Ref: Report of
identificatipon of holy historical sites with Archaeological value connected
with Padmasambhava or Guru Rinpoche’s (Tibetan Guru) early years in villages in
Lakhisarai District before going to Tibet.
Padmasambhava’s
early years in Lakhisarai Dist in Bihar India.
Padmasambhava,
or Guru Rimpoche, as the Tibetans lovingly call him, is the subject of intense
debate on whether he was a mythical or historical figure. The latter part of
his life is well documented by Tibetans. I mean the part of his life he spent
in Tibet. What makes his life story sound mythical is the fact that till date
the places connected to his early life in India haven’t yet been discovered.
Until my brother Ajay Singh studied books pertaining to him, there was a lot of
conjecture pertaining to his life in India. Three facts are clear.
Padmasambhava was born on an Island in a lake that went by the name of
Dhanakosha. He was adopted by the king of Urgain, or Orgen, sometimes mentioned
as Oddiyana. Most of his Indian activities and miracles took place in villages
near the country of Zahor where he made the princess his first consort. A
Shaivite king tried to drown him in the Ganges, but a young Padmasambhava flew
out of the water like a mighty Garoor or vulture. He was known as Kheu Khalding
Tsal. Tibetans seem to have wondered around India wondering where these places
could be and did some wild guessing. Educated Tibetans crossed over to India in
the latter part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century and seem
to have read Samuel Beals translation of Huen Tsangs book “Si-Yu-Ki Buddhist
Records of the western world.” In this book, ‘Oddiyana’ is the second place
Huen Tsang visits in his epic journey to India. His original pronunciation is
‘O-cha-na’ which Beal deciphered as Oddiyana. Tibetans took it for granted that
was the elusive Urgain or Orgen mentioned in the Tibetan seven line prayer.
Oddiyana was never discovered as such a name never existed. So people thought
it was somewhere in the Swat valley or in the state of Orissa in India.
Similarly they searched for Lake Dhanakosha in and around the area of Swat
valley. Wild guess work was done and Lake Rewalsar was chosen as the lake in
which the king of Zahor tried to burn Padmasambhava. They did this because the
lake fell in the district of Mandi which had a verbal resemblance to Mandarva
who was Padmasambhavas first consort and the daughter of the king of Zahor.
Zahor remained elusive, and even wild guess work failed to pinpoint any place
with a similar name. Guesswork continued and Maratika cave in Nepal was chosen
as the cave in which Padmasambhava and Mandarva practiced longevity for three
months and attained the rainbow body. In short wild guessing by Tibetans made
Padmasambhava an unbelievable character who seemed to be flying around all over
north India parallel to the Himalayan foothills. Due to all this guess work the
Tibetan world failed to identify the eight manifestations of the great Guru. Until
my brother took pains to study Tibetan texts everything was conjecture. Ajay
Singh brilliantly identified Uren village as the elusive Urgain or Orgen or the
non existent Oddiyana, Dhanauri lake as the elusive lake where Padmasambhava
was born, Sahur village as the elusive Zahor which even wild Tibetan guess work
failed to identify, and Balguddar village where the Hindu king tried to drown
Padmasambhava in the Ganges where he flew out of the river like a mighty
vulture. This is exactly what Balguddar means. Studying the area between these
villages the entire Padmasambhava and Mandarva story falls into place. We will
start with Uren village.
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