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Uddiyana
(also: ''Uḍḍiyāna'', ''Uḍḍāyāna'', ''Udyāna'' or 'Oḍḍiyāna'), a small region in early medieval India, is ascribed importance in the development and dissemination of Vajrayāna Buddhism.‘Uḍḍiyāna and Kashmir’, pp 265-269 ‘The Śaiva Exegesis of Kashmir’, in Mélanges tantriques à la mémoire d’Hélène Brunner. Tantric Studies in Memory of Hélène Brunner, Collection Indologie 106, EFEO, Institut français de Pondichéry (IFP), ed. Dominic Goodall and André Padoux, 2007.) Tibetan Buddhist traditions view it as a Beyul (Tibetan: སྦས་ཡུལ, Wylie: sbas-yul), a legendary heavenly place inaccessible to ordinary mortals. Padmasambhava, the eighth-century Buddhist master who was instrumental in the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet, was believed to have been born in Oddiyana. The Dzogchen Siddha Garab Dorje is likewise attributed to this region. It is ascribed importance in the development and dissemination of Vajrayāna Buddhism. The r ...
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Garab Dorje
Garab Dorje (c. 665) () was the first human to receive the complete direct transmission teachings of Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen. The circumstances of his birth are shrouded in different interpretations, with some accounts describing a miraculous birth by a virgin daughter of the king of Uddiyana. Garab Dorje became the first teacher of Dzogchen ("Great Perfection", also called ''Ati Yoga'') teachings. Garab Dorje's core teachings revolve around understanding the nature of the mind as the original Buddha, beyond birth and cessation, emphasizing meditation as a practice of allowing this natural state without seeking, this is the highest teaching in Buddhism. According to the Nyingma school tradition of Tibetan Buddhism Tibetan Buddhism is a form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet, Bhutan and Mongolia. It also has a sizable number of adherents in the areas surrounding the Himalayas, including the Indian regions of Ladakh, Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, D ..., he transmit ...
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Padmasambhava
Padmasambhava ('Born from a Lotus'), also known as Guru Rinpoche ('Precious Guru'), was a legendary tantric Buddhist Vajracharya, Vajra master from Oddiyana. who fully revealed the Vajrayana in Tibet, circa 8th – 9th centuries... He is considered an emanation or Nirmāṇakāya of Gautama Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha as foretold by the Buddha himself. According to early Tibetan sources including the ''Testament of Ba'', he came to Tibet in the 8th century and designed Samye Monastery, the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet during the reign of King Trisong Detsen. He, the king, and Khenpo Shantarakshita are also responsible for creating the Tibetan canon, Tibetan Canon through translating all of the Buddha's teachings and their commentaries into the Tibetan language. According to Lewis Doney, while his historical authenticity was questioned by earlier Tibetology, Tibetologists, it is now "cautiously accepted.” Padmasambhava himself was recorded as saying he was an historical per ...
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Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (; ; , ; abbr. KP or KPK), formerly known as the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), is a Administrative units of Pakistan, province of Pakistan. Located in the Northern Pakistan, northwestern region of the country, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is the fourth largest province of Pakistan by land area and the third-largest province by population. It is bordered by Balochistan, Pakistan, Balochistan to the south; Punjab, Pakistan, Punjab, Islamabad Capital Territory, and Azad Kashmir to the east; and Gilgit-Baltistan to the north and northeast. It shares an Durand Line, international border with Afghanistan to the west. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has a varied geography of rugged mountain ranges, valleys, rolling foothills, and dense agricultural farms. While it is the third-largest Pakistani province in terms of both its population and Economy of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, its economy, it is geographically the smallest. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's share of Pakistan's GDP has historically com ...
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Gandhara
Gandhara () was an ancient Indo-Aryan people, Indo-Aryan civilization in present-day northwest Pakistan and northeast Afghanistan. The core of the region of Gandhara was the Peshawar valley, Peshawar (Pushkalawati) and Swat valleys extending as far east as the Pothohar Plateau in Punjab, though the cultural influence of Greater Gandhara extended westwards into the Kabul, Kabul valley in Afghanistan, and northwards up to the Karakoram range. The region was a central location for the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism, spread of Buddhism to Central Asia and East Asia with many Chinese Buddhism, Buddhist pilgrims visiting the region. Between the third century BCE and third century CE, Gandhari language, Gāndhārī, a Middle Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language written in the Kharosthi script and linked with the modern Dardic languages, Dardic language family, acted as the lingua franca of the region and through Buddhism, the language spread as far as China based on Gandhār ...
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Wang Ocheonchukguk Jeon
''Wang ocheonchukguk jeon''往 means ''go to''. 五 means ''five''. 天竺 means ''India'', originally come of Sindhu or Hindu. 國 means ''lands'' or ''countries''. 傳 means ''diary''. (; "An account of travel to the five Indian kingdoms") is a travelogue by Buddhist monk Hyecho from the Kingdom of Silla, who traveled from Korea to India, in the years 723 - 727/728 CE. Overview Written in Classical Chinese, the lingua franca of East Asia at the time, the work was long thought to be lost. However, a manuscript turned up among the Dunhuang manuscripts during the early 20th century. It was bought by French explorer and archaeologist Paul Pelliot in 1908, and is now owned by the National Library of France (). The manuscript scroll contains 5,893 classical Chinese characters in 227 lines. It originally consisted of three volumes, however volume one and later section of volume three are lost. It is 28.5 centimeters in width and 358.6 centimeters in length, is the first known over ...
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Hye Cho
Hyecho (; 704–787) was a Korean Buddhist monk from Silla, one of Korea's Three Kingdoms. He is primarily remembered for his account of his travels in medieval India, the . Life Hyecho studied esoteric Buddhism in Tang China, initially under Śubhakarasiṃha and then under the famous Indian monk Vajrabodhi who praised Hyecho as "one of six living persons who were well-trained in the five sections of the Buddhist canon." On the advice of his Indian teachers in China, he set out for India in 723 to acquaint himself with the language and culture of the land of the Buddha. Works During his journey of India, Hyecho wrote a travelogue in Chinese named the ''Memoir of a Pilgrimage to the Five Kingdoms of India'' (, ). The travelogue reveals that Hyecho, after arriving by sea in India headed to the Indian Kingdom of Magadha (present-day Bihar), then moved on to visit Kushinagar and Varanasi. However Hyecho's journey did not end there and he continued north, where he visited Lumb ...
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Faxian
Faxian (337–), formerly romanization of Chinese, romanized as Fa-hien and Fa-hsien, was a Han Chinese, Chinese Chinese Buddhism, Buddhist bhikkhu, monk and translator who traveled on foot from Eastern Jin dynasty, Jin China to medieval India to acquire Buddhist scriptures. His birth name was Gong Sehi. Starting his journey about age 60, he traveled west along the overland Silk Road, visiting Buddhist sites in Central Asia, Central, South Asia, South, and Southeast Asia. The journey and return took from 399 to 412, with 10 years spent in India. Faxian's account of his Buddhist pilgrimage, pilgrimage, the ''Foguoji'' or ''Record of the Buddhist Kingdoms'', is a notable independent record of early Buddhism in India. He returned to China with a large number of Sanskrit texts, whose translations greatly influenced East Asian Buddhism and provide a for many historical names, events, texts, and ideas therein. Biography Faxian was born in Shanxi in the 4th-century under the Later ...
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Swat River
The Swat River (, ) is a perennial river in the northern region of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan. The river's source is in the high glacial valleys of the Hindu Kush mountains, where it then flows into the Kalam Valley before forming the spine of the wider Swat Valley. Name The word Swat comes from the Sanskrit name ''Suvāstu'' which may mean "clear blue water." Another theory derives the word Swat from the Sanskrit word ''shveta'' (), also used to describe the clear water of the Swat River. To the ancient Greeks, the river was known as the ''Soastus.'' The Chinese pilgrim Faxian referred to Swat as the ''Su-ho-to''. Course The Swat's source lies in the Hindu Kush mountains, from where it is fed by glacial waters throughout the year. From the high valleys of Swat Kohistan, the river begins at the confluence of the Usho, and Gabral rivers (also known as the Utrar River) at Kalam. From the confluence, the Swat river flows through the narrow gorges of the Kalam ...
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Peshawar
Peshawar is the capital and List of cities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by population, largest city of the Administrative units of Pakistan, Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is the sixth most populous city of Pakistan, with a district population of over 4.7 million in the 2023 census. It is situated in the north-west of the country, lying in the Valley of Peshawar. Peshawar is primarily populated by Pashtuns, who comprise the second-largest ethnic group in the country. Situated in the Valley of Peshawar, a broad area situated east of the historic Khyber Pass, Peshawar's recorded history dates back to at least 539 BCE, making it one of the oldest cities in South Asia. The area encompassing modern-day Peshawar is mentioned in the Vedic scriptures; it was one of the principal cities of the Gandhara, ancient Gāndhāra. Peshawar served as the capital of the Kushan Empire during the rule of Kanishka and was home to the Kanishka Stupa, which was among the tallest buildings in ...
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Kashmir
Kashmir ( or ) is the Northwestern Indian subcontinent, northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term ''Kashmir'' denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. The term has since also come to encompass a larger area that includes the Indian-administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, the Pakistani-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Chinese-administered territories of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract. Quote: "Kashmir, region of the northwestern Indian subcontinent. It is bounded by the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang to the northeast and the Tibet Autonomous Region to the east (both parts of China), by the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab to the south, by Pakistan to the west, and by Afghanistan to the northwest. The northern and western portions are administered by Pakistan a ...
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Alexis Sanderson
Alexis G. J. S. Sanderson (born 1948) is an English indologist and Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College at the University of Oxford. Early life After taking undergraduate degrees in Classics and Sanskrit at Balliol College from 1968 to 1971, Alexis Sanderson spent six years in Kashmir studying with the scholar and Śaiva guru Swami Lakshman Joo. From 1971-1974 he was a Senior Scholar at Merton College, Oxford, and from 1974-1977 he held a Junior Research Fellowship at Brasenose College, Oxford. From 1977 to 1992 he was University Lecturer in Sanskrit and a Fellow of Wolfson College. Career In 1992 he was appointed to the Spalding Chair of Eastern Religions and Ethics and became a Fellow of All Souls. He retired in 2015. Sanderson is a scholar of Sanskrit and of Indian religions, especially of Shaivism and esoteric Śaiva Tantra, commonly (but not quite correctly) known as Kashmir Shaivism. He has written as an authority on this subject and many of his studies are publ ...
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