Oddiyana
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Oá¸á¸iyÄna (Skt. Oá¸á¸iyÄna; Tibetan: ཨུ་རྒྱན་, Wylie: u rgyan , Odia: ଓଡ଼ିଆଣ), a small country in early medieval India, is ascribed importance in the development and dissemination of Vajrayana Buddhism. It is conventionally placed in Pakistan's Swat valley although a case can also be made for its location in the Indian state of Odisha. Later Tibetan traditions view it as a legendary heavenly place inaccessible to ordinary mortals. Padmasambhava, the 8th-century Buddhist master who was instrumental in the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet, was believed to have been born in Oddiyana.[1]
Location
The physical location of Oá¸á¸iyÄna is disputed and open to conjecture. Possible locations that have been identified are:[1]
- Swat valley area of Pakistan
- Odisha in Eastern India, through a case founded upon "literary, archeological and iconographic evidence". Scholars championing this location contend that the name Oá¸á¸iyÄna derives from the Dravidian Oá¹á¹iyan, denoting a native or indigenous person of Oá¸ra (Odisha) or from Oá¹á¹iyam, Telugu for Oá¸ra. Oá¸á¸iyÄna is also the Middle Indic form of UdyÄna "garden," the name by which Xuanzang knew the region around Odisha. Confusion about the identity of Oddiyana is conflated with confusion about the identity of Indrabhuti as Donaldson (2001: p. 11) observes:
In his argument, P. C. Bagchi states that there are two distinct series of names in Tibetan: (1) O-rgyÄn, U-rgyÄn, O-á¸i-yÄ-na, and (2) O-á¸i-vi-Å›Ä, with the first series connected with IndrabhÅ«ti, i.e., Oá¸iyăna and Uá¸á¸iyÄna, while the second series falls back on Oá¸i and Oá¸iviÅ›a, i.e., Uá¸ra (Odisha) and has nothing to do with IndrabhÅ«ti. N.K. Sahu objects, however, and points out that these two sets of names are seldom distinguished in Buddhist Tantra literature, and opines that the words Oá¸a, Oá¸ra, Uá¸ra, Oá¸iviÅ›a and Oá¸iyÄna are all used as variants of Uá¸á¸iyÄna. In the SÄdhanamÄlÄ, he further points out, Uá¸á¸iyÄna is also spelt as Oá¸rayÄna while in the KÄlikÄ PurÄṇa, as indicated earlier, it is spelt either Uá¸á¸iyÄna or Oá¸ra. There is also evidence, Sahu continues, that IndrabhÅ«ti is the king of Odisha rather than of the SwÄt valley. The CaturÄsiti-siddha-Pravá¹›tti, for example, mentions him as the king of Oá¸iviÅ›a while Cordier, in his Bá¹£tÄn-ḥgyur catalogue, gives sufficient indications of his being the king of Orissa. Also, in his famous work JñÄnasiddhi, king IndrabhÅ«ti opens it with an invocation to Lord JagannÄtha, a deity intimately associated with Odisha and with no other area of India.[2]
- In later Tibetan traditions, Oá¸á¸iyÄna is either conflated or identified with Shambhala, a land inhabited by dakinis and inaccessible to or by ordinary mortals - a beyul "hidden land".
Orgyan or Orgyen
In the 'Seven Line Prayer' (of Padmasambhava) revealed in Jigme Lingpa's terma of the Ngöndro of the Longchen Nyingthig and throughout the Longchen Nyingtig Ngondro, Oddiyana is rendered in the form Tibetan: ཨོ་རྒྱན, Wylie: o rgyan .
Tibetan Buddhism
In Tibetan Buddhist literature, Oá¸á¸iyÄna is described as being ruled by several kings each of whom were named IndrabhÅ«ti.[1]
A number of Vajrayana and tantric practitioners are said to have stayed and practiced there. The first Vajrayana teachings were supposedly given there by Gautama Buddha at the request of the king.[3]
UdyÄna
UdyÄna (Sanskrit, meaning garden or orchard; Chinese: çƒè‡; pinyin: WÅ«cháng) was a Buddhist region in North India delimited in part by the Indus River. The area is said to have supported some 500 viharas of the Sthavira nikÄya at which traveling Å›rÄmaṇeras were provided lodgings and food for three days. It was said to contain the Buddha's footprint or petrosomatoglyph, a rock on which he dried his clothes, and a locale where he converted a nÄga. It is said that the two schools derived from the Sthavira nikÄya, the Dharmaguptaka and KÄÅ›yapÄ«ya, were established in this area. Both of these schools had proto-Mahayana doctrines.
Notes
- 1 2 3 Keown, Damien (2003). A Dictionary of Buddhism (1 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 203, 208. ISBN 9780198605607. Retrieved 11 February 2016. (subscription required (help)).
- ↑ Donaldson, Thomas E. (2001). 'Iconography of the Buddhist Sculpture of Orissa: Text', Volume 1 of Iconography of the Buddhist Sculpture of Orissa, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. Abhinav Publications. ISBN 81-7017-375-2, ISBN 978-81-7017-375-5 Source: (accessed: Tuesday February 2, 2010), p.11
- ↑ Nyingma History
References
- Faxian, A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms (James Legge translation), Chapter 8. (Online at the University of Adelaide Library)