Uddiyana, Oddiyana

Tib., u rgyan, o rgyan: Urgyen, Orgyan

Skt., uddiyana, oddiyana
Whereas many a Tibetan text simply
locates Uddiyana by saying that it lies
to the West of India, Patrul Rinpoche
(b. 1808) provides us with more detail
when describing the birth place of Garab
Dorje not simply as 'Uddiyana' but as
being close to Lake Kutra in the region
of Dhanakosha; thus indicating present
day North-eastern Kashmir (now Pakistan)
- a region right in the middle between
Chitral, Gilgit and Swat. [The Words of
My Perfect Teacher, pages 338-339]
When Giuseppe Tucci strongly proposed
the idea (in 1940) that the land known
as Uddiyana was finally identified as
the Swat valley, he did not know Patrul
Rinpoche's text (translated in 1994).
Instead, he based himself on two
medieval Tibetan travelers who had
visited Swat and believed it to be the
legendary region that produced such well
known adepts as Garab Dorje,
Padmasambhava, Luipa and Tilopa - not to
mention their mainly female teachers;
the women who made this country famous
as Paradise of the Dakinis. Tucci had
translated these medieval texts and
published them as Travels of Tibetan
Pilgrims in the Swat Valley - and from
then onwards, most authors and
translators kept reciting and reprinting
the mantra "Uddiyana is Swat" until
almost everyone believed it.
Understandably, the majority of scholars
(among those interested in Tibetan
history and culture) was so excited that
Uddiyana had finally been located in
space/time (i.e., geography and
history), that only a few noticed that
the same Giuseppe Tucci - 30 years later
- also had to report that ceramics found
in the royal tombs of Leh (Ladakh) stand
in clear relation with others that were
found in Swat [1970, page 244]. Although
Tucci does not say so explicitly, this
does show us that we're dealing with a
cultural realm larger than the small
valley along the Swat river alone.
For another decade or two, Tucci's
original assessment was generally
believed, much quoted, and thus
multiplied, as can be seen from the
following selected quotes:
* When speaking of the four pithas
named in the Hevajra Tantra, Prof.
Sircar writes without hesitation (in
1948) that the name Odiyana Pitha refers
to "Uddiyana in the Swat Valley". [1948,
The Sakta Pithas, page 12]
* Discussing the birth and childhood
of Padmasambhava, Snellgrove and
Richardson state that he was "nurtured
by the king and queen of ancient Swat
(known as O-rgyan in Tibetan from the
old Indian name Oddiyana)". [1968, A
Cultural History of Tibet, page 96]
* In one of his footnotes, Keith
Dowman explains that O-rgyan or Oddiyana
"is the ancient kingdom of the Swat
Valley in Northern Pakistan" which was
"a center of Tantric practice", at least
up to the Muslim invasion. [1984,
Skydancer, page 189, note 4]
* Discussing the writings of the
Mahasiddha Anangavajra, David Snellgrove
speculates that he may have been a
contemporary and direct student of
Padmasambhava, especially since "both
are said to have come from the Swat
Valley (Uddiyana)". [1987, Indo-Tibetan
Buddhism, page 182].
At some point, however, due to
unconvincing investigations in Swat -
and probably due to a publication I am
not aware of - the scholarly community
gets more cautious and the concept of
Uddiyana shifts away from the Swat
Valley to a larger region: in fact the
whole area of mountain ranges (and
mountain peoples) from North-eastern
Afghanistan to the Kailas range in the
far West of Tibet.
Writing in 1994, Robert Thurman
cautiously formulates in his glossary to
the Bardo Thödol that Uddyana (Tib., U
rgyan) is a "Buddhist country in
northwestern India (perhaps present-day
Pakistan or Afghanistan)". [1994, The
Tibetan Book of the Dead, page 273]
This new concept of a greater Uddiyana
is described most objectively - to my
knowledge - by John Myrdhin Reynolds.
Having discussed Tucci's apparent
discovery and the subsequent failure of
archeology and art-history to back up
this claim, he concludes that "perhaps
Uddiyana is actually the name of a much
wider geographical area than the Swat
Valley alone, one embracing parts of
Pakistan, Afghanistan, and even Western
Tibet (Zhang-zhung). The best approach
is to remain open-minded and not
restrict the name only to the Swat
Valley." [1996, The Golden Letters. Snow
Lion Publications]
The idea of Uddiyana being the name of a
large region rather than of a small
valley, actually reiterates information
published 100 years earlier by Laurence
Austine Waddell in his Buddhism of Tibet
(New York: Dover Publishing, 1895;
reprinted in 1972 as Tibetan Buddhism).
Although Waddell writes twice that
Uddiyana equals Swat, he also noted in a
footnote (3) that "from the extent
assigned to it by Hwen Tsang, the name
probably covered a large part of the
whole hill region south of the Hindu
Kush, from Chitral to the Indus, as
indeed it is represented in the Map of
Vivien de St. Martin (Pelerins
Bouddhistes, ii.)."
Taking this view of Uddiyana and
projecting it in the form of a map
(which I've done here), one arrives at a
very interesting image. Uddiyana thus
becomes the uniting name for the whole
region along the length of the Indus
river for as long as it stays in the
mountains. Starting with the river's
multiple sources near Mt. Kailas,
passing through Zhang-Zhung, Lahul and
Spiti, crossing Kashmir with Zanskar on
the left and Ladakh on the right before
moving into Gilgit; the Indus turns
South just before reaching Chitral. From
here onwards, the river becomes the
natural (Eastern) border of the Swat
valley (the ancient capital was near
present day Mingora) until its waters
leave the mountains and reach the low
and fertile plains that much earlier
gave rise to the Indus Valley
civilization (Harappa, Mohenjo Daro) as
well as the later Buddhist kingdom of
Gandharva.
Thus recognized, Uddiyana is not only
the region into which the 14th Dalai
Lama fled when forced to leave Tibet (an
idea based on a personal communication
with Jane Sperr), it also includes the
very ancient Odiyana Pitha (Bhimasthana
Tirtha) much cited by Sircar, as well as
Jvalamukhi Pitha (sacred to both Hindu
and Buddhist Tantrics); two of the ten
most important shrines on the Indian
sub-continent dedicated to the pre-Vedic
Mother Goddess whose worship survived
all attempts at displacing her. At the
same time, this larger definition shows
Uddiyana to be the most likely mediator
for 1) injecting Persian concepts into
Bön, 2) transmitting Kashmir
Shaiva-teachings into Tibetan Buddhism
and 3) combining the early Mahayana of
India with Tantric teachings and aspects
of folk-religion, a mixture that helped
shape the later Vajrayana of Tibet and
its surrounding regions.
This view of a greater Uddiyana does not
exclude the possibility that the kingdom
in the valley of the river Swat had
perhaps a pivotal role, for example in
establishing and training the apparently
all-female priesthood of the region (a
fact that has been well documented by
Miranda Shaw in her Passionate
Enlightenment; 1994).