**************************
Click Here to View the Main Index
**************************
Throne of the Golden King....Tirich Mir (25,287 feet/7708 meters)......Tirich Mir literally translates into “King Tirich”, a suitable name for this giant mountain which dominates the landscape of Chitral.......Tirich Mir (Urdu: ترچ میر) (alternatively Terich Mir, Terichmir and Turch Mir) is the highest mountain of the Hindu Kush range, and the highest mountain in the world outside of the Himalayas-Karakoram range, located in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, near the Afghanistan–Pakistan border....The Tirich Mir is a chain of about eleven peaks with different routes to their submits.....Tirich Mir main peak (25,287 feet/7708 meters) is the highest peak of the Hindu Kush.... (Pāriyātra Parvata (Sanskrit: पारियात्र पर्वत ), Caucasus Indicus, or Paropamisadae (ancient Greek: Παροπαμισάδαι).....Mountain range.
Mount Suryaprakasa...
Surya.....an important god of later Hinduism; the sun god or the sun itself worshipped as the source of warmth and light.
Prakāśa is a concept of Kashmir Shaivism translated by various authors as "light", "splendour", "light of consciousness" (identified with Śiva)...... "luminous and undifferentiated consciousness"....or "primordial light beyond all manifestations"......Tantric practitioners Tibetan Buddhists practice Clear Light yoga based on a similar concept.......Prakāśa is considered supreme, ultimate, unsurpassable, but as such it cannot be described as pure transcendence, because even though it is above all, it is still present in the manifestation, in every aspect of it. Thus prakāśa is said to be both transcendent and immanent."
"Tirich Mir.....Krumai lives on her sacred mountain Tirich Mir...She had a shrine at Badáwan, where the Afghan Kalasha used to make offerings.....Robertson first thought Krumai was a male god, “but after seeing her effigy in one of the dancing-houses in Presungul, no doubt could remain concerning her sex. She is worshipped everywhere probably…”...The goddess Krumai came over from Tirich Mir* and went among them, but none recognised her ... Tirich Mir was a sacred mountain......
"Suryaprakasa means the mountain of the " dawning of the sun" or " Mt. Sunrise." It is described as being in the North. Which of the many great peaks of the Hindu Kush or Karakorum this is today cannot be ascertained, but it is possible that the mountain was the sacred peak on which Isa-Masiha, surrounded by the disc of the sun, is said to have appeared to a king of the Sakas, according to the Bhavisya purana. The other sacred mountain in Uddiyana was Mt. Ilam (referred to as Mt. Ilo by the Tibetans), which lies south-east of the old capital. It is hard to say what "North" means in this context. It could be taken as North within the Dhanakosa district, or north in the sense of up the Swat River. It is also possible that the mountain was the renowned Tirich Mir, North of the Lotkho Valley in the Chitral.".....http://www.dharmafellowship.org/biographies/historicalsaints/pramodavajra.htm
"Later, when his studies were complete, the young man received the full ordination of a Buddhist monk and was given the title of Master (acarya) from the King. Thus he was known as Acarya Pramodavajra....It is by this name (or the familiar Tibetan translation, Lopon Gah-rab Dorje) that he is best known.....As a Buddhist monk , Acarya Pramodavajra lived a purely monastic, disciplined life for many years. This discipline as a monk prepared him for the contemplative life. At first he studied many texts, many fine scriptures and profound metaphysical treatises, acquiring a vast wealth of knowledge. Then with time he more and more turned away from scholastic studies, to sit in quiet meditation. He meditated in his monastery cell and in the caves and forests of the Kingdom of Uddiyana.....At some point in the maturation of his spiritual evolution, he received the blessed Empowerment and Transmission of the profound Mahayoga teachings of the Secret Matrix Tradition (Guhyagarbha-tantra) from the renowned personal guru of the King of Uddiyana, the great white-robed saint Mahasiddha Kukkuraja. After that he retired into retreat on the slopes of Mount Suryaprakasa in the north, where he performed mantra practice in a small grass hut.".........http://www.dharmafellowship.org/biographies/historicalsaints/pramodavajra.htm
"Modern name Koh-i-Mor located in the Paropamisade region between the river Kunar and Swat in the land of Ashvakas. This name, however, refers to the Meru mountain of Chitral, Tirich Mir, distinct from the Deva-Meru in modern Diamar….The Venus Blueprint: Uncovering the Ancient Science of Sacred Spaces….By Richard Merrick
The Venus Blueprint: Uncovering the Ancient Science of Sacred Spaces….By Richard Merrick
"Land of Tirich Mir and Kafir Kalash.....Ask anyone where Chitral is, and one may get a blank look since this land of Tirich Mir and the Kafirs, people of the lost world, is obscured behind the Lowari Top, which due to its inaccessibility generally keeps the tourist and holiday makers at bay. But those who dare to venture and reach out to Chitral Valley, find themselves in a different world - overlooked by the mighty Tirich Mir, standing at a height of 7,692 metres as part of the Hindu Kush mountain range, and located in the far reaches of Pakistan. Chitral is also famous for the Shandur Festival, which is held each year and where polo is played at the highest polo ground of the world at a height of 3,719 metres. The beauty of Chitral lies as much in its rustic, mountainous terrain, as in its warm hearted and friendly inhabitants. Since it is a land high up in the mountains, at such places legends fascinate the on lookers. One such legend describes Chitral as an abode of genies and fairies in times when no one lived here and locals still look up to the Tirich Mir, which they believe still has the castle of fairies.".....http://pakistanpaedia.com/oth/chitral/chitral.html
"There also is a general pattern of belief in mountain fairies now often called by their Persian name, Peri, but still called Apsaras in the Rājataraṅgiṇī, Suchi (súči, now often called Peri), who help in hunting and killing enemies, and the Varōti, their violent male partners. They live in the high mountains, such as Tirich Mir, but in late autumn they descend to the mountain meadows. The Jach (j.ac.) are a separate category of female spirits of the soil or of special places, fields and mountain pastures.....Noted linguist and Harvard professor Michael Witzel summarizes the Kalash religion with this description: "In myth it is notably the role of Indra, his rainbow and his eagle who is shot at, the killing of his father, the killing of the snake or of a demon with many heads, and the central myth of releasing the Sun from an enclosure. Ritual still is of IIr.type: Among the Kalash it is basically, though not always, temple-less, involving fire, sacred wood, three circumambulations, and the *hotṛ. Some features already have their Vedic, and no longer their Central Asian form (e.g. dragon > snake)"....M. Witzel.....(Extract from: The Ṛgvedic Religious System and its Central Asian and Hindukush Antecedents. A. Griffiths & J.E.M. Houben (eds.). The Vedas: Texts, Language and Ritual. Groningen: Forsten 2004: 581-636
"Higher Realms.....The uppermost realm on the Wheel of Rebirth is that of the devata. There are four highest devas or gods of which two, Indra and Brahma, appear most often in Buddhist scriptures where Indra, ruler of the upper realm, is called Shakra (Pali: Sakka.) In the orthodox Indian view, Brahma is the Intelligence that can be compared to the deity of the western religions, but he does not have that role in Buddhism. Shiva (in Tibetan, Lha Chen) also plays an important role; in fact his god-realm is called Shambhala.....In the Buddhist view, these gods and goddesses are, for the most part, considered to be highly evolved bodhisattvas.....The gods are waited upon by Apsaras -- beautiful attendants and messengers, and gandharvas -- heavenly dancers and musicians. (The dakini can be included in both these categories.) ....Tibetan tradition, Buddhist or not, has a large variety of these kinds of beings. A distinction is made between the deities and the local or worldly spirits. The former are objects of Refuge, while the latter may be considered as protectors but not usually sources of Refuge. Often they are propitiated in return for services rendered.".....http://www.khandro.net/mysterious_spirits.htm
"Dralha..... in Tibetan, dgra lha..... (dgra-) word ends in the syllable lha, and it is a kind of god....Drala spelt sGra bla begins with the syllable sgra which means sound, and continues with la that here means "a type of individual energy that is endowed with protective functions" (Norbu 1995.) For example, seng- ge'i sgra means the lion's roar. It is also possible to write and hence, refer to sgra'i lha since sGra means a sound or cry, but using lha here instead of la conveys the meaning of a sound deity.....The Tibetan term lHa standing alone means god or deity -- usually it refers to one of the devata, a being of the highest realm in the context of The Wheel of Existence. [The syllable LHA found in transliterated Tibetan is pronounced HA.]"........http://www.khandro.net/mysterious_spirits.htm
"Chitral forms Pakistan's north-western border with Afghanistan along the Hind Kush mountain range. The mountain passes that connect Afghanistan with Pakistan were the routes used by the Alexander the Great and his troops, who called the Hindu Kush "Parapamisus" meaning mountains over which no eagle can fly. After Alexander, Tartar hordes of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane also passed through, specially through the inaccessible Baroghil Pass (3,798 m or 12,460 ft) in the Upper Chitral (bordering the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan, which was once considered to be the rout to the famous Silk Route. Chitral has been traditionally and, except for a brief spell uninterruptedly, ruled by the Mehtars who claim themselves as ancestors the Tartar ruling family of Tamerlane....
"King Ja...Kukuraja was a mahasiddha within the lineages of Esoteric Buddhism and he was contemporaneous with Indrabhuti of Sahor in Oddiyana (also known as King Ja) and Kambalapada (also known as Lawapa).....Some sources hold that it was Kukuraja who prophesied the birth of Garab Dorje, the founder of the human lineage of the Nyingmapa Dzogchen Tantra teachings.".... Dorje, Jikdrel Yeshe (Dudjom Rinpoche, author), & translated and edited: Gyurme Dorje and Matthew Kapstein (1991).
"Historical chronicles reveal that in 2nd A.D Chitral was under the rule of a Buddhist ruler Jai Paul, then the middle period is perceived to be ruled by Kalash rulers, Rajawai, Bazik and Bula singh. However, the Kalash suffered heavy casualties in a series of skirmishes with the troops of Shah Nadir Rais, the ruler of Rais Dynasty....An early Sanskrit inscription at a village called Barenis (27 miles away from Chitral) of about AD 900 records that the country was Buddhist, under King Jaipal of Kabul. It is believed that Upper Chitral was under Buddhist influence in the past and even today there are a few rocks in Torkhow area known as "Kalandar-i-Bohtni" (Mendicant of Stone). It is a figure of a stupa; the upper part of which has been cut into the figure of Buddha "....A Short History of Chitral and Kafirstan.....by Mohammad Afzal Khan
Chronicles of Early Janjuas.....By Hussain Khan
"Sites of Gandhara Grave Culture (Proto historic Period) - The grave burials date back to era in between the Indus Valley Civilization and the arrival of Achaemenian in 600 B.C. These graves assume tourist and archeological attractions for the reason that Chitral has never been a part of ancient Gandhara."
"Note the role of the Apsarases as leading warriors to heaven: in the Epic (HARA 2001), in the Rājataraṅgiṇī, for which cf. the Germanic Walkyries (WITZEL 1997b, n. 48); for the Kalash Varōti < vātaputrī, cf. gandharva.....Varōti who are the more violent and angry male partners of the Suchi, reflecting the later Vedic (and typical medieval Kashmiri) distinction between Apsarases and Gandharvas. Certain mountains are the favored seats of the fairies, especially the impressive, 7708 m high pyramid of the Kailāsa-like Tirich Mir in the North of Chitral (~ Meru KaṭhB, Meros Arrian, Anabasis 1.6; Sumeru, Pāli Sineru; cf. *devameru, Shina díamer = Nanga Parbat, CDIAL 6533). In late autumn, the Peri descend to the high mountain meadows."....M. Witzel.....(Extract from: The Ṛgvedic Religious System and its Central Asian and Hindukush Antecedents.
**************************
Email....okarresearch@gmail.com
January 2015
**************************
