Potalaka. Which negates Hsuan Tsang's descriptions of a PAshupata Yogin manifesting at the foot of the hill and being identical to or related to the deity at the temple.]
- And Lokesh Chandra admits he is only speculating: "... Lord Ayyappa of Shabarimala, who could have been the Potala Lokeshwara of Buddhist literature".
- Also, Lokesh Chandra makes basic errors in retelling Ayyappa narratives that no scholar would have made, and works with some typically Buddhist assumptions (that, everywhere in India, shaastaa "must be" exclusively a synonym for Buddha onlee. This is obviously not the case in the south, the homebase for the popularity of the Hindu God DharmaShaastaa.)
I'll be going over the "three sources" of the 'research' - or rather speculations - that Rajeev attributes to his friend Devakumar Sreevijayan. Though one can't help notice that all 3 sources are actually those that Lokesh Chandra traced his speculations to, thus reducing the source of Srivijayan's "research" into just 1: Lokesh Chandra's book.
rediff.com/news/dec/31rajeev.htm
Quote:Devakumar Sreevijayan (formerly of Austin, Texas and currently of New York City) for almost all of this fascinating research. It is in three texts: the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Hymn to the Thousand-Armed Avalokitesvara, and the writings of the intrepid Chinese traveller Hsiuen Tsang (Zuen Xang?), that we find the detailed references. Dev found a good deal of information in the book, The Thousand-Armed Avalokitesvara by Lokesh Chandra.(Or rather: Devakumar found *all* his information in Lokesh Chandra's book. And most of Rajeev's own additional speculations in his rediff article were spin-offs from Lokesh's theories.)
All three sources plus the fourth of Lokesh Chandra's book are inadmissable as evidence, and each has contributed further speculations/mythmaking to the Potalaka myth. I'll provide sources for the following arguments in subsequent posts, but the main points are (the short-short version):
1. In the Mahayana Buddhist "Avatamsaka Sutra", Potalaka is a spiritual Buddhist place
- The Avatamsaka Sutra (its Gandavyuha Sutra section) is the primary, originating source of the Potalaka myth. It takes place in the spiritual Indian Buddhist cosmological plane (where the multiple Buddhas of Mahayana like Maitreya, Manjushri etc were to be met) not in the physical geography of India.
- The main character, Sudhana, visits a lot of spiritual Buddhist characters, some living in fantastic places (very bejewelled). Among the significant number of 53 characters he meets are - besides Avalokiteshwara - the Maitreya and Manjushri Buddhas and (anachronistically) Gautama Buddha's mother.
- Avalokiteshwara's Potalaka is actually very bejeweled too (giant jewel rocks and in the verse-section, mountain Potalaka is made of jewels). So it doesn't "just" have an earthlike natural setting, as people claim.
- All of them advise Sudhana on how to proceed to the next stage in his quest for bodhisattvahood. In other words: they all interact with him. Including Buddha's mother. So why isn't everyone trying to find their locations and only Avalokiteshwara's Potalaka?
- Clearly the Sutra is a spiritual text for meditation, on how to attain Bodhisattvahood, where the Buddhist takes the place of Sudhana and learns what the character learns. The text is not meant to be literally - geographically and historically - true. Just like the magic deer in IIRC the Heart Sutra (was it?) was not meant (nor taken) as historically, literally true, even though set in India.
2. Second stage: Potalaka is assumed to be real geography
- It is Hsuan-Tsang, the Chinese Buddhist visiting India, who taking the Avatamsaka Sutra literally, assumed it to allude to real geography and moreover that this was in India, and hence also sought Potalaka in India. (Avalokiteshwara/GuanYin's growing fame in China may have further compelled his interest in Potalaka.)
- However scholars have surmised that Hsuan-Tsang never visited the place that he choice to identify as Potalaka, but that he got the descriptions from hearsay.
- Further, his descriptions admit to no more than Shaivam (only sightings of Shiva [or Shaiva Yogins] are attested: as Ishwara and a PAshupata Yogin) which HT nevertheless chose to interpet as Avalokiteshwara instead, and which apologists are trying to argue away as "but Avalokiteshwara was based on Ishwara so maybe it was a reference to syncretism", except that all the syncretism is HT's interpretation, and all the Shaivam is from the actual descriptions from persons which he's relaying.
3. Third stage: based on the assumption of Potalaka being real geography, various people have tried to locate it, variously.
Resulting in a wide range of speculations.
- Lokesh Chandra subscribes to HT's speculation that Avatamsaka Sutra's Potalaka at least must be real geography. He further believes HT's description to be of the actual Potalaka (though others have sought Potalaka in other parts of Asia, also because Jambudvipa didn't/doesn't necessarily refer to India). Lokesh further chooses to interpret HT's descriptions of Potalaka as referring to Shabarimala and chooses to infer from the 3 source texts in just such a way as to fit his conclusions.
- However, other scholars (like the Japanese Shu) - also working on the assumption that Potalaka is real geography and located in India and that HT must have described the real Potalaka - have used the same sources to identify a different site (in Shu's case, a Hindu site in TN) as the Potalaka described by HT, and have consequently made different inferences from the same source texts such as to come to their own different conclusions. Both Lokesh and Shu widely vary in their derivation of the etymology of Potalaka, again so as to fit their conclusions. Clearly, HT's descriptions are not unambiguous, because they give rise to widely varying speculations on the location of Potalaka, with widely varying conclusions.
[Next to that, neo-Buddhist circles from some distant part of India had claimed that Tirupati is Potalaka. Which negates Hsuan Tsang's descriptions of a PAshupata Yogin manifesting at the foot of the hill and being identical to or related to the deity at the temple.]
- And Lokesh Chandra admits he is only speculating: "... Lord Ayyappa of Shabarimala, who could have been the Potala Lokeshwara of Buddhist literature".
- Also, Lokesh Chandra makes basic errors in retelling Ayyappa narratives that no scholar would have made, and works with some typically Buddhist assumptions (that, everywhere in India, shaastaa "must be" exclusively a synonym for Buddha onlee. This is obviously not the case in the south, the homebase for the popularity of the Hindu God DharmaShaastaa.)