Sunday, July 5, 2015

Kshatriya King Khingala of Kapisa & Phrom Gesar (745 AD)

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Gesar's traditional four enemies were China to the East, India to the South, Tag zig (Persia) to the west, and Hor to the North." (Norbu:1995, pg 225)

"Buddhaguptanatha (1514-1610 ?)...about 1580 AD Buddhaguptanatha locates Urgyan (Uddyana) in Ghazni, about 50 miles south of Kabul in modern Afghanistan, which is in contrast with the traditional location of Urgyan in the Swat area......

"Buddhaguptanatha was remarkable. He travelled on foot to Iran, Balkh in the north of Afghanistan, Kashgar in Central Asia, Multan, Kabul, Khorasan, Badakshan, Qusht and the lands of the Mughals.....Buddhaguptanatha, said that previously when he was in Upper Hor [Muslim territories]… he was fully protected by the mantras that he had received from those dakinis in Urgyan, as well as by his own physical powers. Urgyan is surrounded to the east, the south and the west by three large lakes. When he… crossed over the pass he came into the Hor Mleccha land of Balkh [northern central area of modern Afghanistan]...."....Buddhaguptanatha and the Late Survival of the Siddha Tradition in India.....by David Templeman

"Archeological sites of the period, including a major Hindu Shahi temple north of Kabul and a chapel in Ghazni, contain both the pre-dominant Hindu and Buddhist statuary, suggesting that there was a close interaction between the two religions.......When the Chinese visitor Hsuan-tsang visited Kapisa (about 60 km north of modern Kabul) in the 7th century, the local ruler was a Kshatriya King Shahi Khingala. A Ganesha idol has been found near Gerdez that bears the name of this king."..........

"H. M. Elliot...... (The History of India, 1867-1877).......relates the early Kabul Shahis to the Kators and further connects the Kators with the Kushanas. Charles Frederick Oldham also traces the Kabul Shahi lineage to the Kators—whom he identifies with the Kathas or Takkhas—Naga worshipping collective groups of Hinduism (Sun god-worshiping) lineage. He further speaks of the Urasas, Abhisaras, Daradas, Gandharas, Kambojas, et al. as allied tribal groups of the Takkhas belonging to the Sun-worshiping races of the north-west frontier.".....Charles Frederick Oldham The Sun and the Serpent: A Contribution to the History of Serpent-worship, 1905, pp. 113-126

6th-century "image of Hindu deity, Ganesha, consecrated by the Shahi King Khingala.".....F. Marble statue of the god Ganesha. The statue was found in Gardez (East Afghanistan) and later erected in the Hindu temple Dargha Pir Rattan Nath in Kabul. (© Shoshin Kuwayama)......The "King Khingala, King of Uddiyana" named in the dedicatory inscription could be the same person as the Kabul Shah Bo Fuzhun known from Chinese sources, who succeeded his father Fulin jipo (Phrom Gesar) on the throne in 745 AD and was invested by the Chinese emperor as king of Uddiyana (Swat).".....The Rutbils of Zabulistan and the "Emperor of Rome"

"Richard Frye noted that Alxon or Alxan appears on a coin with the name Khingila and refutes Harmatta’s suggestion that it is the same as the name Lakhana. ".....Richard Frye (1920 – 2014) was an American scholar of Iranian and Central Asian Studies, and Aga Khan Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Harvard University. His professional areas of interest were Iranian philology and the history of Iran and Central Asia before 1000 CE.

"According to Biswas, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hsüan-tsang came to Kashmir when Khinkhila was ruling here. Regarding the extent of his empire, Biswas concludes: The empire of Kashmir included the Kabul valley, the Swat valley and the mountain regions of Kashmir proper and in the south-east extended as far as Sakala on the Chenab river. If the king of Kashmir had a hold over Swat, the Kabul valley and Bannu, it is possible that his empire extended even to Gardez. The Gardez inscription of Khingala was probably thus of the Kashmir king Khinkhila, who was also the overlord of Udyana.....Khinkhila was succeeded by his son Yudhishthira who, according to the Rajatarangin ruled for 40 years (until c. 670 AD), when he was dethroned by Pratapaditya, son of Durlabhavardhana, the ruler of the Karkota dynasty." ......EASTERN KUSHANS, KIDARITES IN GANDHARA AND KASHMIR, AND LATER HEPHTHALITES.....http://en.unesco.org/silkroad

"Khingila is the first of the four kings mentioned on the Schøyen copper scroll inscription and therefore may have been the eldest or senior most among them. Traditionally, Khingila is regarded as the Alchon king who started to make serious inroads into India, but there is no definitive evidence of this ... it is just that he was one of the few kings whose name could be read on the coins."....http://coinindia.com/galleries-khingila.html

"Archeological sites of the period, including a major Hindu Shahi temple north of Kabul and a chapel in Ghazni, contain both the pre-dominant Hindu and Buddhist statuary, suggesting that there was a close interaction between the two religions. When the Chinese visitor Hsuan-tsang visited Kapisa (about 60 km north of modern Kabul) in the 7th century, the local ruler was a Kshatriya King Shahi Khingala. A Ganesha idol has been found near Gerdez that bears the name of this king, see Shahi Ganesha. Several 6th- or 7th-century AD Buddhist manuscripts were found from a stupa at Gilgit. One of the manuscripts reveals the name of a Shahi king Srideva Sahi Surendra Vikramaditya Nanda."….The Shahi Afghanistan and Punjab, 1973, pp 1, 45–46, 48, 80, Dr D. B. Pandey;

"In the wake of Muslim invasions of Kabul and Kapisa in second half of the 7th century (AD 664), the Kapisa/Kabul ruler called by Muslim writers Kabul Shah (Shahi of Kabul) made an appeal to the Ksatriyas of the Hind who had gathered there in large numbers for assistance and drove out the Muslim invaders as far as Bost. This king of Kapisa/Kabul who faced the Muslim invasion was undoubtedly a Ksatriya."…..The Sun and the Serpent: A Contribution to the History of Serpent-worship, 1905, p 126, Charles Frederick Oldham

"The first Rutbil of Zabulistan had declared his independence from the Kingdom of Jibin (Kabulistan) after 680 CE. According to Arab and Chinese sources, he was an older brother of the king of Kabul "Khorasan Tegin Shah" ..... after his ascension to the throne, they had a falling out and the first Rutbil founded his own kingdom in Zabul. Initially he must have secured the support of the Arabs. The title Rutbil corresponds to the Turkic iltäbär and is used in Arab sources to refer to the king of Zabulistan from that point on. The personal names of the various rulers are not known from written sources. The end of the Zabul kingdom, which together with Kabul stood at the fore of the long resistance against the Muslim conquerors, finally fell in 870 CE when the Arab general Yaqub bin Laith al-Saffar (r. 861–879 AD) conquered the entire Iranian East from Sistan and definitively defeated Zabul.....The center of the Kingdom of Zabul lay in the city Ghazni, one of the three residences of the king. In the northeast it bordered on Kabulistan and in the northwest it reached into the central Hindu Kush . In the south it included at times the cities of Rakhwad (al-Rukhkhaj) and Bost (near Kandahar, South Afghanistan). In the west the border followed the Helmand River, and the Sulaiman Mountains constituted the eastern border."...... The Rutbils of Zabulistan and "Phrom Kesar"

Islam and Tibet: Interactions Along the Musk Routes.......Page 127......edited by Anna Akasoy, Charles S. F. Burnett, Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim

"The success of the Turk Fromo Kesaro, whose name is a Persian pronunciation of "Rome (Byzantium) Caesar", in overwhelming an intrusive Arab army in Gandhara sometime between 739-745, may have formed the historic core behind the Gesar epic in Tibet..... In the records of the earliest rulers of Ladakh, Baltistan and Gilgit, whose countries were later overrun by incursive Tibetans, royal ancestry is connected to the Bactrian Gesar......"Vohra 1996, pp. 218–219...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_King_Gesar#cite_note-6

Fulin Jipo & Phrom Kesar.......745 AD.......PHROM CAESAR TO CHI-P'O.......Tibeto-Logic post on Phrom Ge-sar.......The name Phrom ......the Tibetan counterpart of Late Middle Chinese 拂菻 *Fur-lim (there is no f in Classical Tibetan):.......From (Phrom) comes via Hrom (pronounced From) from Rome, meaning the eastern Rome of the Byzantines, not that one in Italy.......One year later, in 739, Tegin shah [of the Turk Shahi] abdicated the throne of Gandhara in favor of his son, Fu-lin-chi-p’o (also known as Fromo Kesaro, the Bactrian form of his name) ... The name implies an anti-Arab programme and propaganda at the time, which might be explained by Fromo Kesaro's having entered into manhood as an er at (meaning ‘man’s name’ [in Turkic]) in 719, the year in which a Byzantine delegation travelled through Tokharistan on their way to the Chinese emperor and informed the kingdoms of Central Asia of the great victory they had won over the Arabs the previous year.......Fu-lin chi-p'o (Pinyin: Fulin Jipo) is the modern Mandarin pronunciation of Late Middle Chinese 拂菻罽婆 *Fur-lim Kɨej-ba. *Fur-lim (< *Frim 'Rome' in some Iranian language?) corresponds to Bactrian Fromo, but why does *Kɨej-ba have a *-b- absent from Kesaro? I and others regard 婆 *ba 'old woman' as an error for the similar-looking rarer graph 娑 *sa (second half of 婆娑 *basa 'whirling'). 罽娑 *Kɨej-sa is the closest possible LMC approximation of *Kesar:......http://www.amritas.com/100320.htm

"Numismatic evidence and some accounts speak of a Bactrian ruler Phrom-kesar, specifically the Kabul Shahi of Gandhara, which was ruled by a Turkish From Kesar ("Caesar of Rome"), who was father-in-law of the king of the Kingdom of Khotan around the middle of the 8th century AD...... In early Bon sources, From Kesar is always a place name, and never refers, as it does later, to a ruler...... In some Tibetan versions of the epic, a king named Phrom Ge-sar or Khrom Ge-sar figures as one of the kings of the four directions – the name is attested in the 10th century...... and this Phrom/Khrom preserves an Iranian form (*frōm-hrōm) for Rūm/Rome. This eastern Iranian word lies behind the Middle Chinese word for (Eastern) Rome (拂菻:Fúlǐn), namely Byzantium (phrōm-from<*phywət-lyəm>).....A. H. Francke thought the Tibetan name Gesar derived from Sanskrit. S.K. Chatterji, introducing his work, noted that the Ladakh variant of Kesar, Kyesar, in Classical Tibetan Skye-gsar meant 'reborn/newly born', and that Gesar/Kesar in Tibetan, as in Sanskrit signify the 'anther or pistil of a flower', corresponding to Sankrit kēsara, whose root 'kēsa' (hair) is Indo-European."......https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_King_Gesar

""Khorasan Tegin Shah" (= Tegin, King of the East), known in Chinese sources as Wusan teqin sa, was the second Turk Shahi on the throne of Kabul, succeeding his father Barha Tegin around or after 680 AD......The actual dominion stretched from Kabulistan to Gandhara and at times also included Zabulistan. Bactria, the land just north of the Hindu Kush, did not belong to his immediate sphere of rule......Faced with the threat of the Arabs, the two ruling houses remained in close contact and fought side by side against the Muslim enemy. The first Rutbil of Zabulistan fell already by 683 or 686/87 CE in a battle against the Arabs, after having been previously allied with them. Around 710 CE it appears that the Kabul Shah temporarily gained suzerainty over Zabulistan, and troops were recruited in Zabulistan for the mutual struggle against the Arabs......In 719/20 CE an embassy was sent by the Tegin of Jibin (Kabulistan) and the iltäbär of Zabulistan (Xieyu) to China to obtain confirmation of their thrones from the Tang emperor. The investiture decree signed by the emperor was sent by messenger back to Jibin and Zabulistan. During his journey through the lands south of the Hindu Kush in around 726 CE, the Korean pilgrim Huichao stayed for some time at the court of the Kabul Shah, who may well have been "Khorasan Tegin Shah". Huichao recorded that Kabul and Zabul were then ruled by Turkic kings, who were Buddhists, and that the King of Kabul was supposed to have been the uncle of the ruler of Zabul."......Kabulistan and Bactria at the time of "Khorasan Tegin Shah"......http://pro.geo.univie.ac.at/projects/khm/showcases/showcase14?language=en

"Vohra 1996, p. 217 writes that these coins with the title Fromo Kesaro appear to refer to the successor of Sahi Tegin (700-738 CE:Chinese:烏散特勤灑:MC:uo-sân d'ɘk-g'iɘn ṣai=*Horsān tegin šāhi 'Tegin, king of Khurasan'), ruler of the Second Turki Śāhi dynasty at Kapisa-Udyana, whose reign was between 738 and 745 C.E., and who is identified with the 'Frōm Kēsar' (拂菻罽婆: Fúlǐn jìpó:North Western Tang pfvyr-lḭum-kḭe-sâ) of the Tang shu. SeeHarmatta & Litvinsky 1999, pp. 376,380).".....

Vohra, Rohit (1996). "Early History of Ladakh: Mythic Lore % Fabulation: A preliminary note on the conjectural history of the 1st millennium A.D.". In Osmaston, Henry; Denwood, Philip. Recent research on Ladakh 4 & 5: proceedings of the fourth and fifth international colloquia on Ladakh. Dehli: Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 216–234.

Francke, August Hermann (2000) [1905/1909]. A Lower Ladakhi Version of the Kesar Saga. Dehli: Asian Educational Services.

Harmatta, J.; Litvinsky, B. A. (1999). "Tokharistan and Gandhara under Western Türk rule (650-750)". In Dani, Ahmad Hasan. History of civilizations of Central Asia 3. Dehli: Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 367–402.

Kornman, Robin (2005). "The Influence of the Epic of King Gesar on Chogyam Trungpa". In Midal, Fabrice. Recalling Chögyam Trungpa. Boston, Massachusetts: Shambhala Publications. pp. 347–379.

Maconi, Lara. (2004). "Theatrical Gesar de Pékin? Le sort du Roi Gesar de Gling, héros épique tibétain, en Chinese (post-)maoïste". In Judith. Formes modernes de la poésie épique: nouvelles approches. Bruxelles: Peter Lang. pp. 371–419.

ANCIENT KINGDOMS...."the Four Sons of Heaven, the rulers of the four great countries of the Asiatic world: China, India, Iran, Throm (Phrom) in the north with King Gesar." (Stein:1972, pg 280)...

"Tazig: appears to signify Persia. 13 days horseback ride from Ling, at a place called Memoyu Thang." (David-Neel: Gesar: 1981..pg 239)

"One translation, Gessar Khan, a West Tibet version (first appeared in German in 1836) makes reference to Persian non-Buddhist deities. The "Foreward" also mentions the Kalmyk Little Gesser (Riga, 1804.)...The Gesar legends vary according to the cultural tradition of the devotee. In the Bon tradition, Gesar is sent by Shenlha Okar. ... (http://www.khandro.net/langnlit_Gesar.htm)

"Syed Abbas Kazmi of the Baltistan Cultural Foundation , who is a scholar, has written a monograph on the Balti version of the old Tibetan Epic of King Gesar.....http://uyghuramerican.org

"King of Khotan.....Vohra 1996, pp. 216–17 writes that Gesar is mentioned in a Khotan text, the Tibetan Li-yul-lun-bstan-pa, ("Prophecy of the Li Country") of the 9th-10th century, and Phrom long identified with a country northeast of Yarkand. Recent opinion identifies the land either with the Turkish Küūsen or the Kushan territories of Gandhāra and Udayana. Gesar may be either someone of Turkish stock or a non-Tibetan dynastic name. The Khotan king Vijaya Sangrama's consort Hu-rod-ga (Hu-rong-ga) was Phrom Gesar's daughter. The Padma-thang-yig records a Tibetan army subduing Gesar, something also mentioned in the Rygal-po'i-bka'i-than-yig ("Pronouncements concerning Kings")......Vohra, Rohit (1996). "Early History of Ladakh: Mythic Lore % Fabulation: A preliminary note on the conjectural history of the 1st millennium A.D.".

Coin of a Turk Shahi king inscribed with "Fromo Kesaro" .....http://tibeto-logic.blogspot.com/2010/02/from-gesar-place-this-time.html

"Phrom is mentioned several times in SKC (pp. 23, 42, 90), but most interesting here is the one time it mentions Phrom Ge-sar, on p. 44. The passage on Phrom Ge-sar takes up almost an entire page (again, the context is Lord Shenrab’s emanations in many countries). It does inform us that it is in the northern quarter (byang phyogs Phrom Ge-sar-kyis yul...), while Tazig (Stag-gzig) is in the western. It says that its Bon king is named Phrom-bon Mthu-chen (“Bon-gyi rgyal-po Phrom-bon Mthu’-chen bya-ba yod”). It says the Bon ministers are called E-ber and Ting-wer."......SOURCE: The Khyung-po Blo-gros-rgyal-mtshan, Rgyal-rabs Bon-gyi ’Byung-gnas, as contained in Three Sources for a History of Bon (Dolanji 1974), pp. 1-196, at p. 43..........http://tibeto-logic.blogspot.com/2010/02/from-gesar-place-this-time.html

".....the Tibetan manuscripts are all much later than the coins, true, but may incorporate earlier texts or oral traditions that would be closer at least to being contemporary. But I should clarify that the Tibetan epic hero is not commonly known as Phrom Ge-sar. When he isn’t called just Ge-sar or King Ge-sar, he’s usually called Gling Ge-sar. That last name tends to connect him with Gling-tshang area of Kham in eastern part of the Tibetan plateau where, anyway, relics of his are kept and shown to pilgrims. "............http://tibeto-logic.blogspot.com/2010/02/from-gesar-place-this-time.html

"According to Xavier Tremblay, one of the Hephthalite rulers was named Khingila, which has the same root as the Sogdian word xnγr and the Wakhi word xiŋgār, meaning "sword". "....Xavier Tremblay, Pour une histore de la Sérinde. Le manichéisme parmi les peoples et religions d’Asie Centrale d’aprés les sources primaire, Vienna: 2001

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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

July 2015

John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico

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