Mount Meru (mythology)
- For the mountain in Tanzania, see Mount Meru (Tanzania).
Mount Meru (Sanskrit: मेरु) (also called Sumeru i.e the "Great Meru") is a sacred mountain in Hindu, Buddhist cosmology, and Jain mythology, and is considered to be the center of all the physical, metaphysical and spiritual universes. It is believed to be the abode of Lord Brahma and the Demi-Gods (Devas).
The mountain is said to be 80,000 Yojanas (several thousands of miles) high and located in Jambudvipa, one of the continents in the Cosmic Ocean in Hindu mythology. Many Hindu temples, including Angkor Wat, the principal temple of Angkor in Cambodia, have been built as symbolic representations of this mountain.
Contents |
Height
One Yojana can be taken to mean roughly 8 miles though its magnitude seems to differ over time periods. E.g. the Earth's circumference is 3,200 Yojanas according to Vārāhamihira and slightly less so in the Āryabhatiya, but is given to be 5,026.5 Yojanas in the Suryasiddhānta. The Bhāgvata Purāna gives the exorbitant dimension of 80,000 Yojanas for Mt Meru, while the Mahābhārata gives 18,000 Yojanas as the extent of Jambudvipa; hence it is not possible to determine the height of Mt Meru on the basis of these accounts.
Legends
Mount Meru finds mention innumerable times in Hindu lore. Some of the better-known legends are recounted here.
Meru, Vayu and Lanka
Legends say that Mount Meru and the wind god Vayu were good friends. However, the sage Narada approached Vayu and incited him to humble the mountain. Vayu blew with full force for one full year, but Meru was shielded by Garuda with his wings (he was flying high). However, after a year Garuda took respite for some time. Thus the apex of the mountain was broken and it fell into the sea and created the island of Sri Lanka.
Beliefs
The legends, Puranas and Hindu epics frequently state that Surya, the sun-God, circumambulates Mount Meru every day. In late 19th c. when it was believed that Aryans may have had their original home Urheimat in North Europe, it was thought that Mount Meru may actually refer to the "center of the world."
The Iranians claim that the Aryans came from Mount Hara. Har is another name of Shiva, who has His abode in this mountain. A few local beliefs, local i.e. to that area of the Himalayas, associate Mount Meru with a mountain called Kailasa near the Lake Manasarovar in Tibet, which can be traced to some later layers of Mahabharata.
For the equivalent central mountain in Buddhist cosmology, see Sumeru.
Literary references
In the novel Far, Far the Mountain Peak by English novelist John Masters, the central character, Peter Savage, becomes obsessed by the task of making the first ascent of a newly-discovered mountain in the north-west part of the then British India. The mountain is named Meru, in a conscious reference to the legendary mountain: "There have always been legends in Asia about a sacred mountain somewhere in Western Tibet, and it has always been called Meru, though no one has definitely found it ... so they are going to call this one Meru..." (Penguin edition, p. 78).
In his poem Meru, William Butler Yeats has both named his poem after the mountain, and also refers to "Hermits upon Mount Meru or Everest."[1]
Identification
Some scholars believe Mount Meru or Sumeru to be the Pamirs, north-east of Kashmir [2]. In epic times, it had formed the parts of Ancient Kamboja--more precisely, the Parama Kamboja of the epic Mahabharata (II.2.27) [3].
Suryasiddhānta mentions that Mt Meru lies in 'the middle of the Earth' ("bhoogola-madhya") in the land of the Jamboonada. E. Burgess translates "bhoogola-madhya" as "the centre of the earth-globe" and not as 'bhoo-madhya' which is used for equator in Sanskrit and Hindi texts. Narpatijayacharyā, a mediaeval work of 9th century, based on mostly unpublished texts of Yāmala Tantra, mentions "Sumeruḥ Prithvī-madhye shrūyate drishyate na tu" ('Su-meru is heard to be in the middle of the Earth, but is not seen there')[4]. Vārāha Mihira, in his Panch-siddhāntikā, locates Mt Meru at the North Pole. Suryasiddhānta, however, mentions a Mt Meru in the middle of Earth, besides a Sumeru and a Kumeru at both poles. Therefore, Sumeru was used both for North Pole as well as for the central Mt Meru by ancient authors. There is a town Meru at the foot of Mt Kenya at the equator, another Mt Meru lying in neighbouring Tanzania, a place named Kinyan-giri is in Tanzania,which translates as Mt Kinyan or Kenya, etc.
Notes
- ^ "Meru". Retrieved on 30 October 2007.
- ^ The Geopolitics of South Asia: From Early Empires to the Nuclear Age, 2003, p 16, Graham P. Chapman - Social Science; The Pamirs and the Source of the Oxus, p 15, George Nathaniel Curzon; The Hindu World: An Encyclopedic Survey of Hinduism, 1968, p 184, Benjamin Walker - Hinduism; Ancient Indian Tradition & Mythology: Purāṇas in Translation, 1969, p 56, Jagdish Lal Shastri, Arnold Kunst, G. P. Bhatt, Ganesh Vasudeo Tagare - Oriental literature; Journal of the K.R. Cama Oriental Institute, 1928, p 38, K.R. Cama Oriental Institute - Iranian philology; The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture, 1997, p 175, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal - History; Geographical Concepts in Ancient India, 1967, p 50, Bechan Dube - India; Geographical Data in the Early Purāṇas: A Critical Study, 1972, p 2, Dr M. R. Singh - India; Studies in the Proto-history of India, 1971, p 17, Dr Dvārakā Prasāda Miśra - India.
- ^ The Deeds of Harsha: Being a Cultural Study of Bāṇa's Harshacharita, 1969, p 199, Dr Vasudeva Sharana Agrawala; Foundations of Indian Culture, 1984, p 20, Govind Chandra Pande - History; Problems of Ancient India, 2000, p 1-8, K. D. Sethna; Proceedings and Transactions of the All-India Oriental Conference, 1930, p 108; Geographical and Economic Studies in the Mahābhārata: Upāyana Parva, 1945, p 37, Dr Moti Chandra - India; For Pamirs/Badakshan = Kamboja, see also: The History and Culture of the Indian People, 1977, p 264, Dr Ramesh Chandra Majumdar, Dr A. D. Pusalkar, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan - India; Asoka and His Inscriptions, 1968, p 95, B. M. Barua, I. N. Topa; Journal of the Asiatic Society, 1940, p 37, India) Asiatic Society (Calcutta, Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal - Asia.
- ^ cf. second verse of Koorma-chakra in the book Narpatijayacharyā
Sources
- Narpatijayacharyā, commentary by Ganeshdatta Pathak, Cublished by Chowkhambha Sanskrit Sansthana, Varanasi, India, PIN-221001
See also
External links
- Description of Mount Meru in the Devi-bhagavata-purana 12
- Painting of Mount Meru found in Buddhist cave sanctuary in Chinese Turkestan
- Mount Meru in Encyclopedia of Buddhist Iconography 12
- Sacred Geography of North Polar Regions
|
|||||||||||||||||
stock | retire | vm
Why are we here?
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
This page is cache of Wikipedia. History