The Deity Oxus & Ancient Bactrian Polytheism

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"There are many gods....They are always present everywhere.....we prefer to use the term Naturalism rather than Polytheism."

"The single most important element that dominates the landscape of ancient Bactria is the river Amu Darya, the ancient Oxus, and its many tributaries. Bactria without Oxus is almost unimaginable.....yet most research has been confined to the study of the "major" religions (Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and/or Islam)...... Despite that, the local Bactrian polytheistic pantheon presents an amazing richness and forms a fascinating field of study, yet acknowledged by not many modern scholars."......THE LOCAL RIVER GOD OXUS-WAKHSH IN PRE-ISLAMIC BACTRIA.....http://www.iranianstudies.com/content/local-river-god-oxus-wakhsh-pre-islamic-bactria

"It is a river deity or aquatic deity for which we know two things for certain: that in the Hellenistic period a whole temple was dedicated to this god and that much later, in the seventh and eighth century CE, local people took its worship seriously by taking oaths on its name during their legal and economic transactions.".....http://www.iranianstudies.com

Valley of Takhti Sangin

Takht-i Sangin....The ancient town of Takht-i Sangin is located near the confluence of the Vakhsh and Panj rivers, the source of the Amu Darya, in southern Tajikistan.....The Greco-Bactrian temple site of Takht-i Sangin is believed by many to be the source of the Oxus Treasure that now resides in the Victoria and Albert Museum and British Museum. Part of greater Transoxiana and built in the 3rd Century BC, the site consists of a well-fortified citadel containing the so-called "Temple of Oxus".....Holt, F.L. (1989), Alexander the Great and Bactria: The Formation of a Greek Frontier in Central Asia: 2nd Edition, Brill Archive.

"OXYARTES......Hellenized form of the Old Persian male name Vaxšuvarda (also seen spelled as Vakhshuvarda), which was derived from older Persian Vaxšuvadarva......part of the name referring to Vakhsh, the Aramaic counterpart of the Greek river god Oksos or Oxos (known as Oxus in Latin).... Oxyartes would then be a Greek transliteration of the original Aramaic name......if one looks up the Oxus river (nowadays called Amu Darya) from which the river god derived its name (or vice versa).....Vakhsh is said to be ultimately derived from Sanskrit Vaksu. A known bearer of this name was the father of Roxana, the Bactrian wife of Alexander the Great (4th century BC)."......."Kingship in Hellenistic Bactria" by Gillian Catherine Ramsey.....http://www.behindthename.com/name/oxyartes/submitted

"In modern Takht-i Sangin, on the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan borders, along the river Amu Darya (Gr. Oxus, Bact. Wakhsh), a large temple complex has been excavated by Russian archaeologists, which bears little resemblance to typical ancient Greek religious architecture. However, this building has provided us with significant evidence for the cult of the local river god Oxus through Greek inscriptions from the time of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom. A famous stone altar base with a standing Marsyas on top, fragments from a stone perirrhanterion on the temple’s entrance and a bronze caldron preserve dedicatory inscriptions mentioning god Oxus. All names of the devotees are Iranian, but the “epigraphic habit”, god Marsyas, the caldron and the perirhanterion are a clear reference to a Greek understanding of the ritual and the cult.".....https://hellenisticmonarchies2015.wordpress.com/day-2/spyridon-loumakis/

"The popularity of the local cult of Oxus can be seen in the amount of examples of Oxus-based theophoric names found in Aramaic documents from Bactria, dated from 353 to 324 BC, possibly from the archive of the satrap of Bactria, and in the epigraphic data from the Hellenistic city of Aï Khanoum in Bactria (before the mid second c. BC). In addition, we know from ancient Greek authors that Oxy-atres was the name of Darius III’s brother (Arrian, Anabasis 7.4; Strabo, Geography 12.3.10), that Oxy-dates was a high royal Persian, imprisoned by Darius III, and later appointed satrap of Media by Alexander III (Arrian, Anabasis 3.20; 4.18) and that Oxy-artes was one of the four powerful noblemen of Bactria who resisted the advance of Alexander III’s army (Arrian, Anabasis 3.28; 4.18-21; 6,.5; 7.4; 7.6; Diod. Sic., Historical Library 2.6.2)."....Spyridon Loumakis (Concordia University): “Oxus-Wakhsh: A Local River God in Hellenistic Bactria”......https://hellenisticmonarchies2015.wordpress.com

".... this unique temple, which mixes Hellenistic and local Iranian religious traditions in many levels (sacred setting, ritual, cult) was extremely significant for the eastern most border of the Hellenistic world in central Asia, based on three arguments: (a) on the temple’s variety and richness of offerings (more than eight thousand excavated objects of alabaster, clay, terra cotta, bone, ivory, semiprecious stones, glass, textiles, iron, bronze, silver and gold), (b) on its monumental proportions, which manifest the concentration of great political and economic power, and (c) on the abundance of arms dedicated to the temple, probably the biggest assemblage in the entire Central Asia, with different types of offensive and defensive armour, from Hellenistic, Middle Eastern and Sarmatian-Scythian origins.".....Spyridon Loumakis......https://hellenisticmonarchies2015.wordpress.com

"In the extremely beautiful spot where the Vakhsh and Pyanj rivers flow together and give birth to the Amu Darya lie the ruins of the Takhti Sangin temple, a Zoroastrian temple of the Achaemenid Persian period.....During the silk-road period it was a center where merchants visited by land and river. Here, it is believed, the Oxus Treasure pieces were found in 1877; beautiful objects of incredible elegance and beauty..... the Takhti Sangin temple has various legends. Signs of different religions have been found, indicating that the temple existed as a strategic point of trade between the east and west....it takes two days to explore Takhti Sangin and other small castles along Amu Darya river and Tigrovaya Balka Nature Reserve.... unfortunately, the story of the temple is different, its location right in the border with Afghanistan means that few can currently get permission to visit.."....by Bahodur Sheraliev.....

"...northeastern Bactria (that is, the Hindu Kush region) was known as Kafiristan ("Land of the Infidels" in Persian) because of the people's fierce resistance to Islam and unique polytheism (different than Hinduism).....

"The Oxus region is home to archaeological relics of grand civilisations, most notably of ancient Bactria, but also of Chorasmia, Sogdiana, Margiana, and Hyrcania. However, most of these ruined sites enjoy far less fame, and are far less well-studied, than comparable relics in other parts of the world....most of the ruins have been neglected by the modern world – largely due to the region's turbulent history.....

Ayaz Kala of Khwarezm (Chorasmia), today desert but in ancient times green and lush

"The Oxus is the largest river (by water volume) in Central Asia. Due to various geographical factors, it's also changed its course more times (and more dramatically) than any other river in the region, and perhaps in the world.......The source of the Oxus is the Wakhan river, which begins at Baza'i Gonbad at the eastern end of Afghanistan's remote Wakhan Corridor......The Oxus proper begins where the Panj and Vakhsh rivers meet, on the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border...... the land that was the region's showpiece in the antiquity period: Bactria. The Bactrian heartland can be found south of Sogdiana, separated from it by the (relatively speaking) humble Chul'bair mountain range. Bactria occupies a prime position along the Oxus river: that is, it's the first section lying downstream of overly-rugged terrain; and it's upstream enough that it remains quite fertile to this day, although it's significantly less fertile than is was millennia ago...... surprisingly little is known about the details of ancient Bactria today. ....The capital of Bactria was the grand city of Bactra, the location of which is generally accepted to be a circular plateau of ruins touching the northern edge of the modern-day city of Balkh. These lie within the delta of the modern-day Balkh river (once known as the Bactrus river), about 70km south of where the Oxus presently flows. In antiquity, the Bactrus delta reached the Oxus and fed into it; but the modern-day Balkh delta (like so many other deltas mentioned in this article) fizzles out in the sand......Balkh is believed to have been inhabited since at least the 27th century BC.....due to decades of military conflict in the area, access continues to be highly restricted, for security reasons.".....Forgotten realms of the Oxus region...http://greenash.net.au/

"....in Upper Bactria is the archaeological site of Takhti Sangin. This ancient ruin can be found on the Tajik side of the border; and since it's located at almost the exact spot where the Panj and Vakhsh rivers meet to become the Oxus.....The principal structure at Takhti Sangin was a large Zoroastrian fire temple, which in its heyday boasted a pair of constantly-burning torches at its main entrance. Most of the remains at the site date back to the 3rd century BC, when it became an important centre in the Greco-Bactrian kingdom (and when it was partially converted into a centre of Hellenistic worship); but the original temple is at least several centuries older than this, as attested to by various Achaemenid Persian-era relics.....Takhti Sangin is also the place where the famous "Oxus treasure" was discovered in the British colonial era (most of the treasure can be found on display at the British Museum to this day)..... Takhti Sangin has been studied only sporadically by modern archaeologists.....Forgotten realms of the Oxus region...http://greenash.net.au/

"In Dancing With the Sacred, Karl Peters proposes that the sacred is the dance of life (a form of god). He develops an understandable naturalistic theism in which the Universe is not governed by a personal supernatural God. This determination is not atheistic, for the concept of the divine is preserved in a system of non-personal processes within the natural world. Nature produces variations that generate new aspects of existence that are creative but without design.".....Dancing With the Sacred: Evolution, Ecology, and God - Trinity Press International, 2002,

"The Oxus River, identified as the world river that descends from the mythological High Hara.....Hara Berezaiti, "High Hara", the mythical mountain that is the origin of the *Harahvatī river.....Harahvati Aredvi Sura Anahita, the source of all waters in the world that descends from the mythical Mount Hara.....Another source of spiritual home that made Bactria sacred was a great temple of the ancient Iranian goddess, Anahit (in Pahlavi or Middle-Persian) and Anahita (Ânâhitâ) in the Avesta hymns. The temple was so rich that often it attracted the needy Syrian kings who sat out to plunder it....Anahita is a water goddess whose origins go back to Central Asia from where her worship spread through Persia all the way to the Middle-East....According to the Avesta, the water goddess Anahita was the mother of the god of Victory known as Mithra...The female protectress of Balkh, Anahita goddess of the Oxus, in Alexander’s day. Anahita’s magnificent gilded statue had been gifted by one of Darius’s predecessors, Artaxerxes II. Thousands had come to licentious rites in the precinct of the ‘High girdled one clad in a mantle of gold, on her head a golden crown with rays of light and a hundred stars clad in a robe of over thirty otter skins of shining fur’….. "......http://www.iranchamber.com/geography/articles/balkh.php

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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

November 2015

John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico

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Aq Kupruk, Balkh...Early Human Representation....(18,000 BC)

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Aq Kupruk, Balkh...."Over 20,000 stone tools are reported to have been recovered from a site just north of Aq Kupruk/Kopruk township and some 77 km south of Mazar-e Sharif, Balkh Province. Aq Kupruk sits on the banks of the Balkh River where it leaves the foothills of the Paropamisus. .....The Aq Kupruk site is also called Dukhtar-e Padshah. Excavations at the site have yielded artifacts from various levels. Some writers have remarked on the relative sophistication of the stone tools calling Aq Kupruk's artisans "the Michelangelos of the Upper Paleolithic." One of the artifacts recovered is the carved the face of a person on a small limestone pebble - one of the earliest representations of a human face made by a human hand as portable cave art. The artifact has been dated to 18,000 BC....The age of the various levels and their associated artifacts recovered from the four site range from the Upper Paleolithic (18,000-10,000 BCE) to the Iron Age. The finds include incised spatulas, points, and awls made of bone, and a flint toolkit: blades, cores, utilized and retouched side- and end- scrapers, burins, keeled scrapers, points, a micro-industry, combination tools, a very early stone sculpture (the pebble face), domesticated sheep and goat remains, fragments of beaten copper from the ceramic Neolithic period, several projectile points, glass, terracotta and simple jewellery. ".....http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/prehistoricsites/dawn.htm

Sculpted head from Aq Kupruk, northern Afghanistan, circa 20,000 BC - the carved the face of a person on a small limestone pebble - one of the earliest representations of a human face made by a human hand as portable cave art.

"North Afghanistan may well be the zone where modern Homo sapiens, or at least a variety of modern man, developed physically and began to revolutionize Stone Age technology,” said University of Pennsylvania archaeologist Louis Dupree of the Darra-i Kul discovery. But the 1979 Soviet invasion ended the excavation that might have confirmed this startling hypothesis. .....Across northern Afghanistan, from Balkh to the Pakistan border, lay the evidence of vibrant Stone Age, Neolithic and early Bronze Age cultures. A rock shelter at Kara Kamar, 14 miles north of Samangan yielded Stone Age tools dating circa 30,000 BC. More than 20,000 stone tools excavated from Aq Kupruk are of such sophistication that archaeologists often refer to the tool makers of Aq Kupruk as "the Michelangelos of the Upper Palaeolithic."......Aq Kupruk artifacts belong to a cultural phase that lasted some 5,000 years, from circa 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, during which some unknown artist carved the face of a man (or is it a woman?) on a small limestone pebble — giving us one of the earliest representations of a human face made by human hand."...... http://www.cemml.colostate.edu/cultural/09476/afgh02-02enl.html

"There are four sites in the vicinity of Aq Kupruk:
Aq Kupruk I or Ghar-e Asb (aka: Horse Cave) is a cave/rock shelter of the Kushan-Sasanian period, containing some fragmentary Buddhist frescos and some simple architecture.
Aq Kupruk II or Ghar-e Mar (aka: Snake Cave) is cave/another rock shelter that has yielded the largest number of artifacts from among the three sites and dating to several periods except the Kushan-Sasanian period. About 10% of the site has been excavated.
Aq Kupruk III is an open air site on the river terrace. Its artifacts date to the Mesolithic/EpiPaleolithic period (10-15,000 years ago).
Aq Kupruk IV (Skull Cave)....is closer to the modern village. Its artifacts include those dated to the Upper Paleolithic (15,000 years +).
....http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/prehistoricsites/dawn.htm

"....the Aq Kupruk carving remains one of the oldest known human likenesses ever discovered. Why was it carved? We may never know. ....Early peasant farms dating circa 30,000 – 20,000 BC, found at Hazar Sum and in the foothills of the Hindu Kush, confirm that North Afghanistan was one of the earliest places to domestic plants and animals. Later still, farming villages, dating 7,000-5,000 BC, near Deh Morasi Ghundai, show the transition that allowed faming villages to emerge and small cities to follow. By this time, evidence of Bronze Age culture abounds. .......While much has been looted and is forever lost, much has been discovered, and much more awaits excavation, at sites such as the Dashli Oasis."......http://www.cemml.colostate.edu/cultural/09476/afgh02-02enl.html

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"After 2400 BC, throughout Central Asia the growth of urban societies was severely challenged. Within a span of some three hundred years, none of the major centers that developed during the first half of the 3rd millennium were still occupied. The precise reasons for this "urban collapse" remain a mystery. Yet toward the end of 3rd millennium, across northern Afghanistan and southern Turkemenistan and Uzbekistan, a series of events fueled the rise of cities and settlements that was to have a major impact......Large numbers of nomadic invaders or migrants, pastoral citiless people travelling on horseback and by chariot, long known (conveniently, perhaps wrongly) as Aryans (derived from the Sanskrit word for "nobles"), migrated from the Caspian Sea region across the Oxus (present-day Amu Darya) River to present-day Afghanistan during the late early 2nd millennium (by circa 1700 BC).......No contemporaneous record exists of the Aryans' journey. But according to legend, they sang hymns as they travelled that were passed on by word of mouth from one generation of priests to another until c. 1200 BC, when the hymns were added to a collection of volumes known as the Rig Veda (1700-1100 BC). .....In these texts, we read about a tribe, centuries earlier, emerging from the Hindy Kush and crossing the Kubha, or Kabul, River around 1,500 BC, and can almost visualize these nomadic wanderers putting the Central Asian vastness behind them. ......Though evidence remains slim, some of the Aryan migrants appear to have stopped their wandering and settled in Afghanistan, while others continued south toward the India subcontinent. Meanwhile, a third branch of the Aryan Migration turned westward and settled on the Iranian plateau, in a place called Ariana, where an unknown scribe, or scribes, around 1800 BC produced the Persian hymns known as the Avesta, which mentions a city in northern Afghanistan termed Bakhdi (Balkh) "beautiful, crowned with banners.” .......http://www.cemml.colostate.edu/cultural/09476/afgh02-02enl.html

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"AAN’s Thomas Ruttig, points out that northern Afghanistan is part of a ‘Vavilov Centres’, one of eight regions of the world where crop plants were first domesticated. For plant breeders, having access to the wild relatives and related species of a crop is important. The plant crops domesticated here include wheat, peas, lentils, chickpeas, sesame, hemp, onion, garlic, spinach, carrot, pistachio, pear, almond, grape and apple.....Vavilov developed a theory on the centers of origin of cultivated plants. He stated that plants were not domesticated somewhere in the world at random but there are regions where the domestication started. The center of origin is also considered the center of diversity....The center of origin (or centre of origin) is a geographical area where a group of organisms, either domesticated or wild, first developed its distinctive properties.".....https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/plants-of-afghanistan-1-centre-of-global-biodiversity/

"The Bronze Age occurred roughly between 3000 BC and 2500 BC. The previous millennium had seen the emergence of advanced, urbanized civilizations, new bronze metallurgy extending the productivity of agricultural work, and highly developed ways of communication in the form of writing......an increasing amount of evidence supports the hypothesis that horses were domesticated in the Eurasian Steppes approximately 4000–3500 BC......

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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

November 2015

John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico

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Malahim, Armageddon, the Mappō Cycle & Kalachakra Prophecies

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"Dabiq (Arabic: دابق‎) is the monthly magazine of ISIS......Dabiq is named after a town in northern Syria northeast of Aleppo. It lies around 10km (six miles) from the Turkish border....... In Islamic eschatology, it is believed that Dabiq is one of two possible locations for an epic battle of Armageddon between invading Christians and the defending Muslims which will result in a Muslim victory and mark the beginning of the end of the world..... The Islamic State believes Dabiq is where an epic and decisive battle will take place with Christian forces of the west......In Islamic eschatology as found in the Hadith, the area of Dabiq is mentioned as a place of some of the events of the Muslim Malahim (which would equate to the Christian apocalypse, or Armageddon.....The hadith further relates the subsequent Muslim victory, followed by the peaceful takeover of Constantinople with invocations of takbir and tasbih, and finally the defeat of Anti-Christ following the return and descent of Jesus Christ."

"An ancient prophecy romanticised by ISIS militants warns of a battle between an Islamic army and an 'infidel horde' in Syria which will herald the destruction of the world. The 1,300-year-old hadith, which is a report of the deeds, teachings and sayings of the Prophet Mohammed, refers to the 'horde' flying 80 banners as they take on a Muslim army in the Syrian town of Dabiq. It warns of a 'malahim' - the equivalent to Armageddon in Christian teachings – in which the Muslims ultimately prevail." .....http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2786039/

Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, Volume 2......edited by Julie Scott Meisami, Paul Starkey

Armageddon....... "In the book of Revelation, armageddon is the last battle between good and evil before the Day of Judgment. Armageddon, a biblical hill of Megiddo, an archaeological site on the plain of Esdraelon, south of present-day Haifa in Israel.... the place where the last battle between good and evil will be fought.......the place of the gathering of armies for the final battle before the end of the world.....Late Latin Armagedōn, from Greek, from Hebrew har məgiddô, the mountain region of Megiddo : har, mountain; see hrr in Semitic roots + məgiddô, Megiddo.

"Megiddo (Hebrew: מגידו‎; Arabic: مجیدو‎, Tell al-Mutesellim) is a tell in northern Israel near Kibbutz Megiddo, about 30 km south-east of Haifa, known for its historical, geographical, and theological importance, especially under its Greek name Armageddon. In ancient times Megiddo was an important city-state. Excavations have unearthed 26 layers of ruins, indicating a long period of settlement. Megiddo is strategically located at the head of a pass through the Carmel Ridge overlooking the Jezreel Valley from the west."

"......So far as I know there are two major Buddhist prophetic cycles that may be related to the 21st century: the 2,500 year Mappo Cycle and the Kalachakra prophecies......The word mappo (more correctly, mofa) derives from the Chinese 末法, meaning “the end of dharma,” and refers to the last of three ages, commencing with the death of the Buddha, estimated (according to current scholarship) to correspond to the year 405 BC. In the Mahasamnipata Sutra, the three periods are further divided into five five-hundred year periods, the fifth and last of which was prophesied to be a time when the Buddhism of Sakyamuni would lose all power of salvation and a new Buddha would appear to save the people. The three periods and the five five-hundred year periods are also described in the Sutra of the Great Assembly. This time period would be characterized by unrest, strife, famine, and other natural disasters. The final millenium and century of this 2,500 year cycle represents the nadir of the first 2,500 year cycle of historical Buddhism, and the arising of a new current. Descriptions of the three periods also appear in other sutras. Since the Buddha died about 400 BC, this means that the “new current” may be expected about 2100, corresponding very neatly both with the rise of the technological singularity (2045) and the future appearance of Shambhala according to the Kalachakra."......http://palisuttas.com/2012/05/11/buddhist-prophecies-of-the-21st-century/

"Mappō.....The Three Ages of Buddhism, also known as the Three Ages of the Dharma, (simplified Chinese: 三时; traditional Chinese: 三時; pinyin: Sān Shí) are three divisions of time following Buddha's passing. The Latter Day of the Law is the third and last of the Three Ages of Buddhism. Mappō or Mofa (Chinese: 末法; pinyin: Mò Fǎ, Japanese: Mappō), which is also translated as the Age of Dharma Decline, is the "degenerate" Third Age of Buddhism."...... in the Mahāsaṃnipāta Sutra, the three periods are divided into five five-hundred year periods, the fifth and last of which was prophesied to be when the Buddhism of Sakyamuni would lose all power of salvation and a new Buddha would appear to save the people. This time period would be characterized by unrest, strife, famine, and natural disasters."......Marra, Michele (1988). 'The development of mappō thought in Japan', Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 15

"The Kalachakra Verse......Verse I.154 from The Abridged Kalachakra Tantra reads:......."Adam, Noah, Abraham, and five others – Moses, Jesus, the White-Clad One, Muhammad, and Mahdi – with tamas, are in the asura-naga caste. The eighth will be the blinded one. The seventh will manifestly come to the city of Baghdad in the land of Mecca, (the place) in this world where a portion of the asura (caste) will have the form of the powerful, merciless mlecchas.....According to the Kalachakra texts, the prediction of the mleccha invasion was given by Manjushri Yashas in the second century BC. The prediction was that the invasion would be launched in 2424 AD, 1800 years after the founding of the invaders’ Dharma."

"Vajrayana Buddhism taught that its teaching would be popular when "iron birds are upon the sky" before its decline...... The Kalacakra tantra contains a prophecy of a holy war in which a Buddhist king will win.....The earliest source of Kalachakra teachings is 'A Concert of Names of Manjushri', in which Manjushri, the embodiment of the deep awareness (wisdom) of all the Buddhas, is identified with the Kalachakra Buddha-figure. It can be dated no later than the mid-eighth century AD."

"Some monks such as Dōgen (1200 – 1253 AD)and Hsu Yun had alternative views regarding dharma decline. Dōgen believed that there is no mappō while Hsu Yun thought mappō is not inevitable."

" Jesus ...aka: Isa Ibn Maryam (Arabic: عيسى بن مريم‎, translit. ʿĪsā ibn Maryām; English: Jesus, son of Mary), or Jesus in the New Testament, is considered to be a Messenger of God and al-Masih (the Messiah) in Islam, considered an Islamic prophet).....Like all prophets in Islam, Jesus is considered a Muslim.....He will similarly return to the earth after having disappeared. He will come to Damascus and pray at the side of Mahdi. Jesus, rather than Mahdi, will then defeat Dajjal. This battle, known as the apocalypse, will occur at Armageddon (Megiddo) in Palestine.After his victory, Jesus will abolish the poll tax on non-Muslim “people of the Book,” which means convert them all to Islam, and rule the earth in an Islamic golden age. The period of peace that will follow will last for forty years, after which Allah will destroy the earth, raise the dead, and enact the Last Judgment. The good shall go eternally to Heaven and the bad shall burn eternally in Hell...Jesus is unique for being the only prophet in Islam who neither married nor had any children......Muslims believe that Jesus will return to earth near the Day of Judgment to restore justice and to defeat al-Masih ad-Dajjal ("the false messiah", also known as the Antichrist)...... Jesus will not return as a new prophet; Muhammad was the final prophet, but will continue from where he left off at the time of his ascension. He will live for another forty years before dying a natural death........"....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_Islam

"End time (also called end of time, end of days, last days, final days, or eschaton) is a time period described in the eschatologies of the dominant world religions, both Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic..... In Islam, the Day of Judgement is preceded by the appearance of the Mahdi atop a white stallion. With the help of Isa (Jesus), the Mahdi will blow the triumph overMasih ad-Dajjal (the false messiah).......Non-Abrahamic faiths tend to have more cyclical world-views, with end-time eschatologies characterized by decay, redemption and rebirth. In Hinduism, end time is foretold as when Kalki, the final incarnation of Vishnu, descends atop a white horse and brings an end to the current Kali Yuga. In Buddhism, the Buddha predicted that his teachings would be forgotten after 5,000 years, followed by turmoil. A bodhisattva named Maitreya will appear and rediscover the teaching of dharma. The ultimate destruction of the world will then come through seven suns.".....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_time

"In the year 2327 AD— the prophecies of the Kalachakra Tantra tell us — the 25th Kalki will ascend the throne of Shambhala. He goes by the name of Rudra Chakrin, the “wrathful wheel turner” or the “Fury with the wheel”. The mission of this ruler is to destroy the “enemies of the Buddhist teaching” in a huge eschatological battle and to found a golden age. This militant hope for the future still today occupies the minds of many Tibetans and Mongolians and is beginning to spread across the whole world.....Mounted upon his white horse, with a spear in his hand, the Rudra Chakrin shall lead his powerful army in the 24th century. “The Lord of the Gods”, it is said of him in the Kalachakra Tantra, “ joined with the twelve lords shall go to destroy the barbarians” (Newman, 1987, p. 645). ".....http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Part-1-10.htm

"Mohammed's Ascension......n the year 621, at the age of 51 years old, He flew on the magical Winged-Horse of Fire which he called Burak, which literally means White Horse but seen as "Thunder-Lightning". "....http://www.allaboutturkey.com/muhammed.htm

"Christ on a White Horse.....Revelation 19:11 ......Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had[a] a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS......".....https://www.biblegateway.com

Chappell, David Wellington (1980). Early Forebodings of the Death of Buddhism, Numen, Vol. 27/1, 122-154

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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

November 2015

John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico

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Dilbarjin, the Balḵāb River & the Greek Dioscuri Temple (2500 BC)

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Dilbarjin: (2500 BC) A large urban site surrounded by city walls....dominated by a fortified enclosure and citadel (Kala) in the center, and has a vast unfortified urban area to the east and south of the city walls.

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"Dilbarjin (Delbarjin) is the modern name for the remains of an ancient town in modern (northern) Afghanistan. The town was perhaps founded in the time of the Achaemenid Empire. Under the Kushan Empire it became a major local centre. After the Indo-Sassanids the town was abandoned.......The town proper was about 390 x 390 m big. Dilbarjin had a city wall built under the Kushan rule. In the middle of the town there was a round citadel, built at about the same time. In the North-East corner of the town was excavated a temple complex. Here were found many wall paintings, some in a purely Hellenistic style. Originally the temple was perhaps dedicated to the Dioscuri. Outside the city walls there were still substantial buildings. Finds include inscriptions in Bactrian, most of them too destroyed to provide any historical information. There were fragments of sculpture and many coins.".......Warwick Ball: Archaeological Gazetteer of Afghanistan : Catalogue des sites archéologiques d'Afghanistan, Paris 1982, p. 91-92

"DELBARJĪN, urban site 40 km northwest of Balḵ, on the northern limit of an oasis irrigated by the Balḵāb, near a defensive wall built during the Greek period (ca 329-130 B.C.) to protect the oasis. It was probably founded in the 5th century B.C. and flourished up to about the 6th century AD...... Study of the fortifications excavated by a Soviet-Afghan mission (c. 1969-77) suggests that the earliest stage of the citadel may date from the Achaemenid period, as the closest parallels to the construction methods and ceramic finds are of that period (Dolgorukov)...... It was, however, only in the final phase of Greek hegemony (ca. 150 B.C.), when the city may have been known as Eucratideia (Strabo, 11.11.2; Ptolemy, 6.11.8), or at the beginning of the Kushan period (ca. the beginning of the common era) that the site assumed its final configuration: a city protected by a quadrangular rampart (383-93 m2), with a circular citadel in the center. The northeast corner of the walled enclosure was occupied by a temple precinct (Figure 11/I, II), and suburbs of considerable size lay south and east of the city (Dolgorukov; Puga-chenkova, 1984). The earliest city wall consisted of a rather thin curtain of paḵsa (tamped earth mixed with water) and unbaked brick, built on a glacis of paḵsa and pierced with arrow slits, with hollow quadrangular towers at intervals. At the beginning of the Kushan period a second wall, also with towers, was constructed outside the original rampart, forming an interior gallery typical of Central Asian fortifications.".....

Catalogue of the National Museum of Afghanistan, 1931-1985.......By Tissot, Francine...Click on the map to enlarge

"BALḴĀB (Bactros of the classical authors), the river of Balḵ (locally pronounced Balḵaw). This perennial river is a major feature of the geography of northern Afghanistan....Baxl Rōd (the modern Balḵāb)...... It is called the “river of Balḵ” by the author of Ḥodūd al-ʿālam......a name often applied to the Oxus (Jeyḥūn) by early Muslim geographers "

The Dioscuri at Dilberjin....."The present article deals with a wall painting representing the Dioscuri, which was found in the main temple of Dilberjin (Southern Bactria.... near Balkh). .....On the grounds of a comparison with the Graeco-Roman iconographic repertory of the Divine Twins (a particular attention being paid to compositional schemata) there are reasons to reject the chronology (the 2nd century BC) proposed by I.T. Kruglikova, the 2nd (or 3rd) century AD seeming a more reasonable date for its execution. As to the function of the Twins, they are hardly to be thought of as the main object of the cult, whereas a number of clues suggest that they might have figured as assistants or guardians of a major, possibly female, deity. This is a pattern widespread in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire (the "Dioscuri with a Goddess"), but rooted in the local religious background as well (the Indo-Iranian Twins often associated with a female deity). A painting representing the Brahmanic couple Siva-Pârvatî, found in the same temple but pertaining to a later phase, is also taken into consideration as a further possible clue to a female cult. "....Lo Muzio, C, “The Dioscuri at Dilberjin (Northern Afghanistan): Reviewing their Chronology and Significance“, Studia Iranica, n°28-1 (1999), p. 41-71......https://frombactriatotaxila.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/the-dioscuri-at-dilberjin-northern-afghanistan-reviewing-their-chronology-and-significance/

"In Greek and Roman mythology, Castor and Pollux were twin brothers, together known as the Dioskouri. Their mother was Leda, but Castor was the mortal son of Tyndareus, the king of Sparta, and Pollux the divine son of Zeus, who seduced Leda in the guise of a swan. Though accounts of their birth are varied, they are sometimes said to have been born from an egg, along with their twin sisters and half-sisters Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra.......In Latin the twins are also known as the Gemini or Castores..... When Castor was killed, Pollux asked Zeus to let him share his own immortality with his twin to keep them together, and they were transformed into the constellation Gemini. The pair were regarded as the patrons of sailors, to whom they appeared as St. Elmo's fire, and were also associated with horsemanship.......They are sometimes called the Tyndaridae or Tyndarids.....The Dioscuri were regarded as helpers of humankind....

BACTRIAN KING, EUKRATIDES, 171-135 BC........Helmeted bust r./The Dioskouroi.

"We know some wall paintings from the early medieval period, which in the opinion of Gulyamov reached their highest degree of development in the 6th – 8th centuries AD as far as mural size, wealth of scenes, realistic and rich colors of images are concerned......Such paintings were discovered in Dilberjin (near Balkh), Balalyk-tepe , Adzhina-tepe (a Buddhist monastery of the 7th century AD, 12.5 kilometers east of Kurgan-Tube) , Kafyr-qala (Kurgan-Tube district in Tajikistan), Kalai Kafirnigan (80 km to the south-west of Dushanbe) , Kalai Shodmon and several others. The subjects of the images are essentially religious in nature, excluding the image of Balalyk-tepe, where there are secular topics. Art historians have identified a number of painter’s schools for the period. The Tokharistan school was represented by Balalyk-tepe, Adzhina-tepe, Kafyr-qala; the northern Tokharistan school in the Buddhist Temples of Kuva and in Semirechye; the School of the “western edge” with monuments in Sogd, Khorezm...."....http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/diss/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/FUDISS_derivate_000000007165/01_Text.pdf

"In the late 60’s - mid 70’s of the 4th century AD.... Shapur II twice fought with the “Kushans”, who had their capital in Balkh. We know the events form these wars from the work “History of Armenia” by the Armenian historian Fawstos Buzand (end of the 4th - beginning of the 5th c. AD). The first war was begun by the “King of Kushans”..... Shapur II personally led the Sasanian army, but it did not help the Persians: “…the K’ušan army defeated the Persian forces exceedingly. It killed many of them, took many prisoners, and drove part of them into flight”......The war of Shapur II in the east is dated by the last years life of the Armenian king Arsak, captured by the Persian shahinshah in AD 367......".......http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/diss/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/FUDISS_derivate_000000007165/01_Text.pdf

"Among the objects found over more than a century and a half in the territories that today correspond to the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union and with Afghanistan and Pakistan only few can be attributed to a purely Hellenistic archeological context. The main examples are the sanctuary of the god Oxus at Taḵt-e Sangin and the remnants of the capital of eastern Bactria, namely Āy Ḵānom/Aï Khanum (q.v.) in northern Afghanistan. At Āy Ḵānom, Macedonian political power was upheld from the beginning of the Seleucid period to the disappearance of the city around 145 B.C. under the attacks of the Saka nomads from north, followed by that of Yüeh-chih (Yuezhi). ".....http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/greece-viii

"....Supporting the early date of Buddhism in Bactria is a ceramic reliquary from the Kunduz area; it carries a kharoṣṭhī inscription which says that there was a Buddhist vihāra in the vicinity and that the teaching of the Dharmaguptaka sect was widespread there. The inscription is dated to the 1st-2nd centuries AD (Fussman, 1974). A “Buddhist platform” at Sorḵ Kotal, dated, together with the statues, to the 2nd-3rd century AD, is an outstanding monument (Schlumberger, Le Berre, and Fussman, 1983, pp. 75-81). The foundation of a Buddhist monastery at Kunduz can be probably dated to the end of the Kushan period (Hackin, 1959, pp. 19-22). Additional Buddhist temples are found in Dilberjin, Haibak, and other places.......Systematic archeological research in northern Bactria (that is, north of the Amu Darya, in the south of modern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) has revealed numerous Buddhist monuments, mainly concentrated at Termez."......http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/buddhism-iv

Diagram of the Dilbarjin Kala (Click to enlarge)

"Dilbarjin......Variant Name: Dalbarjin.......Jauzjan Province. 40 kilometers northwest of Balkh and 20 kilometers northeast of Aqcha.
Dates: Achaemenid, 6th-4th century BC
Kushan, 1st-3rd century AD
Kushano-Sassanian, 1st half of the 5th century
A large urban site surrounded by city walls re-inforced with rectangular salients. It is dominated by a fortified enclosure and citadel in the center, and has a vast unfortified urban area to the east and south of the city walls. Mounds to the southeast and southwest mark two probably monumental buildings. There is also a temple, of two main periods of construction,, that contained many frescos of the Bamiyan style, a Shiva-Parvati fresco with inscription, a marble Bactrian inscription, many sculptural fragments and many coins. Local pottery production is evident from kilns producing many wasters.
Source: Warwick Ball, Archaeological Gazetteer of Afghanistan, 1982, n. 265, 295

"Eucratideia was an ancient town in Bactria mentioned by a few ancient writers. It was most likely a foundation of Eucratides I who is the more important ruler of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom with the name Eucratides. Not much is known about this city and it might be just a renaming of an already existing town rather than a new foundation. Renaming of cities was a common practise in the ancient world......The location of Eucratideia is disputed. Some proposed locations are:
Dilbarjin
Ai-Khanoum...at the confluence of the Oxus river (today's Amu Darya) and the Kokcha river
Qarshi; the 1923 work "The Encyclopaedia Metropolitana: Or Universal Dictionary of Knowledge" states: "Eucratidia, named from its ruler, (Strabo, xi. p. 516.) was, according to Ptolemy, 2° North and 1° West of Bactra." As these coordinates are relative to, and close to, Bactra, it is reasonable to disregard the imprecision in Ptolemy's coordinates and accept them without adjustment. If the coordinates for Bactra are taken to be 36°45′N 66°55′E, then the coordinates 38°45′N 65°55′E can be seen to be close to the modern day city of Qarshi.

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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

November 2015

John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico

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Hephthalites, Tibetans and White Huns (408 - 670 AD)

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"Central Asia and the neighbouring countries have a very old and rich history......A poorly studied and complex period of this region is the early medieval one (4th-6th century AD)...In the 5th - 6th centuries AD the Hephthalites founded a great empire on the later territory of the modern states of Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and China....Some researchers see descendants of the Yuezhi in the Hephthalites...others derive them from ancient Mongols or Huns assimilated by Central Asian people....Yet another theory considers an Iranian language of the Hephthalites and their Iranian origin.....V. de Saint-Martin was among the first to suppose that the Hephthalites were descendants of the Yuezhi and had a Tibetan origin....Enoki suggests that two centres of the Hephthalite Empire were on the Upper Amudarya..... Another centre was in Ghur (south of Kunduz) and is the Hua of Chinese sources and Gorgo of Procopius. According to Enoki, this argument also supports the theory that the origin of the Hephthalites was eastern Tokharistan on the upper Amudarya or in the Hindukush mountains and therefore it could explain why the Hephthalites did not establish their centre near the Altai mountains as noted in Chinese sources as their place of origin....Enoki in his later work (1959, 27-37) adds another two centres: Balkh and Warwaliz (to the north of Kunduz). ".......THE HEPHTHALITES: ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL ANALYSIS Written by AYDOGDY KURBANOV.....PhD thesis submitted to the Department of History and Cultural Studies of the Free University, Berlin 2010.....http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/diss/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/FUDISS_derivate_000000007165/01_Text.pdf

"Although the Hephthalites dominated much of Central Asia and Northern India at the height of their power (approximately 460 to 570), little information about their civilization is available to us. Their name derives from the Byzantine "Ephthalites," and they were alternatively known as Ye-Ta to the Wei dynasty and Hunas to the Gupta Empire. They are also referred to as "White Huns" in some histories, a term derived from a quotation from Procopius' History of the Wars, in which he writes, "The Ephthalites are of the stock of the Huns in fact as well as in name; however they do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us.... They are the only ones among the Huns who have white bodies and countenances which are not ugly." We do not know what name these people used to refer to themselves. "....https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/exhibit/hephthalites/hephthalite.html

Hephthalite Empire.....408–670 AD
Capitals: Kunduz (Badian), Balkh (Baktra), Sialkot (Sakala)
Official language: Bactrian
Regional languages: Gandhari (Gandhara), Sogdian (Sogdiana), Chorasmian, Tocharian, Turkic, Saka dialects
Liturgical language: Sanskrit
Religion: Buddhism and Hinduism....Nestorianism, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism
Political structure: Nomadic confederation

Click on the Map to enlarge.

Tridu Songtsen (Tibetan: ཁྲི་འདུས་སྲོང་བཙན་, Wylie: Khri 'dus-srong btsan), Tridu Songtsän or Dusong Mangban, (670–704; r. 676–704 AD) was an emperor of the Tibetan Empire from 676 to 704 AD.

"The stronghold of the Hephthalites was Tokharistan on the northern slopes of the Hindu Kush, in what is present-day northeastern Afghanistan. By 479 AD, the Hephthalites had conquered Sogdia and driven the Kidarites westwards, and by 493 AD they had captured parts of present-day Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin in what is now Northwest China.....Following the settlement of the Yuezhi (referred to by the Greeks as Tókharoi), the general area of Bactria came to be called Tokharistan. The territory of Tokharistan was identical with Kushan Bactria, including the areas of Surkhandarya, Southern Tajikistan and Northern Afghanistan."

"White Huns or Hephthalites , people of obscure origins, possibly of Tibetan or Turkish stock. They were called Ephthalites by the Greeks, and Hunas by the Indians. There is no definite evidence that they are related to the Huns. The White Huns were an agricultural people with a developed set of laws. They were first mentioned by the Chinese, who described them (A.D. 125) as living in Dzungaria. They displaced the Scythians and conquered Sogdiana and Khorasan before 425. They crossed (425) the Syr Darya (Jaxartes) River and invaded Persia. Held off at first by Bahram Gur, they later (483–85) succeeded in making Persia tributary. After a series of wars (503–13) they were driven out of Persia, permanently lost the offensive, and were finally (557) defeated by Khosru I. The White Huns also invaded India and succeeded in extending their domain to include the Ganges valley. They temporarily overthrew the Gupta empire but were eventually driven out of India in 528 by a Hindu coalition. Although in Persia they had little effect, in India the White Huns influenced society by altering the caste system and disrupting the hierarchy of the ruling families. Some of the White Huns remained in India as a distinct group.".....The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press.

"In Chinese chronicles, the Hephthalites are called Yanda or Ye-ti-i-li-do, while older Chinese sources of c. 125 AD call them Hoa or Hoa-tun and describe them as a tribe living beyond the Great Wall in Dzungaria. Elsewhere they were called the "White Huns", known to the Greeks as Ephthalite, Abdel or Avdel, to the Indians as Sveta Huna ("white Huns"), Chionite or Turushka, to the Armenians as Haital, and to the Persians and Arabs as Haytal or Hayatila, while their Bactrian name is ηβοδαλο (Ebodalo)..... According to most specialist scholars, the spoken language of the Hephthalites was an East Iranian language but different from the Bactrian language that was utilized as the "official language" and minted on coins..... They may be the eponymous ancestors of the modern Pashtun tribal union of the Abdali, the largest tribal union in Afghanistan."....http://www.self.gutenberg.org/articles/hephthalites

"The origin of the Gurjars is uncertain....The Gurjar clan appeared in northern India about the time of the Huna invasions of northern India (c 470 AD)..... Some scholars, such as V. A. Smith, believed that the Gurjars were foreign immigrants, possibly a branch of Hephthalites ("White Huns"). Mr. Devadatta Ramakrishna Bhandarkar (D. B. Bhandarkar) (1875–1950) believed that Gurjars came into India with the Hunas, and their name "Gujar" was sanskritized to "Gurjara" or "Gūrjara".He also believed that several places in Central Asia, such as "Gurjistan", are named after the Gurjars and that the reminiscences of Gojar migration is preserved in these names. General Cunningham identified the Gurjars with Yuezhi or Tocharians.....General Cunningham and A. H. Bingley consider the Gurjars as descendants of Kushan/Yueh-chi or Tocharians of Indo-Scythian stock".....http://www.mapsofindia.com/history/battles/huna-invasions-of-india.html

"The Gujars, who may represent the Gurjara tribe (Rose 1883, 2: 306), still practice their nomadic life, including vertical transhumance (nomadic pastoralism )...... Baines writes about the Gujars: Next to the Jat in rank, and probably akin in ongm, comes the Gujar … [which] … is now generally affliated to the Gurjara, a tribe which was settled in the neighborhood of the Caspian, and entered India either in company with or at the same time as, the Yetha or White Huna, of whom they are said to have been it branch. (Baines 1912, 44).".....https://aleximreh.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/excerpts-from-the-getes-by-sundeep-s-jhutti-2003/

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".... During the Buddhist period of the Gandhara Kingdom to which Takht-i-bahi belongs (c 2nd c AD to c 7th c AD), the area of what is now NW Pakistan and SW Afghanistan contained significant numbers (I have read of “thousands”) of such complexes....Among the complexes at Taxila, that of Jaulian is particularly similar to Takht-i-bahi in terms of its location and lay-out, being situated on a hill side. Apparently the larger Sangharamas were deliberately located a “convenient distance” away from urban centres in secluded locations with hills/forests and running water.....Regarding relative timescales, the Taxila complex of Dharamajika is the earliest, going back to Ashoka and the 3rd C BCE. Takht-i-bahi was founded from 1st C BCE - although it is said to have earlier Zoroastrian roots, there didn’t seem to be anything “on show” to demonstrate this. Jaulian dates from around the 2nd C CE. Both Dharamjika and Jaulian were destroyed by the “White Huns” in 455. Takht-i-bahi avoided this fate and “prayed on” for another 200 years or so and the last dated construction is from the 7th C CE – this avoidance of destruction was important for preserving the remains on view today. It is said that it escaped the depredations of the Huns because it was off the main road from Swat and “hidden”! The AB evaluation also says “if fell into disuse through the discontinuation of charitable endowments in modern times” without specifying what it meant by “modern times”. In fact it seems an inappropriate word - the Chinese traveller Xuanzang reported the decline of Buddhism in the area in 644. The remnants of Gandhara thereafter, under various conquests, reverted significantly to Hinduism and, in around 1020, became Islamic. .....http://www.worldheritagesite.org/sites/takhtibahi.html

"In AD 701-703 the Hephthalites, together with the Turks and Tibetans, took part in the siege of Termez, when its governor Musa ibn Abdallah ibn Khazim rebelled against the regent of Khorasan. The siege ended with the defeat of the attacking troops."......http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/diss/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/FUDISS_derivate_000000007165/01_Text.pdf

"Professor Paul Harrison of Stanford University, deciphered a copper scroll from Afghanistan in 2007.... The scroll is dated from 492-93 AD and is from the period of the Hephthalites. It apparently mentions that they were Buddhists and had Iranian names and includes about a dozen names including that of their overlord or King. Where their general name is concerned, they have been variously known as Sveta Hunas or Khidaritas in Sanskrit, Ephtalites or Hephthalites in Greek, Haitals in Armenian, Heaitels in Arabic and Persian, Abdeles by the Byzantine historian Theophylactos Simocattes, while the Chinese name them the Ye-ta-li-to, after their first major ruler Ye-tha or Hephtal.".....http://www.ancient.eu/White_Huns_(Hephthalites)/

"...the various Hunnic tribes had long ago divided themselves into four groups along the cardinal points, each with a specific colour. The Northern Huns hence became the "Black" Huns, the "White" Huns were the western tribes, the "Green" or "Blue" were the southern and the "Red" Huns occupied the Eastern territories. So despite being identified as fair skinned, the name itself has less to do with physical appearance and more to do with their self-devised methods of tribal affiliation."....http://www.ancient.eu/White_Huns_(Hephthalites)/

"Procopius of Caesarea (6th cent CE) is quoted multiple times across publications as giving the first physical descriptions of these people and their society in the following words: “The Ephthalitae are of the stock of the Huns in fact as well as in name; however, they do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us, for they occupy a land neither adjoining nor even very near to them; but their territory lies immediately to the north of Persia; indeed their city, called Gorgo, is located over against the Persian frontier, and is consequently the centre of frequent contests concerning boundary lines between the two peoples. For they are not nomads like the other Hunnic peoples, but for a long time have been established in a goodly land. As a result of this they have never made any incursion into the Roman territory except in company with the Median army. They are the only ones among the Huns who have white bodies and countenances which are not ugly. It is also true that their manner of living is unlike that of their kinsmen, nor do they live a savage life as they do; but they are ruled by one king, and since they possess a lawful constitution, they observe right and justice in their dealings both with one another and with their neighbours, in no degree less than the Romans and the Persians.”......- Procopius of Caesarea (Book I. ch. 3)..........http://www.ancient.eu/White_Huns_(Hephthalites)/

"That the Ephthalites practiced sun worship has been suggested by Enoki, who says, “[That] the Ephthalites built their tents with their entrances facing to the east would also imply the practice of sun-worship among them (Enoki O.N.E. 1988, 175). He also adds, “We may also recall the practice of sun-worship among the Massagetae (Herodotus I, 212) and the Kushanians [Ta Yuezhi]” (Enoki O.N .E. 1998, 175). Now the implied practice of sun worship still exists today in the structure of the modem Panjabi villages. .....Further, Enoki suggests that the Yetha worshipped the Fire-god (Mithra) and the God of Heaven (Daeva-Worship), thereby remaining consistent with his idea of the Iranian origin of the Yetha (Enoki O.N.E. 1998, 177). Based on the coins of the Ephthalites, namely the coins of Khingila (father of Toramana Jauvla),."....https://aleximreh.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/excerpts-from-the-getes-by-sundeep-s-jhutti-2003/

"Bernshtam, in one of his article, wrote that the Hephthalites continued the work of the Kushans and supported Buddhism, but in another study he states that the Hephtalites were shamanists..... Such contradictions are also found in the work by Gafurov. In his opinion, amongst a certain part of the Hephthalites Christianity was a wide-spread, and priests were directed in the 6th century AD by the ruler of the Hephthalites to the Sasanian capital by Mar Aba I (patriarch of Christian-Nestorians in the Sasanian Empire) with a request to put this bishop above all Hephthalite Christians. Later Gafurov says the Hephthalites did not believe in Buddhism (though he adds that under influence of subordinated population, which confessed the Buddhism, in the Hephthalite context adherents of this religion appeared), but honoured their own god. “Each morning they came out of their own tents and prayed. Possibly, they honoured the sun”.......Page 233.....http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/diss/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/FUDISS_derivate_000000007165/01_Text.pdf

"In 1959, Japanese researcher Kazuo Enoki proposed that the Hephthalites were probably Indo-European (East) Iranians as some sources indicated that they were originally from Bactria, which is known to have been inhabited by Indo-Iranian people in antiquity. Richard Frye is cautiously accepting of Enoki's hypothesis, while at the same time stressing that the Hephthalites "were probably a mixed horde". More recently Xavier Tremblay's detailed examination of surviving Hephthalite personal names has indicated that Enoki's hypothesis that they were East Iranian may well be correct, but the matter remains unresolved in academic circles.".....http://www.self.gutenberg.org/articles/hephthalites

"Another source which shows that the Hephthalites did not persecute the followers of Buddism is the copper inscription in the Schøyen collection and which was inscribed to mark the consecration of a stupa, a Buddhist sanctuary in the region around modern Talaqan, situated east of Kunduz (north-east Afghanistan). In the list of donors are the name of Hephthalite kings.".....Page 234....http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/diss/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/FUDISS_derivate_000000007165/01_Text.pdf

"According to the Encyclopaedia Iranica and Encyclopaedia of Islam, the Hephthalites possibly originated in what is today eastern Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. They apparently had no direct connection with the European Huns, but may have been causally related with their movement. It is noteworthy that the tribes in question deliberately called themselves Huns in order to frighten their enemies."....http://www.self.gutenberg.org/articles/hephthalites

"The last Hephthalite King, Yudhishthira, ruled until about 670 AD, when he was replaced by the Kabul Shahi dynasty."

"In their religious beliefs, the Ephthalites are said to have worshipped fire and sun gods. While either one is not unusual in any early culture around the world, both together is likely to indicate a Persian origin. In Persia, such beliefs were later to culminate in Zoroastrianism.".....http://rick-heli.info/silkroad/eph.html

"The Bahman yašt is the most important apocalyptic work in Zoroastrian literature…Chapters 4 and 5 tell how calamities which will befall Iran at the end of the tenth millennium when enemy nations—Arabs, Byzantines, Turks, Chionites, Hephthalites(?), Tibetans, Chinese (see H. W. Bailey, “Iranian Studies,” BSOS 6, 1932, pp. 945-53), and others, will push almost as far as Padašxwārgar and conquer Iran, causing decay of religion, breakdown of social order, debasement of law and morality, and degeneration of nature"...http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bahman-yast-middle-persian-apocalyptical-text

"One of the coins included in this exhibit was found along with thirteen other Hephthalite examples among the relics found in the Tope Kulan stupa, located in what is now Hadda, Afghanistan.. If the Hephthalite rulers were hostile to Buddhism, it seems doubtful that believers would have interred coins bearing portraits of their rulers. It is more probably that, once their power base had been secured, they at least tolerated Buddhist practice within their realm. They may even have offered the religion a degree of royal patronage; one inscription records donations to a Buddhist monastery in the name of the Hephthalite ruler Toramana. "......https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/exhibit/hephthalites/hephthalite.html

"Mihirakula (Chinese: 大族王) was one of the most important Hephthalite emperors, whose empire was in the present-day territories of Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern and central India. Mihirakula was a son of Toramana who was a tegin (secondary prince) of the Indian part of the Hephthalite Empire. Mihirakula ruled his empire from 502 to 530.....The "Mihirakula" was a Central Asian Huna origin and may have the meaning "Mithra's Begotten", as translated by Janos Harmatta. Cognates are also known from Sanskrit sources, though these are most likely borrowed from the neighbouring East Iranian languages. Mihira in Sanskrit is Sun and Kula is Clan. He was thus a Syryavanshi and followed Lord Shiva....The 6th-century Alexandrian traveler Cosmas Indicopleustes states that the Hephthalites in India reached the zenith of its power under Mihirakula."......https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihirakula

Enoki, Kazuo, Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, 1955, No. 18, "On the Nationality of the Ephthalites"
Hambly, Gavin, Central Asia, 1966, Chapter 3: "Sassanians and Turks in Central Asia"
McGovern, William, The Early Empires of Central Asia, 1939, Chap. 18: "The Huns in Persia and India,"
Procopius, History of the Wars, Books I and II, Loeb Classical Library,

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November 2015

John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico

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Chinese Travelers in Bactria, Kapisa and Oḍḍiyāna (400 - 675 AD)

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"Xuanzang reports that at the time of his visit to Balkh in 630 AD there were about a hundred viharas and 30,000 monks, a large number of stupas and other religious monuments, and that Buddhism was flourishing in Bactria"

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"Faxian...Fa-Hien and Fa-hsien.... (337 – c. 422 AD) ...... a Chinese Buddhist monk who travelled by foot from China to India, visiting many sacred Buddhist sites in what are now Xinjiang, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka between 399-412 to acquire Buddhist texts. His journey is described in his important travelogue, A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms, Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Xian of his Travels in India and Ceylon in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline.....Faxian's visit occurred during the reign of Chandragupta II, one of the most powerful emperors of the Gupta empire.... Faxian (Fa-hsien) reached the banks of the Indus river from Kashgar traveling through the province of Gandahara, Peshawar, Banu and saw the temples of present day Jalalabad. He saw Suhuto (Swat), Gandahara, Chuhashilo (Taxila), Folusha (Peshawar).......He describes the famous monasteries and Buddhist centers of these places and from Banu travels to the banks of the Indus river."

"Bodhidharma was a Buddhist monk who lived during the 5th or 6th c. AD..... He is traditionally credited as the transmitter of Chan Buddhism to China, and regarded as its first Chinese patriarch....Chinese sources vary on their account of Bodhidharma's origins, giving either an origin from India or Central Asia......He is referred as "The Blue-Eyed Barbarian"...a Persian Central Asian. .....One early account claiming that he arrived during the Liu Song dynasty (420–479 AD) and later accounts dating his arrival to the Liang dynasty (502–557). Bodhidharma was primarily active in the territory of the Northern Wei (386–534). Modern scholarship dates him to about the early 5th century.....Bodhidharma's teachings and practice centered on meditation and the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra."

"Song Yun of Dunhuang (518 AD)......went with a monk Huisheng on a mission sent by the Empress Dowager to obtain Buddhist scriptures in India in 518 A.D. He traveled through the Taklamakan desert via the southern route passing Shanshan, Charkhlik, Khutan, then further west into the Hindu Kush, Kabul, and Peshawar. The most interesting account is his visit is to the Hepthalites (the White Hun) kingdom, which centered in eastern Afghanistan and controlled much of Central Asia during the 5th and 6th centuries. As a result of this journey Song Yun managed to collect 170 books dealing with the Greater Vehicle (Mahayana) and took them to China.....Song Yun followed the route taken by Faxien from Khutan to the eastern parts of Afghanistan. At this time the Hepthalites kings ruled over the land. Gulas, the Hepthalite king, (most likely Mehrakula), ruled harshly over the land with a force of 1000 warring elephants and cavalry.... the Hepthalite administrators appointed a satrap to rule over Gandahara, whose name was Lai-Lih or he was a person who belonged to this lineage. When the Hepthalites conquered Gandahara they appointed Lai-Lih as its king. During the time of the visit of Song Yun (520 A.D.) the second king of this family was ruling over the region.....Song Yun provides accurate accounts of the people, their clothing, the empresses and court procedures and traditions of the people and he states the Hepthalites did not recognize the Buddhist religion and they preached pseudo gods, and killed animals for their meat."..... Chinese Travelers in Afghanistan by Abdul Hai Habibi ....http://www.alamahabibi.com/English%20Articles/E-Chinese_Travelers.htm

Xuanzang (玄奘....Hsüan-tsang)...(c. 602 – 664 AD)..... a Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveller, and translator who described the interaction between China and India in the early Tang dynasty. ...He became famous for his seventeen-year overland journey to India, which is recorded in detail in the classic Chinese text Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, which in turn provided the inspiration for the novel Journey to the West written by Wu Cheng'en during the Ming dynasty, around nine centuries after Xuanzang's death.... the third Chinese traveler who has written his observations about Afghanistan....While Hsuan Tsang was traveling though Afghanistan the effects of Islamic conquests had not reached Afghanistan and Buddhism prevailed over all of the northern and eastern provinces of the country. Monasteries existed in all the major centers and thousands of monks were engaged in the learning of this religion..".

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Yijing (義淨....Yìjìng.....I Ching).... (635–713 AD)...... was a Tang Chinese Buddhist monk originally named Zhang Wenming.... The written records of his 25-year travels provided information about the kingdoms lying on the route between China and the Nālandā Buddhist university in India. He was also responsible for the translation of a large number of Buddhist texts from Sanskrit into Chinese.... He walked to Nālandā, a large Buddhist monastery in ancient Magadha (modern-day Bihar), India, where he stayed for 11 years."

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Samarkand.....
Xuanzang.....630 AD...."In Samarkand, which was under Persian influence, the party came across some abandoned Buddhist temples and Xuanzang impressed the local king with his preaching. Setting out again to the south, Xuanzang crossed a spur of the Pamirs and passed through the famous Iron Gates. Continuing southward, he reached the Amu Darya and Termez, where he encountered a community of more than a thousand Buddhist monks."

Kunduz.....
"Further east, in 630 AD.....Xuanzang passed through Kunduz, where he stayed for some time to witness the funeral rites of Prince Tardu, who had been poisoned. Here he met the monk Dharmasimha....In the third century AD, Kunduz had become a great center for Buddhist learning....Hsuan Tsang went from Takharistan to Holu (Kunduz) and met the elder son of the Hepthanlite chief. This prince was married to the sister of Kao Chang. Hsuan Tsang was in possession of letters of references from that prince. He considers 27 provinces south of the Oxus river to be the domain of the Hepthalite chiefs. Different chiefs ruled under the Huns. Their language was slightly different from that of other countries and its alphabet contained 25 letters which was written horizontally from left to right."

Balkh......
"Xuanzang, on the advice of the late Prince Tardu made the trip westward to Balkh, Afghanistan, to see the Buddhist sites and relics, especially the Nava Vihara, which he described as the westernmost vihara in the world. Here Xuanzang also found over 3,000 non-Mahayana monks, including Prajnakara (般若羯羅 or 慧性), a monk with whom Xuanzang studied early Buddhist scriptures."

"Nava Vihāra also housed a tooth relic of Gautama Buddha, making it one of the main centers of Buddhist pilgrimage along the Silk Road from China to India.....In the Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, Xuanzang reports that at the time of his visit to Balkh in 630 AD there were about a hundred viharas and 30,000 monks, a large number of stupas and other religious monuments, and that Buddhism was flourishing in the Bactrian portion of the Western Turkic Khaganate. He also described it as having strong links with the Kingdom of Khotan in the Tarim Basin. The temple was led by Kashmiris called Pramukha, Sanskrit for "leader, administrator", who, under the Arabized name of Barmak, came to be known as the Barmakids)."....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nava_Vihara

"The Han Chinese pilgrim Yijing visited Nava Vihāra in the 680 AD and reported it flourishing as a Sarvāstivādin center of study."......https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nava_Vihara

"Balkh...Balkh (Persian/Pashto: بلخ Balkh; Bactrian: βαχλο, Pakhlo) was an ancient city and centre of Buddhism, Sufism and Zoroastrianism ......it is considered one of the oldest cities in the world....This was the place where Zoroaster had first preached and it was the place where he died...... By 400 AD, Hinayana Buddhism was widely practiced in Balkh. According to oral traditions, Buddhism had been originally brought into the region by the monk Bhalika, a disciple of the Buddha. Trapusa and Bhalika had offered the Buddha his first meal after enlightenment and had become his first disciples. When Xuanzang visited Balkh in 630 it was a flourishing center of Hinayana Buddhism. At this time there were about a hundred Buddhist convents in the area, as well as 30,000 monks and a number of religious monuments... In the temple of Nawasingara (Nawbahar) of Balkh, there was a vase, tooth, broom and statue of Buddha which were all adorned with jewels. This temple contained precious ornaments and the son of Shahu Khan (Hepthalite) attacked Balkh to loot the precious bounty.."

Bamiyan....
"Prajñakara then accompanied Xuanzang southward to Bamyan, Afghanistan (“the place of the shining light”) where Xuanzang met the king. They visited a number of monasteries and the two large Bamyan Buddhas carved out of the rockface. This area marked the western-most point of Buddhist expansion., Xuanzang saw tens of non-Mahayana monasteries....From the provinces south of the Oxus, Hsuan Tsang arrived at Fan-yen-na (Bamian) where a separate king ruled. His kingdom from east to west extended 2000 li (600 miles) and from north to south it was 100 miles wide. He describes the two great statues of Buddha and a sleeping Buddha and other sacred relics. In ten monasteries about 1000 monks lived. They were all senior monks and were followers of the Lesser Vehicle (Theravada). "

Kapisa....
"Xuanzang then resumed this travel eastward, crossing the Shibar Pass and descending to the regional capital of Kapisi (about 60 kilometres (37 mi) north of modern Kabul, Afghanistan), which sported over 100 monasteries and 6000 monks, mostly Mahayana. This was part of the fabled old land of Gandhara. Xuanzang took part in a religious debate here, and demonstrated his knowledge of many Buddhist schools. Here he also met the first Jains and Hindu of his journey....From Bamian he went to Kia-pi-shi (Kapisa) which was 1300 miles in size and its people wore woolen clothes. Its king was from the Kashttriya people and he was considered a wise and brave man who conquered the adjacent lands and ruled over 10 other provinces too. He was a faithful follower of Buddism and every year erected a 17 feet tall silver statue of Buddha and held the religious conference of Moksha-maha-prishad. In his country there were about 100 temples with 6000 disciples who were followers of the Lesser Vehicle. Beside this followers of other faiths also had 1000 temples in the land. According to Hui Li, the emperor of Kapisa accompanied Hsuan Tsang a distance of three miles as he left the place."

Taxila....
"Xuanzang travelled into India where he found that Buddhism was in decline in many areas. He finally arrived at Taxila (呾叉始羅), a Mahayana Buddhist kingdom, where he found 100 monasteries with 5,000 Buddhist monks. Taxila was a major center of learning and it was here that the Mahayana branch of Buddhism had developed.......Xuanzangthen travelled to Adinapur (later named Jalalabad) and Laghman, where he considered himself to have reached India. The year was 630 AD.... As explained by the traveler Lan Po (Laghman), Na-ki-loho (Nangarhar), and Kien-to-lo (Gandahara) and the lands from Peshawar to the banks of the Indus river were under the domain of the Kapisa emperor and earlier Ta-cha-shi-lo (Taxila) was also associated with Kapisa but later it became a part of Kia-shi-mo-lo (Kashmir)."

Peshawar...
"Xuanzang left Adinapur, which had few Buddhist monks, but many stupas and monasteries. His travels included, passing through Hunza and the Khyber Pass to the east, reaching the former capital of Gandhara, Purushapura (Peshawar), on the other side. Peshawar was nothing compared to its former glory, and Buddhism was declining in the region. Xuanzang visited a number of stupas around Peshawar, notably the Kanishka Stupa."
"Song Yun visited Peshawar and Nangarhar also and he provides interesting accounts of the monasteries of the land. "

Swat Valley.....
"Xuanzang left Peshawar and travelled northeast to the Swat Valley.....Reaching Oḍḍiyāna, he found 1,400-year-old monasteries, that had previously supported 18,000 monks. The remnant monks were of the Mahayana school."

Chinese Travelers in Afghanistan by Abdul Hai Habibi ....http://www.alamahabibi.com/English%20Articles/E-Chinese_Travelers.htm

I-Tsing, Chinese Monks in India, Biography of Eminent Monks Who Went to the Western World in Search of the Law During the Great tang Dynasty, Translated by Latika Lahiri, Delhi, etc.: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986

Sen, T. (2006). The Travel Records of Chinese Pilgrims Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing, Education About Asia 11 (3), 24-33

Faxian (1886). A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms; being an account by the Chinese monk Fa-Hien of his travels in India and Ceylon, A.D. 399-414, in search of the Buddhist books of discipline. James Legge (trans.). The Clarendon Press, Oxford.

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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

November 2015

John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico

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