1 00:00:14,700 --> 00:00:21,660 [Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] So welcome to the second talk in the third series of our podcast, some of the Dhyana and Tibet Seminar. 2 00:00:22,260 --> 00:00:28,770 There will be two more excellent talks coming up this Hilary term and another four in Trinity term as well. 3 00:00:29,160 --> 00:00:35,250 Um, you can keep up to date by checking the um Wolfson Tibetan Studies website. 4 00:00:36,330 --> 00:00:42,540 All our talks are published as video podcasts, freely available from our website at Wolfson, 5 00:00:42,660 --> 00:00:47,879 from the Oxford Podcast, pages from Apple Podcasts and other sites too. 6 00:00:47,880 --> 00:00:51,540 So please try not to interrupt during the recordings. 7 00:00:51,720 --> 00:00:56,700 However, the discussion periods after the talks will not be podcasts and are open to everyone, 8 00:00:56,910 --> 00:01:00,660 so please feel free to express yourselves and ask questions. 9 00:01:00,660 --> 00:01:09,180 Then today, we're delighted to welcome Professor John Nemec, who is Professor of Indian Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. 10 00:01:09,840 --> 00:01:16,560 John did his B.A. at the University of Rochester, his M.A. at the University of California, Santa Barbara, 11 00:01:16,800 --> 00:01:23,340 followed by an MPhil at the University of Oxford and a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. 12 00:01:23,970 --> 00:01:30,210 His research centres on Indian religions and South Asian intellectual, religious and cultural history, 13 00:01:30,420 --> 00:01:38,130 particularly the philosophy and religious and narrative literatures of the Kashmir Valley of the ninth to 12th centuries. 14 00:01:38,580 --> 00:01:49,200 He is the author of three volumes, all from Oxford University Press Ubiquitous, Shiva, Soma numbers, Shiva, Drishti and His Tantric Interlocutors, 15 00:01:49,470 --> 00:01:59,460 a sequel, volume two by the same title, and Brahman and Brahmins and Kings Royal Council in the Sanskrit narrative literatures. 16 00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:06,060 He has two more books in preparation, which will lead up to his major project for the coming five years, 17 00:02:06,240 --> 00:02:09,690 An Intellectual and Cultural History of Kashmir. 18 00:02:10,110 --> 00:02:13,500 John, many thanks for taking the time to speak to us today. 19 00:02:13,830 --> 00:02:17,129 Over to you. Okay. Thank you very much. 20 00:02:17,130 --> 00:02:20,640 Um, am I, uh, audible? I can be heard. 21 00:02:21,360 --> 00:02:26,219 It's okay. Great. So, uh, I have many things to say at this point. 22 00:02:26,220 --> 00:02:31,020 As I told Kathy and Rabindranath, thank you for the invitation. 23 00:02:31,020 --> 00:02:34,110 First of all, I'm very, um, honoured and grateful to be here. 24 00:02:34,530 --> 00:02:40,229 Um, but second of all, you know, I've been working on this eighth century a little earlier than I normally think about. 25 00:02:40,230 --> 00:02:48,870 And what's going on in Kashmir, what's going on in the region, uh, and what's going on in Shi'ism, uh, at that period in the valley. 26 00:02:49,260 --> 00:02:54,720 Um, and, uh, so there's a lot of information here that I hope to share kind of quickly. 27 00:02:55,080 --> 00:03:00,570 Um, much of it or many bits of it will probably be known to many or all of you, I don't know. 28 00:03:00,900 --> 00:03:05,520 Uh, so some some of what you'll see is my own learning rather than new discoveries. 29 00:03:05,850 --> 00:03:09,120 Um, but I do think that it adds up to something to put it all together. 30 00:03:09,600 --> 00:03:12,840 Um, uh, which I don't think anyone else has done before. 31 00:03:13,230 --> 00:03:23,250 I will say, you know, the idea was to think about what we can know about Ludhiana and the famed cremation ground there, and the influence into Tibet. 32 00:03:23,250 --> 00:03:26,670 I'm not a Tibetan, is there? So, you know, my ignorance is vast. 33 00:03:27,060 --> 00:03:32,549 Uh, but, uh, we were interested in the connection between this place in Ludhiana, 34 00:03:32,550 --> 00:03:37,440 Swat Valley in today's Pakistan and the Kashmir valley, and in turn, Tibet. 35 00:03:37,830 --> 00:03:41,790 And I'll just say at the beginning that I sort of have a kind of thesis. 36 00:03:42,150 --> 00:03:46,920 There's a weak version and a strong version. The weak version of my thesis, as I'll exemplify, 37 00:03:47,220 --> 00:03:55,110 is that Tibetans did not need Kashmir or to go through Kashmir geographically or culturally to get to the Swat Valley. 38 00:03:55,590 --> 00:04:01,050 Uh, the stronger claim, which probably we'll have to talk about more and there'll be more to learn. 39 00:04:01,350 --> 00:04:11,700 But I lean toward the idea. The stronger claim is, uh, that, uh, Ludhiana in its origin, was not a Shiva site in its origin. 40 00:04:11,700 --> 00:04:20,669 It was more of a Buddhist side that came to be very interesting to Shiva than Kashmiris, uh, subsequent to a kind of Buddhist. 41 00:04:20,670 --> 00:04:23,670 Uh. Interest or milia. 42 00:04:24,120 --> 00:04:30,120 Uh, and then, uh, the Tibetans could have had an access to Swat Valley directly. 43 00:04:30,490 --> 00:04:33,750 Uh, connection with Buddhism directly outside of Kashmir. 44 00:04:34,170 --> 00:04:37,440 Um, this can be modified later as we talk. 45 00:04:37,680 --> 00:04:44,400 But the basic idea I'm trying to say, uh, is that what I want to show is in the geography of the world that we have. 46 00:04:44,820 --> 00:04:49,350 Uh, Tibet and Kashmir are two independent concerns. 47 00:04:49,830 --> 00:04:55,500 Vis-a-vis the Swat Valley. Uh, they don't have to be seen as one directly contacting the other. 48 00:04:55,800 --> 00:05:01,920 Um, and what I want to do is go through the evidence, uh uh uh, that we have to think about this. 49 00:05:02,370 --> 00:05:05,490 Um, and I sort of have four parts of this talk. 50 00:05:05,790 --> 00:05:09,060 Let's hope that I can, um, remember what they are. 51 00:05:09,330 --> 00:05:12,360 Yeah, I can do this talk in 5 minutes or 2 hours. 52 00:05:12,360 --> 00:05:16,589 I have to get it to one somewhere in between. There are four kind of parts I want to look at. 53 00:05:16,590 --> 00:05:20,280 Geography and trade routes. Part one political context. 54 00:05:20,280 --> 00:05:28,049 Contemporaneous political context. Part two a touch of what's going on with Buddhism in Kashmir in our period in question. 55 00:05:28,050 --> 00:05:30,990 And finally, I'll say a word or two about the Shi'ism of Kashmir. 56 00:05:31,440 --> 00:05:37,920 Um, I would say that Ben Williams, who I think has joined the talk and he and I are friends and collaborators. 57 00:05:38,190 --> 00:05:45,419 Uh, he definitely knows more about the kind of particular brand of Shi'ism that engages explicitly in discussions of Ludhiana, 58 00:05:45,420 --> 00:05:48,150 this crammer tradition of the Kala movement, 59 00:05:48,510 --> 00:05:55,050 uh, which I'll note toward the end, uh, and I kind of want to set the table for him, but I think [INAUDIBLE] get into more detail on this. 60 00:05:55,680 --> 00:05:59,080 Um, okay. So that's what I wanted to do. 61 00:05:59,100 --> 00:06:04,560 So first, let's talk about Ludhiana as a location and reference to it in Shiva sources. 62 00:06:04,920 --> 00:06:09,899 The basic thing is definitive reference to Ludhiana in Shiraz. 63 00:06:09,900 --> 00:06:15,210 Sources overall is late and I give you in the lecture handout item number one. 64 00:06:15,480 --> 00:06:19,170 I know a few people came after we posted it onto um. 65 00:06:20,340 --> 00:06:24,350 The chat. So if you want a copy of this, just email me something later, I'll send it to you. 66 00:06:24,360 --> 00:06:31,050 It's not the greatest thing in the world, but here it is. I'm not going to read any of this because I have many pages and many handout items, 67 00:06:31,290 --> 00:06:38,459 but this is a kind of example of an explicit, clear reference to Ludhiana as a northern, geographically northern place. 68 00:06:38,460 --> 00:06:46,300 That's a kind of tantric power place. And you see this, uh, quoted uh, in the tantra local viveka of geodata. 69 00:06:46,320 --> 00:06:51,600 So we're in the 13th century. I've been have a Gupta, uh, on the verge of the 11th century. 70 00:06:51,840 --> 00:06:57,030 Late. That's the point that I'm making. But we have lots of these kinds of references at a later date. 71 00:06:57,630 --> 00:07:05,940 The earliest place in Shi'ism where we perhaps see a reference to Udine is here in item number two, uh, of the handout. 72 00:07:05,940 --> 00:07:16,019 And I'm just. Please excuse me. I'm just. Well, I guess, uh, I'm playing around, unfortunately, with the zoom formatting for my own vision. 73 00:07:16,020 --> 00:07:22,649 But anyhow, item number two, this is from the Cali Castro gang in the first half of the ninth century. 74 00:07:22,650 --> 00:07:26,250 Somewhere around there, verse 19. This is very, very well known. 75 00:07:26,250 --> 00:07:30,870 Alexa Sanderson has a quote this and translates it in the show of exegesis. 76 00:07:31,140 --> 00:07:39,590 There's an important volume, uh, of uh, uh, liberating stories, hymns, uh uh uh hymns, uh, from the shive, 77 00:07:39,600 --> 00:07:47,970 a tradition that's being prepared by Hamza Stanton and Ben Williams and, uh, Chris Christopher Wallace. 78 00:07:48,300 --> 00:07:52,140 Uh, Chris Wallace shared his translation of this with me, so I thank him for that. 79 00:07:52,500 --> 00:07:55,860 Uh, but you see here a reference to the Maha machina. 80 00:07:56,220 --> 00:08:03,870 And this may be a reference to the famed cut of era cremation ground in Ludhiana, but it's not explicit. 81 00:08:04,230 --> 00:08:07,860 If it were, this would be the earliest place that we have that in China. 82 00:08:07,860 --> 00:08:15,689 Sources, I think. Uh, yes, in the top of the page, it's still the this the screen move got this shared screen. 83 00:08:15,690 --> 00:08:19,229 It's working correctly. Okay. Uh, there's translation here. 84 00:08:19,230 --> 00:08:23,850 And you can see I refer to the, the trio of authors that are collaborating on this project. 85 00:08:24,360 --> 00:08:31,139 The earliest place that I know of cited in Alexa Sanderson, uh, referring to Ludhiana. 86 00:08:31,140 --> 00:08:35,760 And if you look in item number three, you'll see it's clearly geographically in the north. 87 00:08:35,760 --> 00:08:40,079 They can't imagine this somehow being, you know, somewhere else, uh, 88 00:08:40,080 --> 00:08:44,820 is in the Buddhist, uh, I believe it's a created 10th, rather Manjusri mula kalpa. 89 00:08:45,210 --> 00:08:47,880 And here you have a direct and clear reference to it. 90 00:08:48,270 --> 00:08:57,540 There's also this inscription from Gard de Gardez, uh, that was uh, studied um, by Kwei-armah in this special article here. 91 00:08:57,540 --> 00:09:06,419 Very lovely article. So the citation for which is there in the handout item number four that refers to Ludhiana in the north, 92 00:09:06,420 --> 00:09:12,120 in a, in a, uh, this is a, uh, inscription on the bottom of a Ganesha statue. 93 00:09:12,510 --> 00:09:15,930 John, I think we can't see number three in full. 94 00:09:16,890 --> 00:09:20,640 Well, you can see the slide hasn't moved yet. Uh, this is, uh. 95 00:09:20,640 --> 00:09:24,390 Okay, let me try to reshare. Uh, yeah. 96 00:09:24,390 --> 00:09:29,040 That's okay. Uh, okay. I'm now sharing the screen. 97 00:09:29,490 --> 00:09:32,550 And do you see three and four? Okay, lovely. 98 00:09:32,790 --> 00:09:43,560 Um. Uh, maybe. I'm so sorry if I'll just stop one more time and I will put the, uh, handout just one last time, because I saw someone joined. 99 00:09:43,980 --> 00:09:49,080 So at least there's at least one person who wouldn't have had it, but I just put it into the chat yet again. 100 00:09:49,470 --> 00:09:52,890 Um, so hopefully anyone who wants a copy of it now has it. 101 00:09:53,340 --> 00:10:02,840 What I'm afraid of is that when I've changed. Uh, screens, uh, in, uh, The Acrobat that it doesn't appear on your screen. 102 00:10:03,500 --> 00:10:07,370 Um, so you see handout three and four at this moment. Okay. 103 00:10:07,730 --> 00:10:13,520 Um, guards, we have this, uh, Ganesha statue that was found somewhere in Afghanistan. 104 00:10:13,820 --> 00:10:20,180 And the, uh, inscription, the, uh, below makes clear that this is from this Shahi turkey. 105 00:10:20,180 --> 00:10:28,640 Shahi, uh, King from Ludhiana Odeon, uh, synonym of Udine, or another orthographic way of representing it. 106 00:10:29,000 --> 00:10:33,950 Uh, and so this makes clear that this is in the north towards Swat Valley. 107 00:10:34,190 --> 00:10:37,980 The reason now, do you see a map in front of you? Kathy did a change. 108 00:10:38,000 --> 00:10:44,130 Okay, so somehow we've made it work. Uh, if I can quickly find the place where this is mentioned. 109 00:10:44,180 --> 00:10:50,660 Uh, yes. There are many other places that Diana has been identified where Diana has been identified. 110 00:10:50,870 --> 00:10:53,989 Alexa Sanderson again notes this in the Deccan text. 111 00:10:53,990 --> 00:10:58,400 Montana. Bit of and elsewhere. Uh, Jason Schwartz has followed up on this. 112 00:10:58,670 --> 00:11:02,270 Ludhiana is said to be in the Deccan. 113 00:11:02,600 --> 00:11:05,270 Now just we don't have to get into all the details. 114 00:11:05,600 --> 00:11:13,640 Uh, but just quickly to say the earliest scriptural sources in Shi'ism that refer to Ludhiana as a power place. 115 00:11:14,300 --> 00:11:23,520 They. Sanderson has come to show actually are of a definite middle of India provenance and not from the north. 116 00:11:23,880 --> 00:11:31,920 And they later on kind of, I would say retro fit to make the Udine they're talking about be geographically in the North. 117 00:11:32,250 --> 00:11:37,200 This is an important little bit of evidence that the earliest places in Shive ism, 118 00:11:37,200 --> 00:11:41,850 where we're talking about Ludhiana is not talking about Ludhiana in the Swat Valley, 119 00:11:42,270 --> 00:11:50,070 the earliest place where we have geographic reference to Indiana in the North Swat Valley type place is in the Manjusri mula kalpa. 120 00:11:50,610 --> 00:11:56,489 Okay, so leaning a little toward Buddhism, let's say things about geography and trade routes. 121 00:11:56,490 --> 00:11:59,879 So I wanted to mention Jason Schwartz's work because he's been working on this. 122 00:11:59,880 --> 00:12:04,530 Of course, this early part of the talk leans on the work of Alexa Sanderson as well. 123 00:12:04,920 --> 00:12:10,680 Let me say that Ludhiana has also been located in eastern India and conch in the far south, in Kashgar, 124 00:12:10,680 --> 00:12:18,030 in China's Chinese Turkistan, and even in the French region south of the rock in today's Uzbekistan. 125 00:12:18,990 --> 00:12:26,160 If you, uh, if now I may quickly turn to maps, I'll try to go relatively quickly through these maps. 126 00:12:26,460 --> 00:12:30,780 Long story short, it's a much smaller world than we might think. 127 00:12:31,020 --> 00:12:33,989 I've used Google Maps here. I'm not sure I fully know. 128 00:12:33,990 --> 00:12:42,629 I don't know if you can see my cursor, but in the middle, centred at the bottom, there's a, uh, altitude kind of map for the route that's taken here. 129 00:12:42,630 --> 00:12:50,700 This is the walking route that we have from Swat Valley to Kashmir Valley, through a place called Verum Mula or Baramulla. 130 00:12:50,970 --> 00:12:54,720 And the Buddhists understood it to be Vajra mula. 131 00:12:55,140 --> 00:12:59,459 Uh, anyhow, this is something like an 80 hour walk, if you believe Google Maps. 132 00:12:59,460 --> 00:13:02,670 It's a modern thing. Alexa Sanderson looking at to. 133 00:13:02,710 --> 00:13:07,890 She has an example of a Tibetan pilgrim who made this walk in 24 days. 134 00:13:08,130 --> 00:13:11,820 I'm sorry, this will not take 24 days unless you really want to see the sights. 135 00:13:11,820 --> 00:13:16,649 I think you know, it says 80 hours. I mean, people could do this easily in less than a week. 136 00:13:16,650 --> 00:13:22,290 Anyone who's a Trekker knows that that's possible. Okay, let's see if my map will change. 137 00:13:22,590 --> 00:13:28,620 Do you see it? It worked again. Okay. Thank you. Please interrupt if anything goes wrong, but I'm keeping an eye on it. 138 00:13:29,040 --> 00:13:32,099 This is just a basic map. Uh, again from Google Maps. 139 00:13:32,100 --> 00:13:40,980 I love the Google map relief map. And the point is from Larsa Tibetan Plateau, you can see the kind of sweep of the land going towards Central Asia. 140 00:13:41,250 --> 00:13:48,270 If you start in the northeast corner of this map, you can see a sort of sweep from China across around the, 141 00:13:48,270 --> 00:13:53,159 uh, Tarim Basin here, going this way and then up from Iran. 142 00:13:53,160 --> 00:13:58,469 Turkmenistan is Pakistan, Afghanistan coming this way. You see the confluence of worlds here. 143 00:13:58,470 --> 00:14:07,140 And this is really what we have, uh, in, um, the Central Asian region is the place where three major cultural, 144 00:14:07,380 --> 00:14:15,360 military, political worlds, uh, can meet and collide from the Arab world, from China and from the Tibetan Plateau. 145 00:14:15,540 --> 00:14:19,620 Do you see my cursor? Cathy, can I talk about what my cursor is doing? 146 00:14:20,830 --> 00:14:25,440 Do you see it moving? Yes. Okay. So here's the Kashmir Valley here. 147 00:14:26,130 --> 00:14:31,950 Okay. Uh, and so we have movement like this from Tibet, uh, movement like this from China, 148 00:14:31,950 --> 00:14:39,779 and then movement coming up from the west southwest from, uh, uh, Islamic, uh, Middle East, if you like something like that. 149 00:14:39,780 --> 00:14:45,460 Persia. I here have a relief map, modern with political boundaries highlighted. 150 00:14:45,480 --> 00:14:49,440 What can we do of the Kashmir Valley? I don't want to say much about this one. 151 00:14:49,440 --> 00:14:54,000 I'm going to go to the next slide. This one I drew in some things. 152 00:14:54,390 --> 00:15:00,840 If you can see these arrows. Uh, three on the western side and one if you like, on the eastern side. 153 00:15:01,080 --> 00:15:03,840 These are major passes into the Kashmir Valley. 154 00:15:04,230 --> 00:15:13,139 If you look here, there's a kind of circle diagram type of thing to the central eastern end of the valley that's modern day Srinagar, 155 00:15:13,140 --> 00:15:18,270 and indeed the ancient city as well. I've tried to put a little dot here where bottom line is, 156 00:15:18,270 --> 00:15:24,810 this is the easiest place to get into the valley because it's not a high pass to enter coming from the west. 157 00:15:25,140 --> 00:15:29,910 Then I have a dot here in the Kargil valley and yet another one here. 158 00:15:29,910 --> 00:15:37,709 This is lay in Ladakh, the boundary between the kind of Tibetan world, Tibet and then subsequently Tibetan Buddhist world, 159 00:15:37,710 --> 00:15:44,790 and the sort of Brahmin world of the Kashmir valley is in a high pass that's just here, really only a few dozen. 160 00:15:44,790 --> 00:15:49,320 I don't know how many kilometres from the Kashmir Valley itself, this area here. 161 00:15:49,650 --> 00:15:54,840 So the mountain ranges really create a boundary. Couple things to say about Kashmir. 162 00:15:55,020 --> 00:15:58,650 Very rich. One of only three places in the world where you can grow saffron. 163 00:15:58,950 --> 00:16:03,059 It has timber. These were great export crops. Easily defensible. 164 00:16:03,060 --> 00:16:07,020 With these Devadas or Dors either passes into Kashmir. 165 00:16:07,350 --> 00:16:16,110 This is an important part of it. Uh, and, um, there was gold in the kitchen Ganga River valley here, just north of the valley. 166 00:16:16,120 --> 00:16:19,629 Gold was found there. Uh, very easy to find gold there. 167 00:16:19,630 --> 00:16:22,500 It's sort of, you know, nuggets on the surface and that kind of thing. 168 00:16:22,710 --> 00:16:29,130 So I'm trying to say that it was a resource rich region, highly defensible, agriculturally self-sufficient, 169 00:16:29,370 --> 00:16:33,840 and close, as you saw on the previous slide to Central Asia in the trade routes. 170 00:16:34,230 --> 00:16:42,840 I'll quickly go through these again. I used Google Maps to think about passage to Kashmir Valley from, uh, from Ley. 171 00:16:42,840 --> 00:16:47,850 And you can see that this isn't a very long walk. Matter of days, not weeks. 172 00:16:48,780 --> 00:16:52,830 Let's go to the next one. Here. I wanted to point something out. 173 00:16:53,460 --> 00:16:58,110 If we want to imagine going from the Tibetan Plateau to Swat Valley. 174 00:16:58,350 --> 00:17:04,560 Have a look at this map. This is actually the map of following by way of the Indus Valley River riverbed. 175 00:17:04,950 --> 00:17:13,250 And, uh, if my, uh, Google map, uh, research is correct, this would take something like 303 hours. 176 00:17:13,260 --> 00:17:21,210 You can see it here. I thought that they would want a little detour to Gilgit here, this little branch, uh, spur here on the route. 177 00:17:21,220 --> 00:17:25,080 Gilgit was such an important centre. I put it into the calculation. 178 00:17:25,350 --> 00:17:29,100 If you look at the elevation relief, it's downhill. It's a nice passage. 179 00:17:29,340 --> 00:17:38,340 They said something like 300 hours. Uh, if you go the route via through, uh, Cargill, through Lake Cargill, that way down into the Kashmir Valley, 180 00:17:38,550 --> 00:17:49,080 out Baramulla, and then over like that, it's shorter by some 50 70km, but it's only maybe 50 hours walking time. 181 00:17:49,080 --> 00:17:58,680 Less distance. This is a short, quick way of saying that the way to swat from Tibet is probably not through Kashmir. 182 00:17:59,220 --> 00:18:08,040 It doesn't have to be, and it's probably faster and easier to just follow the Indus riverbed, which I have mapped here in the handout item number 11. 183 00:18:08,040 --> 00:18:14,219 I think that this is what people probably would have done, particularly when we get to the politics of the, uh, 184 00:18:14,220 --> 00:18:18,780 Kashmir in the time there was a lot of rivalry in the eighth century, uh, 185 00:18:18,780 --> 00:18:24,089 seventh, eighth century, uh, between, um, Kashmiri kings of the Kota dynasty. 186 00:18:24,090 --> 00:18:28,470 They were version of us were coming to them in a moment. They fought with the Tibetan Empire. 187 00:18:28,950 --> 00:18:35,730 Um, so what I have here is just the, uh, uh, map I found somewhere online of the riverbed of the Indus. 188 00:18:36,060 --> 00:18:41,520 Uh, I wasn't aware of this. The Indus is the river that goes to lay and, uh, Ladakh valley there. 189 00:18:41,880 --> 00:18:47,100 Um, and so this would have probably, I think, been the route. Certainly it's a possible route, no question. 190 00:18:47,370 --> 00:18:52,110 So once again, the weak argument is Tibet doesn't need Kashmir to know Udine. 191 00:18:52,320 --> 00:18:57,060 The strong argument is I think Ludhiana and its origin was more of a Buddhist site, 192 00:18:57,540 --> 00:19:02,190 uh, that subsequently subsequently became very interesting to Shiv, as in Kashmir. 193 00:19:02,640 --> 00:19:07,140 And maybe those shavers in Kashmir influenced Tibetans later on, but I don't know. 194 00:19:07,170 --> 00:19:09,030 We'll talk about that someday, I suppose. 195 00:19:09,360 --> 00:19:16,890 Uh, but what I'm saying is, in the earliest moment in the eighth century, the evidence leans fairly strongly towards a Buddhist milieu. 196 00:19:17,490 --> 00:19:20,640 Okay. That's okay. That's my geography, I. 197 00:19:21,680 --> 00:19:28,850 My geography talk. This map is from this lovely book by Yuri Briggle, an Historical Atlas of Central Asia. 198 00:19:29,120 --> 00:19:35,600 And I'm only pointing here to this little neck of the Tibetan Empire in Little Poland. 199 00:19:36,320 --> 00:19:39,830 Uh, it the, uh, political context. 200 00:19:40,490 --> 00:19:42,080 Sorry, I need to look at my notes here. 201 00:19:42,260 --> 00:19:50,390 The political context in the seventh through ninth centuries was one of a geopolitical fight for control of Central Asia, with Arab caliphates. 202 00:19:50,540 --> 00:19:57,079 The Tang dynasty of China and the Tibetan Empire disputing the region has produced various alliances, 203 00:19:57,080 --> 00:20:02,150 including Chinese protectorates across Central Asia and into even the Indian subcontinent. 204 00:20:02,420 --> 00:20:10,999 I think it's 722 c ad uh, the car Quarter King sends an emissary to, uh, to Tang Dynasty. 205 00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:19,880 And there's a kind of vassalage of the Kashmir Valley, even in an alliance against, uh, Arab Caliphate forces trying to enter the region. 206 00:20:20,240 --> 00:20:24,470 The Tibetan Empire and Tang dynasty. Some of you will know this much better than I do. 207 00:20:24,680 --> 00:20:28,700 Fought for suzerainty over the Gilgit-Baltistan area. 208 00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:38,000 And indeed, by seven 5751, it's the Tibetan Empire that had control of this area, little below their Gilgit area and just to the north of it. 209 00:20:38,330 --> 00:20:45,350 And uh, in 721, I think it is. Anyway, early eighth century Ladakh falls into the hands of Tibetan Empire. 210 00:20:45,680 --> 00:20:51,620 And my point is from here circumventing in that U-turn kind of thing we saw with the Indus Valley, 211 00:20:51,920 --> 00:21:00,020 it's just miles a couple of days maximum to the Swat Valley from this, uh, extended region of the Tibetan Empire. 212 00:21:00,470 --> 00:21:08,209 Is this okay? Kind of, uh, short hand, uh, who was ruling in, uh, Swat Valley at that time? 213 00:21:08,210 --> 00:21:15,950 There's it's this Shahi dynasty that was Buddhist that had connection over across into today's Afghanistan and Kabul area. 214 00:21:16,400 --> 00:21:24,979 Um, the Rashid Khan Caliphate, then the Umayyad Caliphate, then the Abbasid Caliphate were fighting, uh, these Central Asian. 215 00:21:24,980 --> 00:21:28,640 But Asian Buddhist kingdoms are those that gained alliance with the Tang. 216 00:21:29,090 --> 00:21:32,270 Uh uh, yes, I already mentioned the 755. 217 00:21:32,270 --> 00:21:35,509 Tibet had control over today's Gilgit-Baltistan region. 218 00:21:35,510 --> 00:21:41,060 And before that, 719, 720, the duck was absorbed into the Tibetan Empire. 219 00:21:41,600 --> 00:21:50,829 All right, let's go further. This is, uh, in my deep Wikipedia research, you'll find this very inaccurate. 220 00:21:50,830 --> 00:21:55,180 But does the job map? Uh, somewhere around eighth century Tang dynasty. 221 00:21:55,180 --> 00:21:59,070 And you can see the kind of reach it's surprising. 222 00:21:59,080 --> 00:22:02,620 Uh, so take this for what you will. I'm sure it's inaccurate in its details. 223 00:22:02,620 --> 00:22:08,859 In many, many ways. I can find a few on my own. But what I really want to say here is we. 224 00:22:08,860 --> 00:22:16,660 By which I mean I. My own shortcomings are that I have a kind of imagination of the ancient world that's limited. 225 00:22:17,020 --> 00:22:20,770 I think of okay world. They knew about one another a little kind of sort of. 226 00:22:20,770 --> 00:22:25,120 But geography was kind of destiny. It's not entirely true. 227 00:22:25,120 --> 00:22:33,609 In fact, it's the opposite. Um, I was at a conference in Wisconsin and a slight anecdote, uh, and there were these, um, scientists who study sites, 228 00:22:33,610 --> 00:22:41,410 and they're looking at the purity of iron in second century Buddhist stupas in just Swat Valley area. 229 00:22:41,860 --> 00:22:46,360 And I talked to them and said, know, can you date things by the purity of the iron in this kind of thing? 230 00:22:46,720 --> 00:22:52,420 And what what he told me, the scientist, is that in the first second centuries, the best iron. 231 00:22:52,420 --> 00:22:57,670 This isn't the important point, but the best iron came from India and the Roman Empire. 232 00:22:57,700 --> 00:23:03,009 This is the important part. Romans wanted to import iron from Greece if they could get it. 233 00:23:03,010 --> 00:23:07,450 But if if at all possible from India, I would also. 234 00:23:07,450 --> 00:23:10,750 So we're talking about not bringing a gold coin or something like this. 235 00:23:10,990 --> 00:23:16,389 We're talking about industrial trade, that kind of thing. So the world was quite connected. 236 00:23:16,390 --> 00:23:19,690 And this Wikipedia map, for all its shortcomings, I think, 237 00:23:19,690 --> 00:23:25,030 shows us we're looking really at a large part of the world and the connections between Tibet and empire, 238 00:23:25,300 --> 00:23:29,490 uh, the caliphates that are coming from the other direction, uh, and, uh, 239 00:23:30,070 --> 00:23:34,360 dynasty from China, Tang dynasty, these are worlds that are closely interacting. 240 00:23:34,660 --> 00:23:41,950 Kashmir, happily for itself, stays away from any of these kind of dynastic occupation for many, many, many centuries. 241 00:23:42,250 --> 00:23:47,890 Uh, and this has everything to do with geography. Is this this is enough on this point. 242 00:23:48,460 --> 00:23:52,840 Um, yes. Let's come to politics. 243 00:23:53,320 --> 00:24:00,280 Uh, again, uh, I'm not going to, uh, say too much. 244 00:24:00,280 --> 00:24:05,110 I just want to talk about the information I've put here on, uh, the screen. 245 00:24:05,620 --> 00:24:16,420 Uh, we know that the reigns of kings in seventh into eighth and through the eighth century were those of a dynasty, uh, called the Calcutta dynasty. 246 00:24:16,720 --> 00:24:20,590 These are Kashmiri. Vishnu was worshippers of Vishnu. 247 00:24:20,950 --> 00:24:24,340 Uh, uh. So that's one thing to keep in mind. 248 00:24:24,670 --> 00:24:29,829 Another thing to keep in mind is overall, Calcutta Rural was quite stable. 249 00:24:29,830 --> 00:24:38,229 Uh, we definitely have issues through the entire history of, uh, Kashmir, uh, political history of Kashmir violence all the time. 250 00:24:38,230 --> 00:24:44,530 As Walter Sliwa has said, uh, there's hardly a period of any singular lifetime, any one person's lifetime. 251 00:24:44,530 --> 00:24:48,550 If you lived a moderate length, you would have seen real political instability. 252 00:24:49,030 --> 00:24:55,209 Um, some of this happens, too, in these middle years of, uh, uh, uh, the Calcutta dynasty. 253 00:24:55,210 --> 00:25:01,420 And toward the end, you have, uh, maternal uncles assassinating their nephews and taking the throne, 254 00:25:01,420 --> 00:25:07,780 etc., etc., etc. however, there are some really strong kind of golden ages as well. 255 00:25:08,080 --> 00:25:12,639 The dynasty is founded by this man. Uh, does that highlight for you? 256 00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:19,570 I suppose it does, yes. Uh, during Liber Vergina, uh, swansong, uh, visited his kingdom. 257 00:25:19,750 --> 00:25:24,640 He had amicable relations with the Buddhist Shah. He's in the Swat Valley at that time. 258 00:25:25,090 --> 00:25:36,669 Uh, they shows, uh, shrines and returns in 643 and sees that Daulat and I had extended Kashmiri rule out of the valley through that Baramulla, 259 00:25:36,670 --> 00:25:41,410 probably, uh, dura through that gate, out the valley up to the Indus River. 260 00:25:41,800 --> 00:25:49,090 So that means up to the edge of the Swat valley there. Um, and generally had good relations with the Buddhist there in that area. 261 00:25:49,540 --> 00:25:56,230 Um Pratap added to the second door. Lavaca, his son, uh, hosted rich trade in the valley. 262 00:25:56,500 --> 00:26:05,799 This is, uh, cited by this man, uh, steward Mark, uh, who did this book on, um, the bronzes, a Buddhist and Hindu bronzes of Kashmir. 263 00:26:05,800 --> 00:26:11,110 It's quite a beautiful book. Um, but many, many things coming out of the Raja Terengganu. 264 00:26:11,230 --> 00:26:14,590 I should mention this. Uh, Kalama is the author. 265 00:26:14,800 --> 00:26:20,410 12th century. He writes a history of Kashmir. I don't know if a history of the kings of Kashmir. 266 00:26:20,410 --> 00:26:23,739 So Raja Terengganu, he literally means the wave of kings. 267 00:26:23,740 --> 00:26:27,190 But it's really the chronicle of the lives of the kings of Kashmir. 268 00:26:27,580 --> 00:26:33,340 And in the fourth Tharanga, the fourth wave or the fourth chapter of the book, he deals with the Calcutta's. 269 00:26:33,730 --> 00:26:39,910 And it's from here that we know that there is a kind of historical accuracy verifiable to what he does, 270 00:26:40,120 --> 00:26:44,080 because we have Chinese sources against which we compare, none of which I've. 271 00:26:44,410 --> 00:26:50,720 This is one of the shortcomings of my talk today. Um, there are also there's also coinage and there's sort of, uh, 272 00:26:50,770 --> 00:26:58,750 archaeological evidence and material evidence by which we can date and compare, uh, colonised information to our own. 273 00:26:59,170 --> 00:27:04,149 It's a fascinating book. I've been reading it for years, is something I actually know a little bit about. 274 00:27:04,150 --> 00:27:08,050 I've written about it. Others have two. Uh. It's poetic. 275 00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:12,220 Catherine is a beautiful writer with a really unique style of Sanskrit. 276 00:27:12,610 --> 00:27:17,980 Uh, and this is where much of our information is coming from on the Calcutta dynasty. 277 00:27:18,220 --> 00:27:21,940 Perhaps that will, uh, suffice for what to say about it. 278 00:27:22,180 --> 00:27:25,180 Let me say a couple about a couple of markings here. 279 00:27:25,180 --> 00:27:28,540 The one's highlighted. Chandragupta. Right. 280 00:27:28,780 --> 00:27:36,070 Uh, had an embassy sent to Tang Dynasty because he was worried about this Arab caliphate coming from the west. 281 00:27:36,280 --> 00:27:39,460 And in 720, there was a brief kind of vassalage. 282 00:27:39,820 --> 00:27:49,450 It's an alliance. But I can tell, uh, with China, as it were, against, uh, these Islamic caliphates coming from the other direction. 283 00:27:49,900 --> 00:28:00,490 Uh, uh, Kalona, I would just mention here gives a slightly different dating than the dating that we have, the cause of this being, um, who knows? 284 00:28:00,490 --> 00:28:07,330 But when you cross-reference with Chinese sources and some dated coins and so on, they've managed to refine, uh, the dates. 285 00:28:07,570 --> 00:28:10,660 I put this vertical line here, I won't go into much more detail. 286 00:28:10,660 --> 00:28:18,820 I'm going to quickly skip on. But this is to suggest that I had three sons and Tara to lead for a short while. 287 00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:22,540 But then we have this man, Lalit Aditya mukhtar. 288 00:28:22,540 --> 00:28:27,700 Peter. Lalit. Aditya is the third son. This is said to be a Kashmiri Golden age. 289 00:28:28,090 --> 00:28:33,069 Uh, he sends an emissary to China. He goes out and conquers the world. 290 00:28:33,070 --> 00:28:37,660 And I'll give subsequent several slides to look at some of the things he did, because it's astounding. 291 00:28:38,110 --> 00:28:40,180 And he was very good to Buddhist there. 292 00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:48,100 He also, as this quotation says, sealed off five entrances to Tibet in alliance with the king of central India, 293 00:28:48,580 --> 00:28:52,840 uh, the king of Kannauj, uh, and blocked the expansion of the Tibetans. 294 00:28:53,110 --> 00:29:01,059 And this is well known. He talks about it, uh, he makes and Karna makes many, many claims for his reign. 295 00:29:01,060 --> 00:29:05,530 I think this is very much in the perfect period we want for what we're thinking about. 296 00:29:05,530 --> 00:29:09,909 724 to 761 ADC. Please excuse me. 297 00:29:09,910 --> 00:29:15,060 I'm just going to move my notes along. Uh. Uh, yes. 298 00:29:15,140 --> 00:29:21,280 Uh, but we have to be cautious about how wide his kind of conquest was. 299 00:29:21,610 --> 00:29:25,420 Um, for the convenors, I sent the full paper that I have. 300 00:29:25,660 --> 00:29:28,780 And you'll see there a footnote to someone named Michael Meister. 301 00:29:28,790 --> 00:29:34,839 He's an architectural historian at Penn. Uh, retired some years ago, uh, who taught me. 302 00:29:34,840 --> 00:29:42,820 And, uh, he wrote this beautiful article on a stone carve out temple, uh, that's in the Pahari region of south of Kashmir Valley. 303 00:29:43,150 --> 00:29:50,320 And he says, hey, uh, the Raja Terengganu, he says Mukhtar Pita conquered the world, etc., etc., etc., 304 00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:57,010 including conquering the doubters, i.e. the Buddhists, etc. but if you look at temple architecture outside the valley. 305 00:29:58,250 --> 00:30:04,640 But close to Kashmir. It looks like plains of India architecture, not the other way around. 306 00:30:04,820 --> 00:30:11,360 We don't see an expansion of patronage of physical construction between a Kashmiri style. 307 00:30:11,600 --> 00:30:17,510 Rather, we see a Plains of India style moving very up toward the frontier of the Kashmir Valley itself. 308 00:30:17,780 --> 00:30:25,250 So take with a grain of salt how much he did. However, he certainly did, uh, win military conquest. 309 00:30:25,280 --> 00:30:29,160 Nobody doubts that, uh, it was a kind of golden age, as I said. 310 00:30:29,180 --> 00:30:35,899 Global trade is going on all the way through these kings. Uh, and then in addition to that, uh, Mukhtar, 311 00:30:35,900 --> 00:30:41,780 Peter did much for an ecumenical support of religious traditions that we're going to go look at in just a moment. 312 00:30:42,200 --> 00:30:47,380 The last person I want to mention on this slide in These Kings, uh, is J.R. Peter. 313 00:30:47,740 --> 00:30:51,770 Uh, he's been written about many, many times. I gave you Yigal Bronner. 314 00:30:52,010 --> 00:30:56,150 Many others have written about him, too. Absolutely. Fascinating figure. 315 00:30:56,480 --> 00:31:02,629 Um, I've written about him as well. Um, he was a great patronage of the arts and letters. 316 00:31:02,630 --> 00:31:05,510 Probably the most important one in the entire history of Kashmir. 317 00:31:06,020 --> 00:31:12,080 But toward the end of his life, he started to plunder the wealth of the people of his own kingdom. 318 00:31:12,380 --> 00:31:20,260 And he really, uh, turned evil. There are a pair of verses in the adjective organi that describe this change, that are a slasher, 319 00:31:20,330 --> 00:31:27,379 or a double entendre verse that has three separate meanings in the verse, comparing him to pani one comparison. 320 00:31:27,380 --> 00:31:31,310 Good. He's as brilliant as Panini. The second comparison bad. 321 00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:40,159 He turned into this plunder of his own people. So you have triple meaning in one verse, one meaning for panini, one for good, JP, one for bad. 322 00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:44,780 JP that's really quite a lovely thing. Um, and Stein figured this out. 323 00:31:44,780 --> 00:31:49,550 R.L. Stine, who did this translation, uh, of Raja Sarangani with an addition. 324 00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:53,120 Um, and then I read, retranslated it. Okay. 325 00:31:53,120 --> 00:31:56,719 Lots of political instability in Kashmir all the time. 326 00:31:56,720 --> 00:32:02,720 But overall, corporate ties are quite strong. Let's look at a few things we have in common. 327 00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:07,580 Is Raja Terengganu on Mukhtar Pita. I won't again belabour the point. 328 00:32:07,610 --> 00:32:11,030 I think it's okay for time. Things are proceeding pretty well. 329 00:32:11,450 --> 00:32:16,969 Um, but I'll just, uh, read here. Uh, yes. 330 00:32:16,970 --> 00:32:20,360 This isn't the one I wanted to read out loud. There's a very beautiful verse coming up in a moment. 331 00:32:20,360 --> 00:32:23,240 Not that these aren't, but we only have so much time. 332 00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:29,089 I just would point out that, you know, there are some problems with what he says in each of these two verses, 333 00:32:29,090 --> 00:32:32,900 but it gives you a sense of, uh, Mukhtar Pita and how Hanna saw him. 334 00:32:33,170 --> 00:32:39,860 The king, eager for conquests past his life, chiefly on expeditions moving around the earth like the sun. 335 00:32:40,310 --> 00:32:43,610 Okay, uh, the sun doesn't move around the Earth, but. Okay. 336 00:32:43,610 --> 00:32:48,920 Fair enough. Uh, then the second one, he talks about the water's potable water. 337 00:32:48,950 --> 00:32:52,579 But, uh, words for Buddhists or Tibetans rather. 338 00:32:52,580 --> 00:32:56,810 Excuse me, um, that are used in Sanskrit in this period. 339 00:32:57,080 --> 00:33:03,500 And he says the anxiety felt by the boaters could not be seen on the faces which are white in their original state. 340 00:33:03,620 --> 00:33:07,010 Do you see again, item number 15 on the screen? 341 00:33:07,550 --> 00:33:10,670 Yeah. Okay. I don't know what you heard me say before. 342 00:33:10,700 --> 00:33:17,900 These are two verses about Mukhtar Pita. Probably I deserve to be cut off because one of them is scientifically inaccurate. 343 00:33:17,910 --> 00:33:22,010 Having the, uh, sun rotate around the Earth and the other one's kind of racist. 344 00:33:22,010 --> 00:33:29,480 So, you know, uh, what are you going to do? He says, uh, this thing in the second verse, I think I won't say anything more about, 345 00:33:29,510 --> 00:33:33,830 uh, that now, but the point is that he struck fear into the Buddhists. 346 00:33:34,280 --> 00:33:41,780 Uh, and sorry, my dear, but someone is texting me saying that I disappeared off the screen. 347 00:33:42,080 --> 00:33:47,010 Hopefully it's fixed now. Um, so he struck fear into his Buddhist opponent. 348 00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:53,569 Uh, his Tibetan opponents. He struck fear into the Tibetans, and he conquered the world. 349 00:33:53,570 --> 00:33:55,400 That's the only point to this slide. 350 00:33:55,730 --> 00:34:06,740 I give the note that, uh, Stein gives at the bottom of this slide about, uh, these terms for Tibetans that we have, uh, and let's move forward. 351 00:34:07,130 --> 00:34:16,730 Can you see the image here? Uh, I managed to go here first time in my life to, uh, in contemporary mutton in the Kashmir Valley. 352 00:34:17,120 --> 00:34:25,610 Uh, this is the Ma tanda, sometimes spelled Ma Tonda Sun Temple, the temple to the sun god Vishnu in the form of the sun god. 353 00:34:25,940 --> 00:34:29,450 Uh, this was it's absolutely massive and spectacular. 354 00:34:29,750 --> 00:34:33,170 Unfortunately, earthquakes and other problems destroyed much of it. 355 00:34:33,440 --> 00:34:41,510 But the core part of the structure, uh, remains. And this indeed was built, uh, by Lalit Aditya mukhtar. 356 00:34:42,140 --> 00:34:51,440 And I wanted to give, uh, an image of it because you can see the kind of how wealth managed to create this sort of religious patronage. 357 00:34:51,860 --> 00:34:58,760 Let's move forward. Uh, here there's, uh, just about the, uh, production of the temple. 358 00:34:59,030 --> 00:35:04,570 That it's wonderful. And so on. Uh, and that the town around it is swelling with grapes. 359 00:35:04,580 --> 00:35:09,690 I thought it was a lovely passage. Um, let's leave it at that. 360 00:35:09,710 --> 00:35:17,900 I gave information about the site, uh, that is there in Stein as well, uh, which I suppose people can peruse at their pleasure. 361 00:35:18,470 --> 00:35:21,980 Let's move forward. Uh, yes. 362 00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:28,730 Well, he also built a city called para hacer para the happy city, I suppose. 363 00:35:29,180 --> 00:35:34,160 Uh, and he funded Buddhist sites there, including a vihara. 364 00:35:34,430 --> 00:35:39,080 And I wanted to read this first because I think it shows a little, uh, Calvinist style. 365 00:35:39,380 --> 00:35:44,280 He says. Check, check to Chala. 366 00:35:44,490 --> 00:35:53,190 But check. Bridgehead. Janaki Raja Raja Vihar items being Raja set technology time so you can hear the 367 00:35:53,190 --> 00:35:57,330 alliteration in the second verse and the repetition in the first verse of. 368 00:35:58,310 --> 00:36:04,980 They had kind of a beautiful verse and he says uh uh uh uh uh uh. 369 00:36:04,980 --> 00:36:08,219 Peter, Jaya, uh, Lalita, Aditya, mukhtar. Peter. 370 00:36:08,220 --> 00:36:16,140 This king in the golden age, that king was free from passions and built the ever rich Raja Vihara, 371 00:36:16,140 --> 00:36:23,460 the royal vihara with a large quadrangle, a large cheetah and a large image of the Buddha, the Jina. 372 00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:33,270 The second verse we have here, with just as many thousands of as of copper as he spent in Palace of Silver on the party, 373 00:36:33,270 --> 00:36:39,300 has occasion for the statue he made the glorious statue of the Great Buddha, which reached up to the sky. 374 00:36:39,330 --> 00:36:46,230 This is a very famous passage that there seems to have been quite a glamorous, expensive statue of the Buddha. 375 00:36:48,180 --> 00:36:51,300 Keep going. Am I? I'm still here. Uh. 376 00:36:51,630 --> 00:37:02,310 Uh. Okay. Uh, I wanted to mention that this site, uh, today has a parade, just maybe 15, 20km northwest of today's Srinagar. 377 00:37:02,460 --> 00:37:07,860 Downriver. Uh, there are some there has been some archaeological work done here. 378 00:37:08,190 --> 00:37:11,580 I'm looking at Ramchandra Cox. Ancient monuments of Kashmir. 379 00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:15,390 I like this reproduction because it's so raw. 380 00:37:15,720 --> 00:37:24,330 Uh, the basement of the stupa has a. This was sponsored by a Turk minister to the king. 381 00:37:24,600 --> 00:37:28,920 And I give the verse there. Uh, chaturanga for verse to 11. 382 00:37:29,280 --> 00:37:36,240 The Turk, Jungkook, who founded the champ, Kavi Hora, made a stupa loftier even than the mind of the king. 383 00:37:36,540 --> 00:37:40,470 And he made golden images of the genius of the Buddha as well. 384 00:37:41,010 --> 00:37:45,330 Uh, there has been archaeological work done here since. 385 00:37:45,630 --> 00:37:49,920 And I'm giving you here just a page out of the Archaeological Survey of India. 386 00:37:50,190 --> 00:37:58,530 In this handout, item number 20. They seem to be further along, uh, in the repairs that are made, um, uh, 387 00:37:58,530 --> 00:38:05,580 in this area than we saw in at the time that Koc was writing, which is, you know, that three quarters of a century ago. 388 00:38:06,030 --> 00:38:12,570 Um, I didn't know about that. So next time I go to this part of the world, I definitely want to go and see this site. 389 00:38:13,110 --> 00:38:20,490 Uh. Let's see. Uh, there are other things to mention, uh, that probably it's not worth mentioning first at this moment. 390 00:38:21,210 --> 00:38:25,480 Uh, so let's leave that there. Um. Uh. 391 00:38:27,980 --> 00:38:31,280 I should read out a little bit here. Also under his robe. 392 00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:36,139 Mukhtar. Peter. Lalit. Aditya. It is said that Raja strongly 209220 ten. 393 00:38:36,140 --> 00:38:41,810 Chapter four. One of his ministers, Mitra Sharman, funded a shy of a say, 394 00:38:42,110 --> 00:38:48,739 while the king of Lata named Kaya in turn financed both the version of a site and a Buddhist one, 395 00:38:48,740 --> 00:38:53,840 a Buddhist vihara, the latter said eventually to have been the home for some time at least. 396 00:38:53,840 --> 00:38:56,840 Another man in other than Guyana, Sri Mitra. 397 00:38:57,440 --> 00:39:01,620 Uh. I think we can go to the next slide here. 398 00:39:02,100 --> 00:39:06,090 Uh, in Raja chair, I'm getting 4.209 to 210. 399 00:39:06,390 --> 00:39:13,080 I give you this passage itself. Uh, his minister, Mitra Sherman, to put up the Shiva Linga called Mitra. 400 00:39:13,180 --> 00:39:19,589 Shraddha, the king of Lata, called Kaya, made the famous shrine of Vishnu Kiya Solomon. 401 00:39:19,590 --> 00:39:24,419 So Shiva sites are something each for a nation recites or something. 402 00:39:24,420 --> 00:39:31,320 Swami. Uh. By this very king was also built the wonderful and famous Kiya Vihara. 403 00:39:31,860 --> 00:39:38,580 Uh, where subsequently the big shoe sort of a job Mitra resided who appeared as another Jana. 404 00:39:40,070 --> 00:39:44,270 Uh, I should say by this very minister. That's a mistake in my text. 405 00:39:44,780 --> 00:39:48,590 Uh. It's okay, Cathy, I'm still here. No one's frozen or anything. 406 00:39:48,620 --> 00:39:57,499 Excellent. I'm getting paranoid. Please excuse me. Item 22 is a side note in a sense, but it's important for a very important, 407 00:39:57,500 --> 00:40:05,570 very famous piece of evidence of support of Buddhism in the Kashmir Valley in this period, the remote terror. 408 00:40:06,050 --> 00:40:12,980 The famed logician enters the valley, as is memorialised in Roger 24.4 98. 409 00:40:13,430 --> 00:40:24,170 And the king here, who is, uh, JP, the other one, who funded so many arts and so many letters and then subsequently plundered his people. 410 00:40:24,380 --> 00:40:32,270 A little bit later period. Then Mukhtar Peter. He has a kind of dream of the arrival of some exalted teacher in the West. 411 00:40:32,270 --> 00:40:36,770 And the exalted, exalted teacher is named Dharma Takaya. 412 00:40:37,250 --> 00:40:42,440 And it's as if in his dream the sun rose in the west when demoted or arrived. 413 00:40:42,770 --> 00:40:47,390 Now, digging a little deeper, there have been several things made of this verse. 414 00:40:47,540 --> 00:40:56,180 One is, maybe Don Otero was a Westerner and came actually from the West, maybe from the Shanghai Turki Shahi area where we have the Swat Valley. 415 00:40:56,720 --> 00:41:06,110 Uh, Sliwa points out this is probably unlikely, because the likeliest and most common way to enter the valley from the Indian subcontinent, 416 00:41:06,260 --> 00:41:11,600 from the plains of India, was by the west and Baramulla because easy to get in. 417 00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:15,560 No high mountain passes to cross. Number one. Number two. 418 00:41:15,680 --> 00:41:19,969 Sliwa makes a strong argument that this verse suggests. 419 00:41:19,970 --> 00:41:27,410 Not that. The entrance of Dharma terror into the valley was a good thing, but a frightening, terrible thing, 420 00:41:27,410 --> 00:41:34,850 because sun's rising in the West are actually portents of evil turn turns of events. 421 00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:47,029 So what Sliwa is arguing is JP may have welcomed thermo terror with open arms JP funds v Hadas and but as statues in the rest of it, 422 00:41:47,030 --> 00:41:52,640 just as well as his predecessor that JP is ecumenical and supportive of all religions 423 00:41:52,910 --> 00:41:58,160 until he becomes very kind of like certain political leaders we know today. 424 00:41:58,550 --> 00:42:06,740 Um, but in his good days, uh, uh, Jayapal welcomed and it was ecumenical and people crossing boundaries of religion. 425 00:42:06,740 --> 00:42:13,670 And he didn't mind having a Buddhist. But sly as argument is, Carl Hanna noted that this was not a good thing. 426 00:42:14,150 --> 00:42:22,370 Is it right? Is it wrong? We can make up our own minds individually, but I thought I would mention it's really quite a fascinating, um, uh, 427 00:42:22,640 --> 00:42:31,310 verse and passage of text and, uh, similarly shows the support of Buddhism in the valley in our period in question now. 428 00:42:33,890 --> 00:42:37,550 Okay. Uh, I've been speaking for 40 minutes. 429 00:42:37,910 --> 00:42:42,620 A few more things to say. There's a work entitled The Neela martyr put on. 430 00:42:42,770 --> 00:42:47,540 This is definitely a local purana. This is a work that talks about the Kashmir Valley. 431 00:42:48,050 --> 00:42:52,050 Uh, it talks about the rivers of the Kashmir valley, the Nagas. 432 00:42:52,070 --> 00:42:58,760 It comes from the nuggets who lived there at the time, then shared the territory with, uh, humans. 433 00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:02,570 Six months at a time each. There was a whole back story to it. 434 00:43:02,930 --> 00:43:07,100 Uh, begins with a question. Why didn't Kashmir fight in the Mahabharata war? 435 00:43:07,400 --> 00:43:11,780 It turns out that the then king of Kashmir, uh, went to a swam. 436 00:43:11,780 --> 00:43:15,650 But I went to a place where you, the bride, chooses her husband. 437 00:43:16,040 --> 00:43:21,920 And the then king of Kashmir got into a fight with Krishna, who crushed him and killed him. 438 00:43:22,370 --> 00:43:30,830 Uh, because they both wanted the wife. Krishna won. Uh, but then, out of respect for him, he made the the widowed. 439 00:43:31,820 --> 00:43:38,420 Wife of the once king of Kashmir to be Queen of Kashmir, and she had a son named Goh Nanda. 440 00:43:38,840 --> 00:43:42,050 Then the narrator says, why would he do that for Kashmir? 441 00:43:42,080 --> 00:43:48,230 You know, just crush him. Who cares? He says, oh, because the Kashmir Valley itself is uma. 442 00:43:48,560 --> 00:43:59,150 It's the wife of Shiva. It's the goddess. And out of respect for the holiness of this site, he supported them and gave them this lovely possibility. 443 00:43:59,510 --> 00:44:02,749 Okay. It said that Kashmir originally was a lake. 444 00:44:02,750 --> 00:44:06,230 That's the Nagas live there. These snake beings who are kind of semi-divine. 445 00:44:06,630 --> 00:44:14,060 Uh, and then it is drained. This is, of course, uh, historically accurate going back millennia, just like Kathmandu Valley. 446 00:44:14,060 --> 00:44:21,709 I think the same is said about that valley. Uh, and you have this world described in of Kashmir. 447 00:44:21,710 --> 00:44:25,670 This text goes on to give many, many details about the Kashmir Valley. 448 00:44:26,000 --> 00:44:29,810 Uh, let me give you a little taste of that. Is there time? 449 00:44:30,410 --> 00:44:44,030 Uh, it says, uh, after this frame story, it says, uh, in 13 verses, verses 14 to 26, uh, that Kashmir is praised in all kinds of ways. 450 00:44:44,150 --> 00:44:47,330 It's full of rice fields and bears, all kinds of fruits. 451 00:44:47,570 --> 00:44:56,180 The people perform the Vedic sacrifices there. It's full of sacred sites, and hermitage is it's unconquerable by enemy kingdoms. 452 00:44:56,330 --> 00:44:59,720 It is rich in cows, horses and elephants and other creatures. 453 00:45:00,080 --> 00:45:08,660 It's not moistened only by the rains. It has water flowing through it and therefore is not dependent on an unreliable monsoon. 454 00:45:08,960 --> 00:45:14,300 It produces all grains, is richly populated, full of gardens and pleasure groves, 455 00:45:14,630 --> 00:45:20,450 little laden with flowers, fruits, trees, creepers and medicinal herbs, as well as wild beasts. 456 00:45:20,810 --> 00:45:27,379 It's enjoyed by Sid Does his accomplished beings, and Chiron has maybe wandering sages. 457 00:45:27,380 --> 00:45:32,900 That could be what it means. And Kashmir is said to be full of the sacred sites associated with Nagas. 458 00:45:33,140 --> 00:45:37,160 And finally, the B test a river through flowers through its middle. 459 00:45:37,430 --> 00:45:40,460 I love these early verses. It's really quite beautiful. 460 00:45:40,970 --> 00:45:47,480 But, uh, there's a thought, this text, uh, seventh century, most likely. 461 00:45:47,810 --> 00:45:54,950 Uh, vade Kumari. She made this, uh, two volume, uh, translation and edition of it, uh, which I've followed. 462 00:45:55,280 --> 00:46:00,230 Uh, John now do also cites passages from this, including one we'll look at in a moment. 463 00:46:00,740 --> 00:46:11,530 Uh, I think it's a beautiful text, quite interesting, but probably possibly sponsored by the first Kircher character, King developer Verdana. 464 00:46:11,930 --> 00:46:20,330 Uh, and there's a version of a valence to the text, but also this shy, the element you see here, the whole Kashmir Valley is uma. 465 00:46:20,930 --> 00:46:25,940 And then it also says something else about Shiv ism in handout item number 24. 466 00:46:26,240 --> 00:46:31,520 And if I've given anything actually new in this talk, it's actually identifying this passage. 467 00:46:31,940 --> 00:46:39,170 Uh, I would mention, um, our colleague Florinda de Simone, who's at uh, Napoli, University of Naples. 468 00:46:39,530 --> 00:46:45,169 Uh, and she, by our good fortune, uh, agreed, uh, under our invitation to come here to Virginia. 469 00:46:45,170 --> 00:46:51,590 And she's just here now, speaking in the afternoon about the Shiva Dharma, this early lay brand of Shiv ism. 470 00:46:51,890 --> 00:46:57,620 And this passage here is, if it's read the right way, slow tavion Shiva down. 471 00:46:57,620 --> 00:47:03,709 Mash chat. If this means Shiva Dharma should be obeyed or listened to you, should you know. 472 00:47:03,710 --> 00:47:10,700 Here, then this is a very early reference to Shiva Dharma, a late form of Shi'ism, probably having its origins in. 473 00:47:10,700 --> 00:47:15,470 I think she would say she knows better than I do, but I think it's 67th century, something like that. 474 00:47:15,860 --> 00:47:22,730 So here we have a passage saying, hey, Shi'ism is being practised, uh, among the populace, 475 00:47:23,060 --> 00:47:27,469 the Shiva Dharma, uh, tradition is one that is a little more inclusive. 476 00:47:27,470 --> 00:47:29,570 Generally speaking, their complications, 477 00:47:29,570 --> 00:47:37,250 they're more inclusive at the level of caste and at the level of gender than what I would call mainline biomedical tradition. 478 00:47:37,580 --> 00:47:44,719 Uh, that you see best exemplified by a work like man of a Dharma Shastra managed committee, which can be, I would say, Orthodox. 479 00:47:44,720 --> 00:47:49,200 I'll describe it that way. Is it possible I have? 480 00:47:49,200 --> 00:47:52,470 It's Cathy. I'm still here. I'm still alive. Yes. 481 00:47:52,650 --> 00:47:55,710 Is it possible that we have in popular. Sorry. 482 00:47:56,010 --> 00:48:02,910 In material evidence. Also indications of what the religious world might have been at that time. 483 00:48:03,270 --> 00:48:04,469 Here I was fortunate. 484 00:48:04,470 --> 00:48:12,270 I have a colleague, Tanenbaum, who is really just wonderful, our historian, uh, who, uh, made me aware of this in a private collection here, 485 00:48:12,270 --> 00:48:22,860 actually, in Charlottesville, I managed to take a photograph of a marble statue, uh, of, uh, Umar Mahesh Farah, uh, the god Shiva with his wife. 486 00:48:23,100 --> 00:48:26,879 Uh, this is a formulation that you see in Shiva Dharma works, uh, 487 00:48:26,880 --> 00:48:32,100 that's datable to the late eighth or maybe early ninth century Calcutta ran 488 00:48:32,100 --> 00:48:37,140 into the dynasty that comes after with of antivenom in the diamond dynasty. 489 00:48:37,560 --> 00:48:46,320 There's much, much more work to be done fully to understand, uh, the religious history of Kashmir, uh, and religious history in India more generally. 490 00:48:46,530 --> 00:48:50,609 But this, uh, item measures an 11.5in, excuse me, inches. 491 00:48:50,610 --> 00:48:55,200 Not centimetres by 12.5 by 3.9. Something like this. 492 00:48:55,530 --> 00:49:01,200 It's a personal item. Uh, not in a public giant temple or anything like that. 493 00:49:01,560 --> 00:49:08,400 So to give you a flavour of some of what was going on in Shibe ism, in the ecumenical support of different, 494 00:49:08,760 --> 00:49:13,200 uh, religious traditions by the two kings of Kashmir in our period. 495 00:49:14,100 --> 00:49:17,700 All right. We're moving closer and closer to the end here. 496 00:49:17,970 --> 00:49:24,629 I've put here these famous verses, uh, that are cited in John now do, uh, and have been known for many, 497 00:49:24,630 --> 00:49:30,240 many years, uh, where the Buddha is mentioned in the near Lama to put on. 498 00:49:30,240 --> 00:49:36,240 Now, uh, it's important to note here that, uh, the Buddha is counted as an incarnation of Vishnu. 499 00:49:36,720 --> 00:49:45,600 Uh, that's not an unusual thing. Uh uh, and, uh, of course, if the matter put on, it was royally sponsored. 500 00:49:45,900 --> 00:49:49,470 The Kakarot has their version of us. So there's a kind of continuity here. 501 00:49:49,800 --> 00:49:54,690 Uh, Vade Kumari, the translator. She notes that what we have here fits. 502 00:49:54,690 --> 00:50:05,280 Around 550 AD, we start to have the idea that the Buddha is an incarnation of Vishnu and the incarnation, the idea of being an avatar. 503 00:50:05,280 --> 00:50:08,730 It's a form of Vishnu that crosses down into the world. 504 00:50:09,090 --> 00:50:16,499 This is also an early attestation to that idea because they don't use the term avatar, they use the term uh, 505 00:50:16,500 --> 00:50:22,409 pride or blue pride or bhava uh, which is an earlier way of talking about incarnation. 506 00:50:22,410 --> 00:50:28,649 So again, indication that nila Mata put on might be an early work seventh century or something like that, 507 00:50:28,650 --> 00:50:32,100 maybe a little later than that, but right in the period that we want. 508 00:50:32,460 --> 00:50:40,890 So we definitely see here I highlighted things that are obviously kind of Buddhist in terms of art that work for for Buddhist tradition. 509 00:50:41,100 --> 00:50:46,470 And you can see that clearly here. We have people doing Buddhist things in the Kashmir Valley in the eighth century. 510 00:50:47,820 --> 00:50:50,820 Shall I go forward? All right. 511 00:50:50,850 --> 00:50:54,659 Now, the last two parts of my talk are very short. 512 00:50:54,660 --> 00:50:58,410 Each of them. Many, many, many, many more things can be said. 513 00:50:58,740 --> 00:51:01,800 I can only see the shortcomings in what I've offered you. 514 00:51:01,920 --> 00:51:08,550 I think I wrote them out in a nice, uh. Uh, well, let me say a couple of things here. 515 00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:14,070 Okay. Here on item number 27, I think I've outlined everything wrong with this. 516 00:51:14,370 --> 00:51:23,129 So let's do it that way. These are some, not all, some prominent Buddhists, uh, who were Kashmiri or Kashmiri, 517 00:51:23,130 --> 00:51:28,950 is writing about, uh, Buddhism around the period of study, and I've just included some of them. 518 00:51:28,950 --> 00:51:32,070 This has been gone over by. You'll now do as well. 519 00:51:32,340 --> 00:51:40,920 There's also a very recent article in 2025, uh, by Jonathan Silk and Walter Sliwa about Buddhism in Kashmir. 520 00:51:41,310 --> 00:51:45,420 I looked at that. And then for Oxford Bibliographies Online some years ago, 521 00:51:45,420 --> 00:51:51,040 I made a an entry entitled Kashmir and looked into a lot of this kind of thing for that article. 522 00:51:51,060 --> 00:51:52,650 So between those three sources, 523 00:51:52,950 --> 00:52:00,050 I've pulled out some of these very famous names of people who wrote about Buddhism or Buddhists who are writing in Kashmir. 524 00:52:00,060 --> 00:52:04,410 So everyone's Kashmir definitely landed in Kashmir, no question. 525 00:52:04,650 --> 00:52:07,650 Some of them are Kashmiris, some of them are just in Kashmir. 526 00:52:07,950 --> 00:52:11,370 Some of them are Buddhists writing about Buddhism. Some of them are not. 527 00:52:11,370 --> 00:52:19,050 But it's like Ananda Gardena, who wrote a commentary under mountain dynamo Teras Brahman of Initiate Tiger, now lost. 528 00:52:19,320 --> 00:52:23,700 But he was not a Buddhist. But this Buddhist logic was very important. 529 00:52:24,120 --> 00:52:27,680 So this is an example. Two last quick things to say. 530 00:52:27,690 --> 00:52:30,780 One is Cambridge listed here I Tibetan. 531 00:52:30,780 --> 00:52:38,729 This will all know him. Am I still alive? It's okay. Uh, people will still know him as the author of this Bodhisattva video on a cult, 532 00:52:38,730 --> 00:52:42,900 but later, which becomes very important in aesthetics in Tibetan language. 533 00:52:43,260 --> 00:52:46,460 Uh, he was said to be, uh uh uh. 534 00:52:46,860 --> 00:52:50,160 Shiva converted to Vishnu wisdom, but wrote about Buddhism. 535 00:52:50,460 --> 00:52:58,710 Uh, someone who's in the talk now, she Bahuguna is a doctoral, advanced to candidacy at UCLA, and she's working on these, 536 00:52:58,710 --> 00:53:04,590 um, other Donner stories, uh, and, uh, how they're dispositive of Buddhism in Kashmir in the period. 537 00:53:04,920 --> 00:53:08,700 Uh, maybe eventually, with an eye toward how it connects to Tibet. 538 00:53:08,910 --> 00:53:17,129 She's working on shamans that are just now. Uh, also, there's, uh, another scholar who's interested in these kinds of connections. 539 00:53:17,130 --> 00:53:23,160 A beginning doctoral student just in her first year here, Nguyen Jiang, who is interested in divination, 540 00:53:23,610 --> 00:53:28,530 uh, and astrology, uh, between China and India and looking in a comparative way. 541 00:53:28,530 --> 00:53:33,720 And I think these kinds of connections are very, very important. Um, yes. 542 00:53:33,930 --> 00:53:40,380 But what I've given you here is hardly, uh uh uh. 543 00:53:41,640 --> 00:53:48,150 A complete account of what we have. Uh, of Buddhists in, uh, Kashmir in this period, and I for it. 544 00:53:48,150 --> 00:53:53,310 I wrote that this covers only the most public facing rather than esoteric tantric Shiva authors. 545 00:53:53,640 --> 00:54:01,680 It's definitely incomplete. It reads from Kashmir, perhaps with an eye toward Tibet, but to the exclusion of the view of Kashmir from Tibetan sources. 546 00:54:02,160 --> 00:54:08,850 It omits the early history of Buddhism in the valley, including the likely provenance there of the Mojave Bazaar and the start of ostinato, 547 00:54:09,210 --> 00:54:12,750 and it fails to mine the useful Chinese sources we have for the period in question. 548 00:54:13,110 --> 00:54:18,450 That that is perfect. Um. It gives you a sense of how lively and active Buddhism was in Kashmir, 549 00:54:18,720 --> 00:54:23,070 in the valley, in the eighth and ninth, and then by this into the 10th centuries. 550 00:54:23,310 --> 00:54:27,300 So I hope that that could suffice to make that point. All right. 551 00:54:27,660 --> 00:54:37,830 Uh, the last thing I want to look at, uh, here is, uh, my item number 28, which, because it's complicated, it goes on for three pages. 552 00:54:38,190 --> 00:54:48,810 Um, it's really kind of trying to map the pre tantric Shiva, the proto tantric China and the Tantric Shiva texts and traditions that we have. 553 00:54:49,110 --> 00:54:56,520 This is following largely the tradition, the, uh, mapping and the historical, social, historical work done by Alexis Sanderson. 554 00:54:56,880 --> 00:54:59,880 Uh, and I'll just say a few things about it. 555 00:55:00,180 --> 00:55:06,510 I tried here, uh, to underline and put in bold texts that we know are Kashmiri. 556 00:55:07,050 --> 00:55:13,350 Uh, and I tried to put an asterisks next to things that definitely refer to Diana. 557 00:55:13,830 --> 00:55:18,120 Uh, we know that second century for sure. 558 00:55:18,120 --> 00:55:24,740 Around that time, we start to have an ascetic tradition of Shi'ism with the partial Paytas. 559 00:55:25,140 --> 00:55:28,890 Uh, that is kind of what to say. Mortuary in nature. 560 00:55:28,890 --> 00:55:37,260 They hang around cremation grounds. They are socially nonconformist, challenging medical norms in their dress and behaviour and so on. 561 00:55:37,500 --> 00:55:45,390 We have what's called the arti marga, the outer way, or, if you like, the extreme path or this high path, if you like, 562 00:55:45,720 --> 00:55:54,810 uh, uh, of, uh, renunciation traditions in Shiv ism, all of them having some kind of connection to the cremation ground. 563 00:55:55,020 --> 00:55:57,900 Very important, given what we have with Diana. 564 00:55:58,740 --> 00:56:06,870 Somewhere after this, we have this corpus of texts that Florinda is an expert on the Shiva Dharma corpus display Shiv ism. 565 00:56:07,200 --> 00:56:11,760 There are series of 123456789 texts. 566 00:56:12,150 --> 00:56:20,400 Uh, the first two of which the Dharma Shastra and the Shivaji amo tera, are found, replicated, copied all around South Asia. 567 00:56:20,760 --> 00:56:25,860 The rest of them only in collections, all collected together in Nepal. 568 00:56:26,100 --> 00:56:31,200 Why? That is, the scholars who are working on this, uh, are working on understanding that. 569 00:56:31,470 --> 00:56:40,260 But this tradition leans on Pashupati tradition and a form of Veda conforming Shiv ism from the mantra marga, 570 00:56:40,530 --> 00:56:43,170 the Shiva Siddhanta that you see here below. 571 00:56:43,710 --> 00:56:52,080 I think that our nila Mata Purana is citing this Shiva Dharma Shastra as I showed you a bit earlier, lay shive ism, 572 00:56:52,080 --> 00:57:00,120 a bit more inclusive around women, explicit about, uh, liberation being possible for all for Varna, including sutras. 573 00:57:00,570 --> 00:57:05,730 Uh, a little bit pushing against a more conservative, uh, Brahmin orthodoxy. 574 00:57:06,240 --> 00:57:14,670 Uh, the Shiva Siddhanta is, uh, ritual practising, temple managing and eventually, uh, Veda conforming form of activism. 575 00:57:14,670 --> 00:57:22,140 Of all the brands of Shi'ism we have, this is the one that we could say doesn't really push back and try to liberalise, 576 00:57:22,470 --> 00:57:28,570 uh, mainline Brahmin ism around the area of, uh, caste differentiation and gender. 577 00:57:28,590 --> 00:57:31,860 It's a little bit conservative. We know this Bridget Calo. 578 00:57:31,870 --> 00:57:36,210 Tara is a Kashmiri production. It has a lot on temple design. 579 00:57:36,450 --> 00:57:44,220 Libby Mills, who's at Toronto now, I've given her in the footnote here, has edited and translated the temple architecture portions of this text. 580 00:57:44,490 --> 00:57:48,480 There are many, many others Shiva sit down to except only given one that we know is from Kashmir. 581 00:57:49,470 --> 00:57:59,340 As the tradition develops, it's a cognisant of what comes before it, and claims to have new brands of shy wisdom that are superior to those before it. 582 00:57:59,760 --> 00:58:05,490 We have this mantra pita bite of a centred, God centred switch and Tantra as a Kashmiri work. 583 00:58:05,910 --> 00:58:09,690 And it does that. It's a scripture, but we can locate it to Kashmir. 584 00:58:10,320 --> 00:58:16,050 Uh, the desire to more goddess centred as you go through the history of activism. 585 00:58:16,350 --> 00:58:19,500 It becomes more non dualistic and more goddess centred. 586 00:58:19,530 --> 00:58:20,850 That's the general model. 587 00:58:21,300 --> 00:58:28,680 Uh, ultimately coming along, we have the countries that are very famous for maybe never Gupta and this famed Giger Toyama lot, 588 00:58:28,710 --> 00:58:34,980 which I've done very little with myself. But Alexa Sanderson has been editing and dealing with this, and others have as well, 589 00:58:35,280 --> 00:58:41,060 and it has enforced shut because there are chapters, the second, third and fourth of which are very. 590 00:58:41,520 --> 00:58:44,910 I mean, they're Kashmiri. According to Sanderson, I believe him. 591 00:58:45,990 --> 00:58:51,630 Much of the view we have of the precedent traditions is coming out of the later texts that talk about the earlier ones. 592 00:58:51,810 --> 00:59:02,790 So this relative chronology is one built up by the attestation of the texts themselves after the, uh, mantra marga, the etymology, the mantra marga. 593 00:59:02,970 --> 00:59:13,050 Then we have this kula marga, this, uh, pathway of the, uh, family, if you like, the cooler in for transmissions east, south, north and west. 594 00:59:13,350 --> 00:59:18,300 Uh. Poor Virginia. It's well-established at least by the ninth century in Kashmir. 595 00:59:18,630 --> 00:59:25,950 I've given some of the names of the texts here. We go to the last page and last page of the handout in general for the talk. 596 00:59:26,220 --> 00:59:31,350 We have mom niya, the goddess chica. Here we have mention of Ludhiana. 597 00:59:31,770 --> 00:59:36,060 Uh, this becomes very important first in the Deccan, but it's also there in Nepal. 598 00:59:36,330 --> 00:59:39,360 I don't know much about the history, but there we are then. 599 00:59:39,360 --> 00:59:45,600 Uttara omnia, the northern transmission of the crown of the, uh, Kala, of the Kula tradition. 600 00:59:45,870 --> 00:59:52,470 And we have this tradition called the Crema, which I think Ben Williams is going to speak about at much greater length than I did. 601 00:59:52,800 --> 01:00:00,210 And here we have references again to, uh, Ludhiana duction omnia, the southern transmission. 602 01:00:00,540 --> 01:00:09,029 I would mention this Netra Tantra. I've just been looking at this, maybe a ninth century, early ninth century text that, um, with um, 603 01:00:09,030 --> 01:00:14,550 rotation for the imagines, all kinds of pathways that might be using a Buddhist deity might be this, it might be that. 604 01:00:14,790 --> 01:00:19,109 But all worked into this nature. Tantra. Um, maybe a court work. 605 01:00:19,110 --> 01:00:27,510 A work that's concerned with the life of the king in the what are called post scriptural authors, authors who say, hey, I'm a human being. 606 01:00:27,930 --> 01:00:31,440 I'm not. This isn't a text. That's gods from time immemorial. 607 01:00:31,440 --> 01:00:39,450 These are human beings writing. They put themselves into, uh, history we have given in nature in the ninth century, the Kali Castro. 608 01:00:39,750 --> 01:00:44,970 And here we come around to where we began. He mentions the Maha Sharma Shana. 609 01:00:45,390 --> 01:00:50,220 Uh, perhaps a reference to Indiana. No, nothing definite there. 610 01:00:50,550 --> 01:00:56,340 This is one of the earliest places that we have a concern with the matter that we're all attentive to today. 611 01:00:56,790 --> 01:01:00,419 And then coming very back to the beginning of my talk. Tantra loka. 612 01:01:00,420 --> 01:01:03,840 Tantra loka viveka. We have Ludhiana mentioned. 613 01:01:04,170 --> 01:01:08,460 Uh, uh, I've been have a Gupta as a 10th 11th century. 614 01:01:08,940 --> 01:01:12,600 Um, this is really all I would say about this material. 615 01:01:12,840 --> 01:01:14,520 There's much, much more to be done. 616 01:01:14,850 --> 01:01:22,650 Uh, in fact, uh, I want to go and look again in the ancient Loka and make sure that Orianna is explicitly mentioned in the Tantra loka, 617 01:01:22,830 --> 01:01:26,340 and not just in the viveka. And I'm starting to hesitate on that. 618 01:01:26,340 --> 01:01:29,820 I have to go and do a little bit more homework. Okay. 619 01:01:30,000 --> 01:01:36,480 So summing up, I've been speaking for an hour and one minute, but I also fell off line, so hopefully, uh uh. 620 01:01:37,730 --> 01:01:45,860 I'm not over time. I just want to give my conclusion, which is there are a lot of things to suggest that Swat Valley, Indiana, 621 01:01:45,860 --> 01:01:54,950 in the eighth century was balanced in Buddhism rather than, uh, Hinduism, Shi'ism in particular, if I can say it that way. 622 01:01:55,400 --> 01:02:00,050 Uh, the earliest reference we have to Indiana that's datable is eighth century. 623 01:02:00,260 --> 01:02:08,810 The, uh, Manjusri more local part uh, the Turkey Shahi, the Shawnee dynasty at that time in the Swat Valley, supported by Buddhism. 624 01:02:09,110 --> 01:02:17,900 Tibetans from the time that we date or imagine had met some of, uh, had direct access to Swat Valley via the Indus, uh, riverbed. 625 01:02:18,830 --> 01:02:21,890 Kashmir and Tibet were in direct confrontation in this period. 626 01:02:22,220 --> 01:02:27,560 Uh, Lalit Aditya mukhtar pita brags about beating the boats and so on. 627 01:02:27,830 --> 01:02:36,590 Uh, this is not suggesting a kind of certainly political conflict, maybe not cultural flow as much from those across that frontier. 628 01:02:37,220 --> 01:02:43,940 At the same time suggesting maybe Tibetans gaining an interest in Ludhiana went around Kashmir rather than through it. 629 01:02:44,330 --> 01:02:53,149 And the earliest references we have to Udayan and Shive, a tradition from the Crema, uh, which Ben Williams will speak about, uh, have, uh, 630 01:02:53,150 --> 01:03:01,610 evidence of a definite provenance and provenance from the Deccan plateau, uh, only later to be associated with Swat Valley and Kashmir. 631 01:03:02,060 --> 01:03:09,860 Uh, so all that suggests Kashmir may not have played a direct role in the Tibetan engagement with Ludhiana, at least in this early period. 632 01:03:10,250 --> 01:03:20,210 Uh, the contravening evidence. Who knows for sure. Contravening evidence is well, Lalit Aditya mukhtar pita 724 to 761. 633 01:03:20,240 --> 01:03:23,900 Very good relations with the kings of the Shanghai kings of the Swat Valley. 634 01:03:24,230 --> 01:03:29,390 They had good connections. So maybe that suggests interaction at the cultural level as well. 635 01:03:29,990 --> 01:03:37,430 Now, of course, last point. I'm not naive enough to think that political boundaries and cultural bound boundaries are terminal. 636 01:03:37,700 --> 01:03:42,020 You can have feuding states and yet cultural influence at the same time. 637 01:03:42,290 --> 01:03:48,150 Just because a king supports Buddhism doesn't mean that Shiv ism isn't thriving in that valley. 638 01:03:48,170 --> 01:03:51,260 The guard's inscription is of a Ganesh statue. 639 01:03:51,650 --> 01:03:58,790 Uh, so we can't equate political identity with religious identity or political identity with cultural influence. 640 01:03:59,090 --> 01:04:02,090 All these things are true. Maybe we'll never know for sure. 641 01:04:02,390 --> 01:04:09,410 Maybe they cut away the cremation ground as it comes to be called, uh, uh, which Sanderson says, you know, is direct. 642 01:04:09,410 --> 01:04:12,800 Talk about it. But that's late. It's 13th century, something like that. 643 01:04:13,220 --> 01:04:16,340 Um, maybe it was always inter religious, I don't know, 644 01:04:16,610 --> 01:04:23,150 but what I do know is when you really dig around Chavis sources and you really dig around Kashmir in the period in question, 645 01:04:23,480 --> 01:04:29,750 it's not suggesting this heavy, heavy influence, uh, interest and influence in Indiana till a later date. 646 01:04:30,050 --> 01:04:33,640 So that's, uh, note that. See what we want to do with it. 647 01:04:33,650 --> 01:04:41,600 I'm perfectly happy to be wrong. I'm just trying to collate the evidence that we have, uh, can to date and, uh. 648 01:04:41,720 --> 01:04:45,920 Yes, that's all I have to say. Thank you so much. I hope I didn't go over too much.