SHANG SHUNG...Information on the language and culture of Shang Shung (Zhang Zhung, Zan Zun). Until the 7th century, an independent, non-Tibetan kingdom, with its own language and history..... Especially the Zhang-zhung terms: WER RO (king), NYI RI (sun), SHE TUN (heart)(Kvaerne: 1996).... The Zhang-zhung dialect is somewhat related to Tibetan, but it is closer to the modern Kanauri language of the western Himalayas. (Reynolds:1996)... Translations on the early history of Zhang Zhung from the Zhang Zhung Nyan Gyud (See Wangyal:1993 p 209)..."The Tibetan script U-Med is based on the ancient script of Zhang-Zhung. This script is called sMar-yig or Lha-bab-yi-ge, which means "script descended from the heavens" and is possibly 3000 years old. (Ngakpa:1986..pg 178)....Article in Montreal Gazette (December 12, 1997): The French explorer Michel Peissel announced that he has found remnants of Shangshung in the remote region of Tibet. (Reuters)..."Thirty three generations of Shang-Shung Kings reigned from Nyatri Tsenpo to Songtsen Gampo who died in 649 A.D.) (Norbu: 1995..pg xvi)....."The Dzogchen teachings of the 'Oral Transmission of ShangShung' have enjoyed direct and uninterupted transmission from ancient times to the present, whereby apart from the inherent value of the teachings themselves, they are also extremely precious as historical sources." (Norbu: 1995, pg 218)...See "The Zhang Zhung Language", A Grammar and Dictionary of the Unexplored Language of the Tibetan Bonpos" by Eric Haarh, Kobenhaven: 1968"..

SILVER PALACE OF THE GARUDA VALLEY...."Khyunglung Nulkhar, the Silver Palace of the Garuda Valley, the ruins are to be found in the Sutlej Valley southwest of Mount Kailash." (80E 31N)...(Wangyal: 1993..pg 31)....Khyunglung Nulkar..(Khyung lung dngul mkhar)..."the Silver Palace of Khyung-lung (80E 31N) in the upper Sutlej Valley of Zhang-Zhung (Hoffman: 1979..pg 103)...

BELUKHA....(49 N..86 E)..."The Oriots, a Finno-Turkish tribe in the Altai mountains had their own version of the Shambhala legend. Begins when the White Burkhan comes. His messenger, the Holy Oirot appears riding a white horse....The mountain in the Altai region is called Belukha. Oirots were a Western Mongolian tribe whose messiah was The White Burkhan. Shambhala was called Belovodya (White Waters)...'Oriot' the spiritual leader of an Altai tribe and messenger of the tribes messiah, 'The White Burkhan'."...(Decker: 1989...pps 148+)...

PERSIA: (rTag gzigs...sTag gzig...Tazik...Aryan/Iran) "The Persian empire of Cyrus the Great was founded in 549 B.C. The Saka peoples appear North East of Iran as mounted nomads in 530 BC. Mounted nomadism first appeared around 1000 B.C. in Central Asia." (Phillips: 1965..pg 129)..."The mounted deities of Tibet have a striking resemblance to the Iranian 'Fravashi'." (Hoffman: 1975..pg 95)... The Greek historian Pliny the Elder (23-79 BC) wrote in the 1st Century BC that the Greeks were upset because the Persians were inviting Celtic Druid priests from the Isles of Britain to come to Persia and teach them magic....."Tazig refers more specifically to the area immediately west of the Pamirs, namely Sogdiana and Bactria." (Rao: 1978..pg 392)....In Iran, the great Sassanian dynasty collapsed in the 7th century under the Arab onslaught...."the spelling sTag-gzig consists of two Tibetan (Shang Shung?) words, stag (tiger) and gzig (leopard). (Snellgrove:1968)..."The ancient Persian conception of the sun (hvar) was that of a ruling power." (Campbell: 1968..pg 209)...

TAJIKS...."upper reaches of the Amu-Daria River. Extremely remote valleys cut off for millennia. In some of the villages the people are dark haired, dark eyes and a few miles away in another valley the people are blond and blue eyed with white complexions...."..(Cameron: 1984..pg 226)...

ANCIENT KINGDOMS...."the Four Sons of Heaven, the rulers of the four great countries of the Asiatic world: China, India, Iran, Throm in the north with King Gesar." (Stein:1972, pg280)...Gesar's traditional four enemies were China to the East, India to the South, Tag zig (Persia?) to the west, and Hor to the North." (Norbu:1995, pg 225)..."In Jambudvipa there were six great countries where the true doctrine was propagated: India, Tibet, China, Khotan, Shambhala, and Kailash." (H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche (1904-1987): History of the Nyingma Lineage)......"Three priests were sent for from Kha che, Bru sha, and Shang shung." (Bansal: 1994..pg 41)...."the translators were from Tazig, Zhang Zhung, Sumpa (Shang Shung term for Amdo), China, and Khrom." (Wangyal: 1993..pg 32).... "Kashgar, Khotan, Karashahr, and Kucha (the four garrisons) were defeated by the Arabs in 751 and the whole of inner Asia was lost." (Knobloch: 1972..pg 224)...Bactria: semi mythical empire about 1000 BC....

HOR..."Hor gling denoted the region north of eastern Tibet in what is now Xinjiang Uighur."..."Hor and Phrom, (Turks and Tartars) north of Tibet. The land of Phrom Gesar of the North." (Stein: 1972..pg 41)..."Hor: where live the Uighurs. Near the Tarim River."...."Hor and Phrom, Turks and Tartars".(Stein: 1972..pg 41)...(80E) ...(See: Hermann: Historical Atlas of China)

SWAT.....Uddiyana...(Tib: Orgyan) Padmasambhava...a largely inacessible region in Pakistan was conquered by Alexander and became a stronghold of Buddhism..."Birthplace of Padmakara and also the region where Tilopa resided. Geographically between Afghanistan and Kashmir." (Nalanda: 1980...pg 371)...

MA...."country of happy Ma" "The country of Ma in Kham. Ma Yang Chug Mo, the Land of Ling" (Lopez: 1997..pg 94) "Upper Ma Thama, the land Happy Valley" (Lopez: 1997..pg 89)..."in the great land of rMa is the snowy mountain rMa rgyal spom ra." (Blondeau: 1996..pg 80)....

PHRYAIANS...(1200 BC)...Indo-European speakers who occupied central Anatolia. Chief deity was called Ma, the Great Mother." (Langer: Ency World History: 1940)...

PHROM...."The country of Phrom, where King Gesar ruled over the Turks (ie: Eastern Turkestan)." (Hoffman:1979)..."Gesar was the King of Trhom (Phrom), the place name Rum for Byzantium or Anatolia, the ancient Rome of the Near East. Ling is an abbreviation of the term denoting the whole world, ('dzam-gling: Jambudvipa)." (Stein: 1972..pg 280)....

'OL MO LUNG RING: river Gyim-shan-nag-po; the province of Hos Mo; Yung drun dgu brtsegs mountain.(Francke: 1950..pg 164)..." Ol: because there is no rebirth, it is called 'Ol...mo: because no concupiscence finds a place it is called Mo...lun: because in lun (valley) prophecies (lun) are uttered...Rin: because compassion extends far, it is called rin (long)" (Francke: 1950..pg 183)..."Ol: unborn..mo: undiminishing..lung:prophetic words..ring: everlasting compassion" (Wangyal: 1993..pg 30)..." a King of the region of Olmo Lungring called Gyalag Odmai Ling." (Norbu: 1995)..."Traditional maps of Olmo lung ring show resemblance to the Persian empire of Cyrus the Great. Names of places and palaces are transcriptions of words of Persian origin. Hetenyi and Kuznetsov of the Soviet Union have done research in this area."..(Karmay: 1975..pg 175)...

PUR...Country of Pur...Mountain of Penerita...

KHOTAN...(Li Yul)...near the Tarim River..."khotan (kamsadesa, Li Yul) an ancient city-state in Central Asia, beyond the Karakorum Range. The city has been buried for centuries near the village known as Yotkan."...(Kongtrul: 1995..pg 153)...

GREEKS AND ROMANS...."laid out their cities with some understanding of external drala...There was some power and wisdom in the Roman civilization which we should not overlook." (Trungpa: 1984..pg 111)...Homer composed the Illiad and Odyssey in the 8th Century BC. About the same time that Rome was founded. 500-50 BC was the Golden Age of Greece...

SHAMANIC TRADITIONS....The Finno-Ugric shamans of Siberia had sacred drums covered with cabalistic signs. The heart and lungs were the seat of the spirit in humans.....(Decker: 1989)

THE LAND OF WOMEN...Stritajya (Suvarnagotra)...An area that Alexander the Great was not able to conquer...(Stein:1972..pg 34) An interesting Kingdom of women warriors northwest of Shang Shung.....See Hermann: An Historical Atlas of China: 1966..."The country referred to about the ant's gold and the Amazons whom Alexander was not able to conquer." (Stein: 1972..pg 35)....

ANCIENT IMPERIAL COURTS...."During Imperial times, the Ancient Tibetan priest was a highly honored magician whose task it was to protect the King's la. These priests sat to the right of the king while the "Great Minister" sat on the left." (Hoffman:1975..pg 98)....See Ariane Spanien MacDonalds 1971 study on Tibetan Royal Courts in the 6-8th Centuries for an interesting discussion of Royal heirarchy...

SAKYA (Saka, Shaka, Sacae, Shakya).....The first seven Kings of Shambhala were descended from the Shakya clan..(Bryant: 1992..pg 69)... A Scythian tribe originated near Lake Balkash but were forced to move south in 165 BC. Occupied the Swat Valley and Gandhara after conquering the Indo-Greeks. The earliest Saka King was Maues, (Mauakes Moga) 95-75 BC. Mathura (in modern Uttar Pradesh) was an early headquarters. Their coins not only included the Indian goddess Lakshmi, but also the Greek Palla Athene and Herakles. Malwa, with their capital city of Ujjain in the Western Kshatrapas, from which they ruled Rajputana and Maharashtra for 300 years. Alexander fought against the Massagetae, a people of the nomadic Saka confederacy in 328 BC on the site of the modern Leninabad (Khojent) on the Jaxartes. This became Alexandria Eschate, (40 N, 80 E), his farthest excursion into Central Asia. (Encyclopedia Britanica)....Sucandra was the first of the seven Shakya kings of Shambhala.His father was Shakya Shambha." (Bernbaum: 1980..pg 285)...Saka is a Middle Iranian Language....Gautama Buddha was a member of the Shakya tribe. Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, was a member of the Jnatrkas tribe....The Saka peoples appear North East of Iran as mounted nomads in 530 BC..[Sidenote: the Kalachakra initiation is never performed in the Northeast Sector of a community]....In Persian sources, the Scythians (8-3rd C BC) were called Saka......"The Saka tribes who settled in the western Pamir in the 2nd Century BC were obviously not able to continue their nomadic ways."..(Gafurov: 1968..pg 137)...."On the map of Shambhala, Saka is shown exactly where it is supposed to be, north of Bactria, near Lake Balkash (45N-75E). Between 154 and 114 BC the Saka broke the Parthian defense lines and seized a region in eastern Iran known as Sakastan (Seistan)." (Kuznetsov: 1970..pg 568)..."The ancient Persian Sun- worship and the period of the Sakas beginning in the middle of the 2nd Century BC." (Humbach: 1978..pg 241)....

CELTS...Indo-Europeans who emerged in South Central Europe about 500 BC....In 335 B.C. Alexander asked the Celtic envoys what they feared most..."That the sky might fall on their heads" came the reply......emerged as a distinct people in the 8th Century BC.. the Arthurian and Grail legends (before they were transmuted into Christian wisdom) and the romance of Tristan and Iseult....reached apex in 300 BC...hundreds of names of their gods and goddesses are known to us...each clan had its local deities...a super-clan court met in Chartres, France (Gaul)...Epona, the horse goddess ranks high among the Celtic deities...Pagan rites continue to linger in modern Europe. Some people still make sunrise circuits of wells...(National Geographic...May 1977)...."Two noble classes: priests (druidum, druids) and warriors (equitum, equites). Both sacral and temporal forms of authority were fused in the Druids." (Lincoln: 1981..pg 138)....."(Druidae is Gaelic)...Dru-wid...dru=oak...wid= knowledge, to know, to see (as in the Sanskrit 'vid')...."Fear that the 'sky-roof' might fall was widespread among the Celtic peoples. Heaven is the sky (skv) that has been heaved up on the shoulders (latin: humerus..Gk: omos). The shoulders support the sky as a head. (Campbell: 1968...pg 111)

SHOTOKU...In 604 AD the Japanese Crown Prince Shotoku issued the 17 Article Constitution, combining Confucian ethics with the Chinese political theory of a centralized imperial government.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT...(356-323 BC)..."Alexander of Macedonia shattered the power of the numerous petty kingdoms and tribal oligarchies of the Punjab in North-west India and created a political vacuum that was exploited by Chandragupta Maurya, who actually met Alexander in 327 BC. Chandragupta's grandson, Ashoka, ascended to the peacock throne of the Mauryas in 269 BC.".....Alexander adopted Persian royal dress and attempted to impose the Persian court ceremonial of prostration (proskynesis) on the Greeks (to no avail). His attempts at a racial fusion between the Greeks and the Orientals was also futile. He was buried in a crystal coffin in Egypt, location still unknown. His armies mutinied in India, desiring to return to Persia. (Encyclopedia Britannica)...Alexander spent a year in Samarkind (then Marakanda) because 'it was so beautiful'.....

I-CHING...."The I-Ching appeared in its present form with 64 hexagrams during the reign of King Wen (1150 BC)..(Wilhelm: I-Ching..pg 15)

LANGUAGE..."Synchronizing mind and body is looking and seeing directly beyond language." (Trungpa: 1984..pg 53)..."In the language of the gods of the yungdrung [phywa sans mu rgyal ad phyod gsal]" (Francke: 1950...pg 163).....Code languages (dakini code) [brda skad]........"the Altaic language is related to Mongolian and to the Tungus language spoken in other parts of Siberia. The ancient Turkic languages also belong to the Altaic language family.' (Kharatidi: 1996..pg 203)..."the language of the Masang, a class of semi-divine beings of the Theurang." (Norbu: 1995...pg 15)..."The lore of the deu made use of secret languages to transmit knowledge. Deu (lde'u) is an ancient Tibetan term, possibly from the language of Shang Shung." (Norbu: 1995..pg 21)...secret language (log pa'i skad)...

SANSKRIT...(Tibetan: legs sbyar gyi skad)....Sanskrit appears about 2000-1500 BC in India with the migration of the Indo-Aryan branch of speakers into northwest India. The nearest relative of Indo-Aryan is Persian. Their earliest literature is the Vedas, sacred hyms to the Aryan deities. The Mahabharata consists of 100,000 couplets. Close affinities with the Iranian Avesta. The Sanskrit dramatists had little regard for the three classical unities of space, time, and action..(Encyclopedia Britannica)....The most archaic Sanskrit is that of the Vedas (1500-1200 BC)...The Buddha taught in the Magachi language. Sanskrit, the more cultured language was favored by the educated elite....

INDO-EUROPEANS....Aryans. The first Indo-European speakers entered central Europe about 2300 BC. (National Geographic: May 1977, pg 558)....'The appearance of the Indo-Aryans in India around 1500 BC, the waves of invasion into Greece around 1600-1000 BC, and into Anatolia around 2000 BC"..(Lincoln: 1981..pg 181)...'Identifying the Kurgan culture of southern Russia with that of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Weaponry was highly developed: swords, spears, and arrows, which testifies to a distinctive warrior ideology." (Gimbutas: 1976..pg 289)...The Kurgans were on the steppes of southern Russia in 4000 BC....."Indo-Europeans of the Pazyryk culture"...(Kharatidi: 1996..pg 169)....

KALACHAKRA...(dus kyi khor lo)...Taught by the Buddha to Dawa Sangpo in South India in 881 BC (Dudjom:1991 pg 947)...Appeared in India from 966 AD with Chilupa. (Jeffrey Hopkins:1985, pg 61)... Introduced into Tibet from India in 1026 AD.(Norbu:1995,pg 272).... Evidently was taught continuously in Shambhala during this period.... "Shen Rab explained the mighty Kalachakra Tantra in the Palace called dBan chen sa bdag." (Kvaerne: 1971, pg 221).... Was it taught in Zhang Zhung before India? before Tibet?...."the 1047 verses of the Kalachakra Tantra used today (the original is 12,000 verses) was composed by the eighth King of Shambhala, the first Kulika (Kalki), Jampal Trakpa. The original 12,000 verses have never been translated into Tibetan." (Kongtrul: 1995..pg 271)..."The Kalachakra is one of the last Sanskrit works to have been written in a Central Asian land." (Geoffrey Hopkins: 1985..pg 60)..."King Sucandra wrote the 12,000 verse root text to the Kalachakra in an unknown tongue called the 'twilight language.' (Bryant: 1992..pg 68)..."Sixteen translations of the Sri Kalachakra from Sanskrit to Tibetan appeared between the 11th and 14th centuries." (Bryant: 1992..pg 71)...

ORIGIN MYTHS....(cho rabs...chog rabs)..."literally means history of the paternal lineage" (Norbu: 1995..pg 230)..."Buddhist cosmology recognizes a process of creation but does not acknowledge any sort of supernatural creator. To Buddhists, the collective force of the evolutionary actions of sentient beings creates (and destroys) the world." (Kongtrul: 1995..pg 40)...."In Dzogchen, the primal creative cause of the universe is neither the evolutionary action of beings or the inter-relationships of the Buddhas and sentient beings, but Rigpa, a state of pure and total awareness." (Kongtrul: 1995..pg 54)..."The myth of the origin of existence is narrated in the 'Treasury of the Origin of Existence" (srid pa'i mdzod phug) by Trenpa Namkha. Delhi: 1996...(Norbu: 1995..pg 165)....."in Kabala, the famous 'Book of Splendour' (Sefer-ha-zohar) deals with the mystery of creation and the 10 divine numbers."..(Ency Britannica)....

SHINTO...."At first there was a long mythological period called the 'Age of the Gods', following which the goddess Ama-terasu-o-mikami descended to the lower realms, and his great grandson, Emperor Jimmu, became the first emperor of Japan in the year 660 BC....From the 8th century AD onwards, Buddhist beliefs and rituals began to penetrate into Shinto shrines and Shinto shrines came to be built within Buddhist temples. In 1867, when the Tokugawa Shogunate fell and the Meiji Restoration was accomplished, Buddhism and Shinto were separated, Buddhist elements were removed from Shinto shrines and Shinto was restored, in so far as possible, to its pure, original form."...(Jinga...1958..pg 3)

BARBARIANS...(mleccha, kla klo)..."uncultured people who did not speak Sanskrit, ie: non-Aryans"...(Kongtrul: 1995..pg 274)

HITLER & TIBET...."The Nazis developed a fascination with Tibet. In the late 1930's Hitler and Himmler sent an expedition into Tibet and Hitler is reputed to have brought a group of monks to Germany to perform special chants to alter weather patterns in preparation for his Russian invasion."..(Feigen: 1996..pg 15)...

RUSSIA...."In 987 AD the Grand Duke Vladimir Red Sun of Rus sent an expedition into the Altai region looking for Belovida (Shambhala)...(Kharatidi: 1996..pg 78)...The eminent historian and ethnologist Lev Gumilev (see: Kuznetsov: 1970) became interested in the Shambhala myth while a prisoner in the Siberian Gulag. He is the son of the great Russian poet Anna Akmatova...