Siddhartha Gautama (563-483 or 466-386 BC), also called Shkyamuni (the Sage of the Shakya Clan), the Gautama Buddha (, the "Enlightened One," from budh, "to wake up"), and the Tathgata (the "Thus Come"), was born to a royal Ks.atriya family. At his birth there was a prophecy that either he would become a world conqueror, a Cakravartin, , or he would "conquer" the world by renouncing it and becoming a Buddha. His father preferred the more tangible kind of conquest and tried to shield Siddhartha from all the evils of life that might tempt him into spiritual reflection. This strategy backfired; for when, about age thirty, Siddhartha finally did experience evils, by encountering a sick man, an old man, a dead man, and a wandering ascetic, he determined immediately to renounce the world and seek enlightenment like the ascetic. This violated Siddhartha's duty as a householder, since his wife had just given birth to their first child, but Vedic duties and the traditional four stages of life were no longer of interest to him.

After years of fasting and other ascetic practices, during which he supposedly subsisted on as little as one grain of rice a day, Siddhartha felt that he had achieved nothing. He ceased his fasting, which disillusioned his fellow ascetics -- "Siddhartha has become luxuriant!" They left him. Siddhartha then sat down under a tree with the determination not to arise until he had achieved enlightenment -- which sounds like an ascetic practice in its own right. The tree became the Bodhi ("Enlightenment") Tree; for under it Siddhartha, resisting the attacks and temptations of Mra, the king of the demons, became the Buddha, the one who "Woke Up." In the traditional chronology, that was in about 527. The Buddha proceeded to Sarnath, near Benares. Along the way he met some traveling merchants, who recognized him as a Buddha. Since merchants later spread Buddhism to Central Asia and China, this began a tradition of respect for merchants and trade, very different from the disapproving attitude in Western philosophy. At Sarnath, the Buddha encountered his old companions and delivered his first sermon in a place called the Deer Park. That set the "Wheel of the Law," the Dharmacakra, , in motion. The form of the Dharmacakra at right is identical to the one on the flag of India and is copied from a pillar set up at Sarnath by the great King Ashoka. In Chinese, the "Wheel of the Law" is translated (Hrin in Japanese), and to "revolve" the Wheel, or preach the Dharma, is (Tenhrin in Japanese).

The Buddha's sermon consisted of the Four Noble (rya) Truths:

This whole business seems to go back to what is presented as the etymology of duhkha. Sukha, , can mean "pleasant, agreeable, gentle, mild, comfortable, happy, prosperous" [M.F. Monier-Williams, Sanskr.it-English Dictionary, Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, New Delhi, 2008, p.1220, Oxford, 1899]. This analyzes as "good," su, [cognate to Greek , "well, good"], "[axle] hole," kha, ["cavity, hollow, aperture... 'the hole in the nave of a wheel through which the axle runs'," p.334], giving, with the other meanings, "having a good axle-hole." The opposite of this would be duhkha, , i.e. "bad [axle] hole." Therefore it is said that duhkha does not really mean anything all that bad. The "YogaGlo" site (which I mention, not because it is important or authoritative in itself, but just because it is characteristic) says that duhkha "might be thought more simply as a 'bad fit'," or "uneasiness, or discomfort." The problems with this I would classify under three headings:

Either way, duh is going to be a rather stronger element than the YogaGlo version of duhkha is going to contemplate.

If Nirvn.a is living a "normal human life... doing normal human things," then not only is the practice of the Buddha himself inexplicable, but what we hear about his followers is also something very different. When asked why he had abandoned Vedic sacrifices and become a follower of the Buddha, the Brahmin Kassapa answered:

Somehow, if "whatever belongs to existence is filth," including pleasures and women, it is hard to imagine Kassapa leaving his Buddhist meditation class to drive his SUV home to a suburban household and prosperous professional life. Siddhartha walked away (well, rode way, actually) from all that. To the idea that the Buddha's Enlightenment meant that he could just live a "normal life," the critical question would be to ask, "Well, why didn't the Buddha then just go home and return to his wife and family?" But the Buddha obviously did not live an "normal" life "doing normal human things." He was a mendicant monk, and still an ascetic; and one may notice that Westerners, who may rather smugly tell us that Nirvn.a is just "normal life," are almost never engaging in monastic practice themselves. Its very existence renders their assertions incoherent.

My suspicion is that those who trivialize the meaning of "suffering" may be transposing, consciously or unconsciously, a Mahyna notion that maybe the world isn't all that bad. This is a point of view that is, to be sure, part of the Buddhist tradition, but it is very different from the early message and attitude of Buddhism. Nor is it even characteristic of all of the Mahyna, where the practice of Pure Land schools is to "shun the defiled world." Acting like it was the meaning of it all from the beginning may reflect a sectarian commitment, but it is ahistorical and, for people who are supposed to be scholars of Buddhism, dishonest or incompetent. However, the idea that the world is essentially unpleasant, in all its details, and gives us a nagging feeling that something is not quite right, is a good Buddhist clue that something is wrong more deeply. This is even rather like what we find in the movie, The Matrix, where, from initial uneasiness, and in properly Buddhist fashion, it turns out that the world is a horrible illusion and deception.

Much worse than presenting as original and authentic an interpretation of Buddhism that may actually only be characteristic of some schools of the Mahyna is a secularizing and psychologizing approach. If Buddhist practice relieves stress and produces greater health and happiness, and enables us to live a normal life, it does not matter that disease, old age, and death are still there if death itself will actually deliver us from these conditions. We can get his approach from people who are in fact modern materialists and naturalists, reject the reality of karma and reincarnation, dismiss the miraculous powers of the Buddha as metaphors or fairy tales, and regard death as nothingness. Each of these contradicts basic Buddhist metaphysics and are all historically judged to be major Buddhist heresies. Viewing the dead as nothing is "annihilationism" and conflicts with the application of the Four-Fold Negation to the ontology of Nirvn.a. In Buddhist philosophy, materialism is despised. It is alien to the letter and the spirit of Buddhism, not to mention rather missing the point. A lot of "Buddhist modernism" is an attempt to reduce Buddhism to nothing more than a scientifically reasonable form of rationalistic philosophy, while at the same time scrambling to make it ecologically and politically correct. These are concerns that are foreign to any traditional form of Buddhism and irrelevant to the sober truth of the Buddha's insights. Why people who may regard themselves as Buddhists would give doctrinal credence and priority to the metaphysics of Western atheists puzzles me.

The Buddha established a monastic Order (the San.gha), with five basic Precepts: not to kill, not to steal, not to be unchaste, not to drink intoxicants, and not to lie. The monastic discipline soon involved many more rules, and the Five Precepts became simple moral injunctions that applied to the laity as well as to the monks and nuns -- until debate began about whether the Precepts needed to be observed at all. Practice and Enlightenment then lead one to Nirvn.a, , which the Buddha refused to positively characterize. Since Nirvn.a means "Extinction," do we even exist when we achieve Nirvn.a? The Buddha denied that we exist, denied that we do not exist, denied that we both exist and do not exist, and denied that we neither exist nor do not exist. This kind of answer is called the Four-Fold Negation and becomes a fundamental Buddhist philosophical principle to deal with attempts to characterize Nirvn.a or ultimate reality: we cannot either affirm or deny anything about them.

Buddhist scriptures are called the Tripit.aka, or the "Three Baskets," consisting of the Sutrapit.aka, the Buddha's sermons, the Vinayapit.aka, the monastic rules, and the Abhidharmapit.aka, early philosophical treatises. The Buddha himself spoke the Prakrit Mgadh, but the oldest version of the Tripit.aka that is extant was committed to writing in Sri Lanka using the Prakrit Pli, which had become a literary language. These texts are called the "Pli Canon." The version of the Tripit.aka that exists in Chinese used to be regarded as derived from the Pli Canon, but they are now both seen as based on older versions. One frequently finds Pli terminology used in reference to Buddhism. Sanskrit sutra becomes sutta; dharma becomes dhamma; r.s.i (Hindi rishi) becomes isi; shrama becomes assama; (King) Ashoka becomes Asoka; etc.

As I have noted, it is tempting to many to see the Buddha as essentially a philosopher and Buddhism as profoundly unlike other world religions -- perhaps not a religion at all. Since there is no God or soul in Buddhism, there is certainly a sharp contrast with religions like Judaism, Christianity, or Islm. However, the contast is less sharp with other historical and world religions. Thus, while there is no God, there are gods in Buddhism, gods like Indra and Brahm who turn up as guardians of Buddhist temples. Most importantly, the sanctity of the Buddha, the "Blessed One," himself is immediately obvious. After his death, the ashes of the Buddha became relics in much the same way that we find relics of the Saints in Christianity. The form of the stupa originally served to enshrine such relics. That the Buddha may originally have been just a person is not something extraordinary in Indian religion, where in Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism it is possible for ordinary human beings to become morally and spiritually superior to the gods. Especially noteworthy is the belief that in achieving Enlightenment, the Buddha acquired supernatural powers. These powers were:

These supernatural and extrasensory powers, it should be noted, do not actually add up to either omniscience or omnipotence, or even immortality -- there was debate about whether they meant that the Buddha did not need to ask directions when he entered a strange town. They are enough, however, to enable the Buddha to discover and verify the essentials of Buddhist doctrine, as well as to function in this world at a level far beyond ordinary human abilities. These may seem like modest claims in comparison to the divinities of other religions, but they are certainly rather more than what is claimed by those we would regard as merely philosophers -- or than is expected by those looking for a primarily humanistic and rationalistic religion.

The swastika is often associated with Buddhism in East Asia. It is character number 7032 in Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary [Harvard University Press, 1972, p. 1042], pronounced wn. In a place like Japan it is often found on maps marking the location of Buddhist temples. The symbol and the name, however, both come from India. The bar at the top of the Nazi swastika points to the right. And while the Indian and Chinese swastika tends to point to the left, observers will notice that this is not always the case, even after World War II. Although the Nazi swastika seems to turn to the right, and the Buddhist to the left, in Buddhist terms it would make more sense to see the Nazi form as "left-handed," i.e. dark, violent, and transgressive (Tantric), and the common Buddhist form as "right-handed," i.e. proper, non-violent, and observant of the Precepts.

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There are some philosophical doctrines that are so early and so fundamental to Buddhism that denials of them tend to be regarded as profoundly non-Buddhist heterodoxies. All forms of Buddhism endeavor to maintain these principles.

Shnyata, "Emptiness," is easily misunderstood. It is not nothingness. Emptiness is neither existence, nor non-existence, nor both existence and non-existence, nor neither existence nor non-existence. At the very least, this means that we don't know what is left when we take away all conditioned relations. Beyond that, it can mean that we cannot know what that is. No Self Nature means that there are no essences, just as Momentariness means that there are no substances.

Nirvn.a is thus not the removal of an ultimate cause but the simultaneous removal of all causes, all of conditioned existence. The interpretation of Buddhist doctrine discussed above, that "suffering" is really more like unhappiness or dislocation, puts forward the notion that our understanding of Dependent Origination (now often called "Interdependent Arising") enables us to adjust to the world and thus live a happy and normal life. This may be a reasonable Mahyna or Japanese interpretation, but the point of the original teaching (the Third Noble Truth) is that Nirvn.a is to be attained by the removal of the causes of suffering, which means the entire system of causation in Dependent Origination -- to be free of the world, not adjusted to it. The normal in this world is what the Buddha wanted to avoid.

In the history of Buddhist philosophy, these doctrines created some difficulties. If there is no self, then what is it that attains enlightenment or Nirvn.a? It is not me, for I am already gone in an instant; and if it is not me, then why bother? Also, if there is no enduring self, then the rewards and punishments of karma are visited on different beings than those who merited them. Why do I, instead of someone else, deserve the karma of some past existence? The Buddha himself probably would have been irritated with the doctrines that created these difficulties, since he rejected theorizing (it did not "tend to edification"), and he would have expected no less than that such theories would lead to tangled and merely theoretical disputes.

The important philosophical lesson of these difficulties, however, is whether the concept of causality (which is accepted with none of the skepticism visited upon substance and essence) can be used as a substitute for the concept of substance. In all honesty, no. Something rather like the Buddhist position, however, can be formulated by Kant, for whom the concept of substance applies to phenomena but has only uncertain meaning when applied to things-in-themselves. Phenomena are only "provisional existence" to Buddhism, and the Buddhist doctrine of no enduring Self could easily be adapted to the Kantian transcendent.

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The history of Buddhism in India, which lasted about 1500 years, can be divided into 500 year periods, during which distinctive forms of Buddhism emerged. This is an idealized and schematic picture, but it is convenient, and it can be matched up with where Buddhism spread during these periods and what forms of Buddhism became dominant there.

Buddhist doctrine and practice in the earliest period were agreed upon in a series of Councils, sometimes reckoned to be three, or four.

Theravda ("Teaching of the Elders") Buddhism (called "Hnayna," the "Lesser Vehicle," by the Mahyna): In India, 5th century BC to 1st century AD.

Mahyna ("Great Vehicle") Buddhism: In India, 1st century AD to 6th century.

Distinctive doctrines: Vajrayna Buddhism is Tantric Buddhism, often called "esoteric" Buddhism. Although it is sometimes also translated as "diamond" (i.e. "hard"), the vajra (kong in Japanese) was originally the thunderbolt of Indra; and in Vajrayna it symbolizes the magical power of Tantrism. We see a vajra in the right hand of the esoteric deity at right, in an illustration from Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee story, The Phantom of the Temple [1966]. The staunchly Confucian Judge Dee, of course, strongly disapproves of this kind of religion.

Tantric magic could be worked through man.d.alas, sacred diagrams, mantras, sacred formulas for recitation (the most famous one being, "Om, mane padme hum" -- "The jewel is in the lotus"), and mudrs, sacred gestures. This Tantric magic could be merely thaumaturgical ("wonder working") or could be regarded as means of achieving liberation in addition to or apart from meditative or meritorious practices. Just as Hindu Tantrism expresses its magical power through goddesses like Kl, Vajrayna emphasizes female figures. Vajrayna comes to balance male Bodhisattvas with female Bodhisattvas as attendants of the various Buddhas. And while Buddhas tend to be regarded as male in all branches of Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism supplies female figures corresponding to each Buddha, like the "savioresses" Green Tr, White Tr, and Mmak, who actually vow to always be reborn as women in the process of leading all beings to salvation.

Vajrayna symbolism always balances male and female: the Vajra Man.d.ala (or the "jewel" above) corresponds to the Womb (or Matrix) Man.d.ala (the "lotus"). The extent to which Vajrayna practiced real sexual union, been the physical male "vajra" and the physical female womb, as part of its Tantrism is unclear and disputed. Often "right-handed" Tantrism is distinguished from "left-handed" Tantrism, in which the former practiced the union of male and female, in symbolic, iconographic form, while the latter practiced it literally. While the "right-handed" forms are mainly what remain in Tibet and in Japanese Shingon today, there is little doubt that real "left-handed" practices existed in the past and survive to an extent in the present, and Tibetan art sometimes still portrays the more violent and disturbing aspects of Tantric practice -- rape, bestiality, etc.

Places where Vajrayna spread: Vajrayna Buddhism most importantly spread to Tibet and then Mongolia. In Tibet it assumed distinctive forms that are usually called Lamaism, since the monks are called Lamas. The present Dalai Lama, who was the priestly ruler of Tibet until he fled the Communist Chinese in 1959, is from a line that is reputed to be successive incarnations of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. Vajrayna Buddhism also entered China, Japan, etc., as special "esoteric" schools, like the Japanese Shingon school. The great temple at Borobudur, outside Jakarta on the island of Java, dates from this period (c.800), and embodies Vajrayna man.d.ala forms; but in Indonesia Buddhism soon thereafter gave way to Islm.

The end of Buddhism in India. Buddhism may have died out in India in the 11th century because: 1) It had become almost indistinguishable from the Tantric forms of Hinduism. Sophisticated Buddhist doctrine did not appeal to most people, and the actual practices and iconography of Vajrayna could easily be assimilated into Hinduism. And, 2) Islm arrived in earnest in India with the Afghan prince Mah.md of Ghazna, who defeated a coalition of Hindu princes in 1008 and soon annexed the Punjb. As Buddhism was persecuted, conversions to Islm increased, and Buddhism declined. By the time the British arrived, about 25% of India was Moslem. That ultimately led to the partition of the country into India and Pakistan. The Gautama Buddha himself has ended up being regarded as the 9th Incarnation (Avatar) of the great Hindu God Vis.n.u, although the unflattering take on it is that he deliberately taught a false doctrine (i.e. Buddhism) in order to deceive and destroy demons.

The Final Dharma Age

Another way of dividing the history of Buddhism emerged in the Buddhist tradition as a way of dealing with the prediction of the Buddha himself that the Dharma would only last 500 years. This became a matter of concern in China, where Buddhism did not even become established until nearly 1000 years after the time of the Buddha. Indeed, there was uncertainty about when the time of the Buddha had been, but soon enough it was obvious that far more than 500 years had passed. The doctrine that was formulated in response to this we find in K'uei-chi (Tz'u-en, 632-682), founder of the Fa-hsien school early in the T'ang Dynasty, in his I-lin-chang, "The Grove of Meanings." There we find a division into three periods based on the existence of Buddhist teaching, Buddhist practice, and Buddhist "proof," i.e. results -- supernatural powers and Nirvn.a:

While many Buddhists now no longer worry about the problem of the fading Dharma, there is no denying the statement of the Buddha, or the role that dealing with this has played in the history of Buddhism.

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On the southern slopes of the Himalayas are a chain of three states with similar and related histories. In order of size, they are Nepal, the largest, then Bhutan, and Sikkim. The size also gives the history of their degrees of sovereignty. Nepal, warring with Tibet, India, and Britain, was the least compromised in sovereignty and is now completely independent. Bhutan in turn became the vassal and protectorate of China, Britain, and modern India. Sikkim was more or less ruled by Britain as one of the Princely States of India. Although it did not join India in 1947 like other Princely States, eventually, in 1975, it was annexed to India. This was approved by popular vote, but India had great strategic interest in the place, since it fronts on Tibet, which was conquered by China in 1950. Since the Chinese subsequently attacked India and sought to resolve border disputes by force, this has remained a matter of concern for India.

Besides its size and independence, Nepal also has the longest history of the states. The Buddha supposed to have been born in its territory; and although about 76% Hindu, the country still contains a 20% Buddhist minority. Nepalese history begins with the Licchavi Dynasty, which may have been an offshoot of the Kushan rule of northern India. Unlike Bhutan and Sikkim, Nepal has been strong enough to retain territory down into the Gangetic plain. The official language of Nepal is Nepali, which is in the Pahari group of the Indic language family. This was brought to Nepal late in its history by the Gurkhas. There are surviving Tibeto-Burman languages in the country, and these now have influenced Nepali.

Under the Malla dynasty the country became fragmented. At the death of Jaya Yaksha Malla in 1482, a division was made between this sons. This resulted in separate states of Bhatgaon, Katmandu, & Patan. The rulers of Katmandu are in the main list at left. Those of Bhatgaon are listed separately below. This division weakened the country enough that control was lost over outer areas and further fragmentation occurred. By 1669, one of these new states, of the Gurkhas, brought the whole country together under its rule. This ushered in the modern era of Nepalese history.

Limitations of Nepalese sovereignty were due to clashes with Britain. A proper war with Britain in 1814-1816 ultimately led to a treaty in 1860. The British were impressed enough with Gurkha fighting that part of the treaty allowed them to recruit Gurkhas into the British Army, where they often distinguished themselves, as in Burma in World War II. This arragement continued long after the end of the British dominion in India. Gurkhas were still fighting for the British in the Falklands War of 1982.

Another ethnic group in Nepal are the Sherpas. Living in the mountains, where these are the highest mountains in the world, the Himalayas, the Sherpas are used to the terrain and the altitude. Thus, attempts on Mt. Everest, at 29,035 ft., relied on Sherpa guides. When Edmund Hillary (b.1919) first reached the peak of Everest on 29 May 1953, he was accomplanied by the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay (19141986). At the time, the Nepalese were only allowing one expedition up Everest a year. These days it has grown into a rather large business. In 1993, 129 people reached the summit of Everest; 8 died. In 1996, 98 reached the summit; and 15 died. More than 150 have died on the mountain, and 120 bodies of climbers remain there, freeze-dried by the wayside -- perhaps pour encourager les autres. Although Nepal was never a proper part of British India, Everest nevertheless was named, in 1865, after Sir George Everest, the British surveyor-general of India, 18301843. The mountain is Sagarmatha ("goddess of the sky") in Nepali and Chomolungma ("mother goddess of the universe") in Tibetan. George Everest himself argued that the mountain should be recognized by a local name. Of course, the locals did not know the height of the mountain, or its preeminence, until Everest's survey.

The power of the Nepalse monarchy came to be compromised by noble families, the Thapas and then the Ranas. This continued until 1950, when the Ranas were deposed and the power the monarchy reestablished. The monarchy, indeed, has often been an absolute one. Nepal, indeeed, has had great difficulties adjusting to modernity, both politically and economically. As of 2004, 81% of the work force was in agriculture, and literacy was only 45.2%. As with other politically backward and economically underdeveloped places, Nepal has been diverted by confused ideologies. Thus, governments have often included Communists, and since 1996 there has been a guerilla war carried on by Maoist rebels. In 2001, the King and other Royal family members were killed by the Crown Prince, who himself then (reportedly) died of suicide. The current King, his brother, dismissed the government in 2005, suspended civil rights, and assumed personal rule. This earned the displeasure of India and Western countries that gave aid to Nepal, and the King then turned to China. Since the Chinese seem to have gotten the Maoists to stand down, one wonders if the whole business may have been their doing in the first place. None of this does Nepalese life much good, where a growing population but traditional life has tended to deforest the mountains for firewood. Without enough of an economy to develop more modern sources of energy, conflict and poverty would seem to necessarily follow.

The monarchy of Bhutan was founded by a Tibetan monk of the Drukpa subsect of the Kargyupa sect. This priest king of the country (an Indian Dharma Raja), like the ruling lamas of Tibet, was chosen as a child, supposedly the reincarnation of the previous king. Such a system made for very long minorities. The system of regents for minor kings soon grew into the equivalent of a secular monarchy (the Deb Raja). The table of sacred kings is thus followed by that of the regents.

Unlike other Princely States of India, Sikkim retained its autonomy, by popular vote, when India became independent in 1947. However, the subordinate relationship to India continued, with India retaining also some supervision over Sikkimese government. This culminated in 1975, when a referendum assented to annexation by India and the end of the monarchy. India had already occupied the country, which thus became a State of India.

The tables here are derived almost completely from the invaluable Bruce R. Gordon's Regnal Chronologies, with some details from the Encyclopdia Britannica, Wikipedia, and some other internet and print sources.

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Most people think of the Himalayas, on the border between Tibet and India and Nepal, as the "Roof of the World" (which would be Culmen Mundi in Latin), since Mt. Everest, at 29,035 ft., is the highest mountain in the world. There was no easy route across the Himalayas, however, so the term actually originates in Persian (Bm-e Dony) to refer to those ranges that were more familiar to travellers. This especially meant the Pamirs, which are very nearly the center from which the other ranges radiate, and the focus of overland travel to and from India:

The Silk Road route from the Middle East to China mainly went through the Tarim Basin, either on the north side, below the Tian Shan, or the south side, above the Kunlun. The center of the Basin, the Taklimakan Desert, is waterless, uninhabited, and, really, uninhabitable. There was also a route north of the Tian Shan. That was a bit further, but the Dzungaria Basin, which I've heard described as a "sage brush and jack rabbit desert," is not as lifeless as the Taklimakan. Today, the through rail line and the larger cities (like rmqi) are on the north side on the Tian Shan. All this is now in the Chinese territory of Sinkiang [Xinjiang]. The passes trough the Pamirs are so high, that familiar pack animals like horses and mules simply die. Only yaks are adapted to the altitude. But then yaks can't live at lower altitudes. Every caravan (from Perisan krvn), consequently, must begin down below with one kind of animal and then change over to yaks, and then back again once over the mountains. Perhaps the most famous Silk Road site, the caves full of Buddhist art and manuscripts at Dunhuang, is just north of the Nanshan ranges, still in the Chinese province of Kansu [Gansu].

Following Central Asia, the Andes have the highest peaks, culminating in Aconcagua at 22,834 ft. North America comes next, with Mt. McKinley at 20,320 ft. Then Africa, with Mt. Kilimanjaro at 19,340 ft. The Culmen Europae, the highest range in Europe, are the Caucasus mountains, whose highest peak is Mt. Elbrus (18,510 ft.). This is far from the population, historical, and cultural center of Europe. The Culmen Franciae is in the Alps, whose highest peak is Mt. Blanc at 15,771 ft. This lay in the historic Kingdom of Burgundy but is now on the border between France and Italy.

Just to round things off, the highest peak in Antarctica is the Vinson Massif, at 16,864 ft. The highest peak in the remaining continent, Australia, is Mt. Kosciusko at only 7,310 ft. This is beat on two nearby islands, Mt. Jaya on New Guinea, at 16,500 ft., and Mt. Cook in New Zealand, at 12,349 ft. However, the highest peak in Polynesia is Mauna Kea on the Island of Hawai'i, at 13,796 ft. Measured from base to summit, Mauna Kea is itself actually the tallest mountain in the world. Mt. Everest is at the edge of the 10,000 foot Tibetan Plateau, meaning that it only rises about 19,000 feet. Mauna Kea, however, rises directly from the sea floor, which is at least 15,000 feet (three miles) down. Base to summit, Mauna Kea is at least 5.6 miles, or 29,568 ft. high (or perhaps as much as 33,000 feet, depending on the reference depth -- sea level certainly makes this kind of thing easier).

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Sri Lanka is also from Sanskrit, Shr Lank, , where shr, , is simply an honorific prefix, while Lank, , is the name of the island in the great epic, the Ramayana. This is not entirely a positive association, since Lanka is ruled by the Rkshasa Demons and their King Rvana. Rvana kidnaps St, the wife of King Rma, an incarnation of the God Vishnu. Rma leads an army, including monkeys led by Hanuman, to Lanka, defeats the demons, kills Rvana, and recovers St.

The demons, however, are not supposed to be the ancestors of modern Ceylonese. According to the Mahvamsa chronicle, the island was conquered by the Aryan Vijaya, who called the place Tmra-dvpa ("Copper Island") or Tmraparn -- Tambapanni in Pli: This name turns up in Greek as Taproban. Indeed, the Sinhalese language is an Indo-European language of Indic group, unrelated to the older languages of South India (the Dravidian) and Southeast Asia. This attests to its introduction from the North of India, and the assimilation, at least, of the original inhabitants of Ceylon. Vijaya, however, is not otherwise a historical figure, and its is likely that his story, and that of the continuation of the dynasty by his nephew Upatissgama, is largely legendary.

The first historical King of Ceylon would be Devanampiya Tissa, who converted to Buddhism. This conversion was effected by Mahinda and his sister Sanghamitta, children of the Maurya Emperor Ashoka, who are supposed to have flown to Ceylon on their mission. Although this should enable us to date Devanampiya Tissa with some precision, I nevertheless find conflicting dates for him, either 307-267 BC or 250-210. The latter looks more like it, since Ashoka is now dated to 269-232 BC. An earlier date for Ashoka runs into the problem that his grandfather Chandragupta apparently met Alexander the Great, who can be dated with certainty, and that we know of the Hellenistic contemporaries whose conversion to Buddhism was solicited by Ashoka.

The Chronicles of Lanka thus preserve some of the earliest information about Buddhism. Indeed, the life of the Buddha is usually dated using the Chronicle statement that 218 years had elapsed between the death of the Buddha and the reign of Ashoka. This is the source of the conventionally given dates for the life of the Buddha as 563-483 BC, though I get 487 for his death adding 218 to 269 BC -- we evidently have some small disagreements remaining about when Ashoka ascended the throne (I also see 274 as the date, which is even worse). The Chronicle figure of 218 years, however, has been questioned. To cover 218 years the tradition only lists five kings and five masters of the Buddhist vinaya, the monastic discipline. This would imply reigns averaging 44 years each, which is not impossible but otherwise seems unlikely for the era (see the similar problem for Egypt's Dynasty II). As discussed by Hirakawa Akira (A History of Indian Buddhism, From Shkyamuni to Early Mahyna, translated by Paul Groner, U. of Hawaii Press, 1990, pp.22-23), northern traditions allow only 116 years from the Buddha to Ashoka. This requires only 23 years for the reigns and the masters, putting the life of the Buddha at 466-386 BC. This would seem generally more consistent with the evidence, such as it is, but the topic is one of endless dispute. That the earlier date is usually given is a tribute to the prestige of the Lanka tradition in Buddhist scholarship and history. This is understandable given the preservation of the Pli Canon in Ceylon and the attention that this attracted from 19th century Buddhologists.

Following Devanampiya Tissa there is an obscure period, including a time of rule from the mainland of South India. This area was the Tamil homeland, grew into the later Chola empire, and was in different eras the source of conquest and migration to Ceylon. Considering the recent history of ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, we certainly get off to a bad start when the Sinhalese King Dutthagamani emerges from the shadows of history. With a relic of the Buddha on his spear, Dutthagamani defeats and slaughters the Tamils. The King feels that he has sinned with such killing and says to the monks sent to reassure him, "How shall there be any comfort for me, O venerable sirs, since by me was caused the slaughter of a great host numbering millions?" The answer seems to be an extraordinary statement, coming from Buddhists (indeed, according to the text, actual Arhats, those who have achieved Enlightenment):

We thus discover that even Buddhists sometimes regarded Unbelievers as inhuman.

Over the next centuries, we get episodes of rule from the mainland. The Lambakanna dynasty, which begins in 65 AD, is overthrown by the Dravidian Pandyans in 432; but Sinhalese rule is restored by the Moriya dynasty in 459. The Tamils return in 993, briefly created the Chola empire that stretches to Indonesia. Vijayabhu of the Polonnaruwa dynasty expells them in 1070. The Cholas had not gone undisputed, however, since most of their rule was contemporaneous with a line of kings at Rajarata. The Kalinga dynasty follows in 1187, but after Nissanka Malla (11871196), the state weakens and before long the country begins to fragment. One noteworthy fragment is Jaffna, a Tamil state, of the "Arya Chakravarthi" kings, in the north. I have not listed the kings, in part because I find two different lists which vary substantially in names and dates. One dates the beginning of Jaffna to 1210, the other to 1240. Either way, by 1461, the state is under the control of Portugal; and the line of kings ends, either in 1615 or 1620, replaced by direct Portuguese rule.

Curiously, the Portuguese were not the first voyagers to arrive from great distances in ocean going craft. The Chinese had beat them. The great expeditions of the Ming Dynasty, led by Zheng He, called at Ceylon. The third expedition (1409-1411) had the greatest impact there. The ruler of Raigama, Vira Alakeshvara, was defeated, made a captive, and taken back to China. This was the strongest political and military intervention during any of the Chinese voyages. The Yung-lo Emperor (1402-1424), however, was not bent on conquest and returned Vira Alakesvara to Ceylon. It is not clear, however, if he was able to return to power.

The Chinese, as it happens, did not stay long. The last of the expeditions returned to China in 1433. The experience testifies to the position of Ceylon at a crossroads of the oceans. This was already evident in the embassy that king Bhuvanaika Bhu I (1272-1284) had sent in 1283 to the Mamlk Sultn of Egypt. Such relations are not surprising in that the Mamlks controlled all the trade that passed from the Mediterranean world to India. Their monopoly is what motivated the Spanish and the Portuguese to look for alternate routes. Thus, in 1498 the Portuguese entered the Indian Ocean by rounding Africa, something that Herodotus said the Phoenicians had done in the reign of the Egyptian King Neko II. A Portuguese fleet, under Loureno de Almeida, was blown into Colombo harbor in 1505. This led to friendly relations with the King of Kotte, Vira Parakrama Bhu VIII. In 1518 the Portuguese were allowed to build a fort, marking the beginning of the Portuguese presence in Ceylon, which rapidly passed through phases of trade, conversion, and conquest. The last King of Kotte was converted to Christianity and in 1580 willed his kingdom to the Portuguese. They inherited at his death in 1597. With direct Portuguese rule, we start to get Governors, or Captains General, as in the following table.

In the midst of the Portuguese conquest of Ceylon, we actually get the foundation of a new and durable Ceylonese kingdom, that of Kandy. The Portuguese unintentionally helped with this, installing their convert, Don Phillipe, as King. With Don Phillipe's death, however, a Sinhalese nobleman, Konnapuu Bandara, seized the throne, expelled the Portuguese, and created an independent Buddhist kingdom. The Portuguese were never able to recover, and Kandy remained independent until British conquest in 1815.

The flag of Kandy, representing the last independent kingdom in Ceylon, was revived for an independent Ceylon in 1948. Since the flag could be taken to represent the Sinhalese, stripes were added later to represent the Hindu Tamils (orange) and Muslims (green).

While the Portuguese were occupying Ceylon, in 1580 the Kingdom of Portugal itself became a possession of Spain. This immediately put Portuguese colonies in peril from the Dutch, who were fighting their long war of independence (1568-1648) against Spain. Thus, the new King of Kandy welcomed Joris van Spilbergen, a Dutch representative, in 1602. Although joint action against the common enemy was soon in the works, things ended badly with the Dutch being killed instead. This was straightened out by 1612, when the new King, Senarat, concluded a treaty with the Dutch. Eventually the Portuguese were driven out, and the Dutch assumed their dominant place on the island. By then (1658), Portugal was independent again (1640), but it was too late for many of the prizes of their former empire.

After more than a century, Dutch rule finally ended because of a problem similar to the one that had undermined the Portuguese. In 1795 Revolutionary France deposed the Dutch monarchy and installed a friendly republican government. In 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte revived the monarchy, but with his own brother Louis as King of the Netherlands, and then simply annexed the country to France in 1810. None of this was agreeable to Britain, which became the principal enemy of France and of Napoleon. The British moved quickly to occupy Dutch colonies and prevent them from becoming French bases. Some of these would be returned to the Netherlands at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, but Ceylon (like the Cape Colony) would not. Ceylon thus became a kind of outlier of the growing British Indian Empire.

An extraordinary development during the years of British rule was the interest of Westerners in Ceylonese Buddhism. Perhaps the most notable name in this was Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907). In New York in 1875, with Madame Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) and some others, Olcott founded the Theosophical Society, which embodied their interests in spiritualism and Eastern religion. In 1878-1879, Olcott and Blavatsky travelled to India to create a new headquarters for the Society, presumably on soil more congenial to its values. However, in 1880 Olcott went on to Colombo and there converted to Buddhism. His enthusiasm for his new faith would have a lasting impact on Western perceptions of Buddhism, on Buddhist perceptions of Buddhism, and on the strength, it is often called a "revival," of Buddhism in Ceylon. Although Britain had renounced any official policy of proselytism for Christianity, private Christian missionaries, of course, had a free hand. Christian schools in Ceylon had some success at winning converts, as they would long be successful into conveying modern Western learning. Olcott, in turn, wanted to help Buddhism meet Christian missionaries on their own terms. He formulated a catechism for Buddhism in 1881, wrote extensively promoting Buddhism, and even created a "Young Men's Buddhist Association" (YMBA). The result was influential in what has been called "Buddhist Modernism." Olcott did not believe that ritual and superstition were proper to Buddhism and promoted the idea, now quite common, that Buddhism is really a system of philosophy, or a kind of empirical spiritualism, in its own way rational and even scientific. What went along with this was a view that all Eastern religion was really, at root, like this, and that any differences between Buddhism and, say, Hinduism were only superficial. This is a view that is now also quite common, to the extent that popular culture lumps together Indian, Chinese, and Japanese religion as all subscribing to the same esoteric truths. That this really has little to do with the traditional practice of such religions is obvious to scholars, and to anyone really familiar with the countries, is irrelevant, since an approach like Olcott's is normative and owes much more to the originally Western ideology of something like Theosophy than it does to anything intrinsic to Indian or Chinese religion. Where the one parts company with the other is the most conspicious when we come to the devotionistic sides of the religions. Thus, the most popular form of Buddhism in East Asia is the Pure Land sect of the Buddha Amitbha, who promises rebirth in his paradise even for the sinful. This sort of thing was altogether too much like Christianity for someone like Olcott, and we get the beginning of an attitude that most of Mahyna Buddhism is not really Buddhism (the only Mahyna sect eventually to pass muster would be Zen). Thus, Olcott and those of similar predilections would find the Theravda Buddhism of Ceylon more congenial, though even this would take some cleaning up, to return it to the Purity of the early Sangha. Such preferences were not without a tangible basis. Sinhalese Buddhism preserved the Pli Canon, the oldest collection of the Buddhist Tripitaka. In 1881 the Pali Text Society was founded by Thomas William Rhys Davids (1843-1922), a member of the British Civil Service in Ceylon. Rhys Davids had no sympathy for Theosophy, but his project would provide a scholarly foundation for whatever appropriation anyone wanted to make of Theravda Buddhism. A Pli dictionary had already been published in 1874 by another Civil Servant in Ceylon, Robert Caesar Childers (1838-1876), and Edwin Arnold's (18321904) popular and influential The Light of Asia, a handsome and sympathetic presentation of the life of the Buddha, had already been published in 1879. Considering the contemptuous and patronizing attitude of the Mahyna (and so of the Chinese, Japanese, etc.) for Theravda Buddhism, calling it the Hinayna, i.e. the "Lesser Vehicle," the esteem of Europeans for their own tradition would have been flattering to the Ceylonese. With a Protestant rigor, Olcott and others would have dismissed the Sutras of Mahyna Buddhism as apocryphal or fraudulent. I gather that the impression for many years was that Pli was the language of the Buddha himself, and that the Pli Canon thus preserves his actual words. For all their Buddhist revivalism, however, Western Neo-Buddhists in general were (and are) not much interested in the monasticism of Buddhism, a characteristic that was undeniable, not only in every Buddhist tradition, but something that could hardly be missed in the Pli Canon itself, where a large part of the corpus concerns monastic discipline, the vinaya. It is hard not to see that disinterest as reflecting an originally Protestantizing attitude towards religion.

The list of rulers and governors here is combined from lists given by Bruce R. Gordon's Regnal Chronologies and a number of articles at Wikipedia. Other information is from the Encyclopdia Britannica and print sources like the above referenced book by Hirakawa Akira. The different lists sometimes give different dates or have other anomalies. I cannot always tell which versions represent the best scholarship, so I have tried to indicate the variations.

Prime Ministers of Ceylon/Sri Lanka

The Sun Never Set on the British Empire

Philosophy of History

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