Kashmir, Tamilnadu, Panini, Abhinavagupta, etc.

[DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA]

At 09:14 AM 1/9/99 PST, you wrote:
> Thanks for the info, Mr. Sarma. However, the attempt
> to locate parvata is not so easy or 'absurd' as one would
> assume.
>

"yatnE kRtE yadi na siddhyati kO.atra dOshaH".

Let us be clear about some general commonsense points.

1. Because of the poor means of communication in the old days, normally
   any thing that travels to tamilnadu has to go either through
   Andhra or Maharashtra. This means that whether it is mahAyAna or
   mahAbhAshyA, normally it will be communicated to tamilnadu after it
   has been established in these two regions. The chances of a jump
   right from north to tamilnadu is very very unlikely. Remember
   there were no aeroplanes in those days and travel was by foot or
   at the most by horse drawn carriage and very few people could afford
   the latter.

2. Similarly if anybody wanted to get something from the south he will
   search these two regions first for the thing required and only if
   does not find it in these regions he will go to tamilnadu or other
   more southern region. Sheer economics will dictate this.

The above two are based on geography and trying to fight them will
be like fighting the windmills.

The other point I want to be understood is that Andhra and especially
nAgArjunakonda in Guntur District of Andhra region was an internationally
renouned region for both mahAyAna and hInayAna buddhism. It is generally
accepted that the great buddhist philosopher nAgArjuna lived in
nAgArjunakonda and we have inscriptional evidence that budhhist monks
from ceylon came here to study hInayana.

In my next post I will locate dhAnyakaTaka which chandragomin visited
in the telugu country (which fact none of the previous postings in this
thread bothered to mention).

regards,

sarma.