Glossary

The Buddha of Infinite Light. The name is built from amita, boundless, and abha, light. He is also called Amitayus, Infinite Life, which is the same Buddha under his other aspect, one name for the light and one for the lifespan.

He is one of the Five Tathagatas, holding the western direction, and the head of the Lotus family. He presides over Sukhavati, and an enormous devotional literature across Asia is addressed to him.

Verse 2.139

Someone who has finished the path and will not be born again. The nun Chuda is called an Arhati, the feminine form.

Verse 1.112

An Indian emperor of the third century BCE who ruled from Pataliputra, modern Patna, and became famous across Asia for turning to the Buddha's teaching.

In this book he asks the monk Upagupta where Swayambhu came from, and near the end he makes the last pilgrimage in the story.

Verses 1.81, 10.71

The spring high on Shivapuri where the Bagmati is said to come straight out of the rock. The text calls it Prabhava, meaning source, and says one bath there is worth more than a hundred in the Ganges.

Verse 5.104

The main river of the Kathmandu Valley. It begins on Shankha hill, which is Shivapuri, from water that ran out of Vajrasattva's thumb, and the teaching of Krakucchanda Buddha made it holy.

Verses 4.54-4.57

The valley's second river, which the text calls by its older name, Keshavati. See Keshavati.

Verses 4.66-4.68

Awakening. The understanding that makes someone a Buddha. The book uses it both for the goal and for the vow to reach it.

Verse 1.128

The monastery where the teacher Jayashri tells the whole book to his student Jineshvara. It is the outermost of the story's three frames, opened in chapter 1 and closed in chapter 10.

Verses 1.4-1.5, 10.156

Someone on the way to becoming a Buddha who stays in the world to help others rather than taking release alone. Manjushri and Maitreya are the two who matter most here.

Verse 1.5

The creator deity of Hindu tradition. He appears here as one of the many who come to honor the self-arisen light, which is how the book treats the Hindu deities throughout.

Verse 1.60

The four attitudes a practitioner is told to live in: kindness, compassion, joy in others' good fortune, and evenness of mind. The text always calls them the four Brahmaviharas.

Verses 1.128, 3.141

One who has awakened. The book names seven of them in order: Vipashvi, Shikhi, Vishvabhu, Krakucchanda, Kanakamuni, Kashyapa and Shakyamuni, and the story moves forward one age at a time through their lifetimes. The one usually meant by the Buddha is the last of them, Shakyamuni.

Jina, Sugata and Tathagata are all other words for the same thing, and the book uses them interchangeably.

Verse 1.29

The word the text uses for a stupa. The two are the same thing. See Stupa.

Verse 7.32

The name of Manjushri's sword. It means moon-laughter. In pictures of him it is raised above his shoulder as the blade that cuts through ignorance; here it cuts through a mountain.

Verses 3.66-3.67

The wish-fulfilling jewel. Also the name of the bathing place where the Bishnumati runs into the Bagmati, known today as Teku Dovan, which is said to give whatever is asked for.

Verses 5.59-5.61

The gorge at the southern rim of the valley where Manjushri cut the hills open. The Bagmati still runs out through that cleft in the rock, and visitors are shown it.

Verse 3.67

A nun at Manjushri's hermitage, called an Arhati, a woman who has completed the path. She is one of the few people named individually in the book, and the Buddha's closing promise in chapter 10 is made to her.

Verses 1.112, 10.3-10.8

An old measure, about the length of a forearm. It is the size given for the self-arisen light, in chapter 1 as it was found and again in chapter 2 as it appeared.

Verses 1.59, 2.25

The two lakes Manjushri deliberately left undrained, as somewhere for the serpent king Karkotaka to live. Dhanadaha is the pond known today as Taudaha.

Verses 3.72, 3.75

A spell or chant held in memory. The book records only one in full, the nine syllables of Manjushri's, om chale chule vande svaha, which the nun Chuda recites.

Verse 10.5

The teaching, and the right order of things. It runs through every chapter and carries both senses at once: what the Buddha taught, and the way a king, a river or a person ought to be.

Verse 1.6

The realm of Dharma. This is the book's usual name for the self-arisen light at Swayambhu. The text treats it as older than any of the Buddhas: they come and worship it.

Verse 4.13

The wealthy man of the line of Mahasammata whom the book makes the valley's first king. He builds the first city and sets up a government. His name means mine of Dharma.

Verses 4.77, 4.86

The famous teacher at Vikramashila who could not explain the hidden meaning of twelve syllables, traveled north to ask Manjushri, and got the answer by overhearing it.

He then denied having recognized Manjushri in public, and lost both eyes for the lie. See Jnanashrimitra.

Verses 6.42-6.43, 6.174

The form in which the deity Khaganana rises out of the drained lake bed and stays for the good of the world. The name means source of the Dharma. Her shrine today is Guhyeshvari.

Verse 3.80

A holy bathing place, always at a spot where two rivers run together. Chapter 5 names twelve of them and then gives the rule: wherever streams meet other streams, that place counts too.

Verses 5.5, 5.117

A great bird and the ancient enemy of the serpents. The book has both of them attending the same sermon without comment.

Verse 2.15

Bengal. The kingdom King Prachandadeva gives away before becoming a monk in the Kathmandu Valley.

Verse 7.37

Gokarneshwar, on the Bagmati northeast of Kathmandu, one of the great Shiva temples of the valley. It is the second of the eight Vitaragas.

Verse 4.73

Cow's Tail, and the hill the Swayambhu stupa stands on. The book gives it a different name in each of the four ages: Padmagiri in the Satya age, Vajrakuta in the Treta, Goshringa in the Dvapara, and Gopuccha now, in the Kali age.

Locally it has a fifth name, Samhegu, which the Sanskrit text stops to record.

Verses 1.49-1.52

The Swayambhu hill's name in the Dvapara age, the third of the four. See Gopuccha.

Verse 1.51

The shrine near Pashupatinath where Khaganana, who rose from the drained lake bed as Dharmodaya, is worshipped today, by Hindus and Buddhists alike.

Verses 3.80, 3.98

The king who handed the running of the kingdom to his ministers and gave himself to pleasure, bringing fire, disease and drought on the valley.

He worked out the cause himself, went up the hill for help, and personally hauled the serpent king Karkotaka out of the water to end the drought.

Verses 8.16, 8.188

A yakshini, one of the nature spirits, who is still worshipped on the Swayambhu hill today under the name Ajima.

Verse 2.44

The teacher at Bodhimanda who tells the entire book to his student Jineshvara. Everything in the ten chapters is inside his telling.

Verses 1.4, 10.156

Victor. A Buddha. The book uses it constantly, and calls bodhisattvas sons of the Jina.

Verse 1.29

The bodhisattva who approaches Jayashri and asks for the story. He is the listener the whole book is addressed to.

Verse 1.5

The new name Manjushri gives Dharmashrimitra after his eyes fall out, telling him to see by knowledge instead. It means friend of the glory of knowledge.

Verses 6.178-6.179

The present age, and the worst of the four. The book was written for readers living in it, which is why so much of its advice is about what still works in a bad age.

Verses 1.51, 5.45

The fifth of the seven Buddhas. In his age the shrine gained the name Vagishvara, through what happened to Dharmashrimitra.

Verse 6.6

The serpent king who lived in the lake before the valley existed. Manjushri left him two pools rather than driving him out.

Generations later he is the one who stays away from the rain ritual out of shame at his looks, and has to be dragged out of the water by a king.

Verses 1.147, 3.72, 8.188

The sixth of the seven Buddhas. In his age Prachandadeva covered the light with a stone and built the stupa.

Verse 7.7

The older name for the river now called the Bishnumati, which runs down the west side of Kathmandu past Swayambhu. The name means she of the hair.

It was given because half the hair shaved from seven hundred new monks was thrown into the river. The other half was laid on a rock, and a small shrine appeared for every hair.

Verses 4.66-4.68

Manjushri's companion, who takes the name Varada when they come south. In chapter 6 she is the one who asks for the teaching that Dharmashrimitra overhears from outside the door.

Verses 3.52, 6.76

The deity who rises out of the drained lake bed and remains for the good of the world, in the form called Dharmodaya. Her name means sky-faced. She is worshipped today as Guhyeshvari.

Verse 3.80

Singers, part human and part bird or horse, at home in the Himalaya. Of all the beings who come to worship, they are the most local to this landscape.

Verse 2.46

An old measure of distance, a little over two miles. The lake that filled the valley is given as seven kos across, which the purport puts at perhaps fifteen miles.

Verse 1.143

The fourth of the seven Buddhas. In his age seven hundred people became monks together, the rivers were born and the valley became a country.

Verse 4.5

Great China in Indian geography, meaning Tibet and the lands beyond it. Manjushri's five-peaked mountain is there, and it is where Dharmashrimitra sets out for.

Verse 3.37

The first king of the world in Buddhist tradition, chosen by common agreement when people first needed order. Tracing the valley's first king back to him is the book's way of calling that kingship legitimate from the source.

Verse 4.77

The bodhisattva who sits in the assembly on the Swayambhu hill and asks the Buddha the questions, so most of the book is spoken to him.

He is the Buddha-to-be: in Buddhist belief he waits in the Tushita heaven to be born as the next Buddha after Shakyamuni.

Verse 1.115

A sacred diagram. The book uses it in two ways: the valley floor itself is described as one, and the rain ritual works by drawing one of the serpent kings on the ground.

Verses 3.79, 8.149

The hill northeast of the valley, still called Manichur. Manilinga, the shrine on its slope, is the first of the eight Vitaragas.

Verse 4.72

The human form Manjushri takes to come south and drain the lake. He settles in the valley afterwards and the text calls him the first Vajracharya, making him the founder of the Newar Buddhist priesthood.

Verses 3.51-3.52, 3.110

The bodhisattva of wisdom, and the figure who creates the Kathmandu Valley. He sees the light shining on the lake from his mountain in the far north, takes human form as the teacher Manjudeva, comes south, and cuts the southern hills open to drain the water away.

Verses 3.37, 3.67

The tempter, whose defeat belongs to the night of the Buddha's awakening. One hymn in the book gives wisdom the credit for it instead.

Verse 3.87

A serpent king who lives in water. Nagas are everywhere in this book: one lived in the old lake, one lives in each of the twelve holy bathing places, and a whole assembly of them is summoned to bring rain.

Verses 1.147, 5.7, 8.149

The shrine of the serpent lord, one of the five built into the platform around the Swayambhu stupa. It is where the rain ritual is performed and where the painted cloth of the serpent kings is kept sealed.

Verses 7.157, 8.152

The Chanting of the Names, the text Dharmashrimitra lectured on. The twelve syllables he could not explain belong to it.

Verse 6.40

Nepal. The book uses the name for the country the Swayambhu hill stands in, calling it a land renowned as Nepala in the northern Himalaya.

It is the name as the author knew it, writing in 1813. The book applies it backwards to ages when the valley was still a lake and nobody lived there at all, so it marks where the story happens rather than claiming a country of that name existed then.

Verse 1.49

Final peace, the end of being born again. Shantikar is entitled to it, and turns it down in order to stay and wait for an age with no teacher left.

Verse 9.67

Lotus Mountain, the Swayambhu hill's name in the Satya age, the first of the four. See Gopuccha.

Verse 1.50

Ashoka's capital, the modern Patna. It is where he asks Upagupta for the story, and where the book returns near its end.

Verse 1.81

The bathing place at the head of the Bagmati, which the book ranks first of all. The name means source. See Bagdwar.

Verses 5.104-5.105

A king of Gauda, in what is now Bengal. He handed his kingdom to his son and went to live alone in a forest hut, then decided that sitting by himself helped nobody and spent years walking across India teaching instead.

He was ordained in the Kathmandu Valley as the monk Shantashri, and is better known today as Shantikar. He went on to build the Swayambhu stupa. His royal name carries the sense of fierce, which the monastic name he took deliberately reverses.

Verses 7.37, 7.117

The fifth layer given for every verse in this edition: a short explanation of what is happening and why, including the names and references a reader today is unlikely to know.

The bodhisattva who asks what the shaking of the earth means, is told to go and see for himself, and leads the first pilgrimage to the light.

Verse 2.64

The local Newar name for the Swayambhu hill, recorded in the Sanskrit text itself. It is the form behind Semgu and Swayambhu in everyday Kathmandu speech. See Gopuccha.

Verse 1.52

One of the great tantric Buddhas of the Newar tradition, and the deity of Shantipura, the fifth of the shrines on the hill.

Verse 7.158

The Buddha most people mean when they say the Buddha: the historical teacher, born Siddhartha Gautama. Shakyamuni means sage of the Shakyas, the clan he was born into. He is the seventh and last of the seven Buddhas this book names.

In the book he is the figure teaching on the Swayambhu hill and answering Maitreya, quoted by Upagupta, quoted by Jayashri.

Verse 1.106

Conch Hill, which is Shivapuri, the high ridge closing the northern rim of the valley. The Bagmati rises on its slopes.

Verses 4.14, 4.54

The name Prachandadeva took when he was ordained as a monk in the valley. It means glory of peace, and reverses the sense of his royal name exactly. See Shantikar.

Verses 7.117, 9.17

The same man as Shantashri, and before that the king Prachandadeva of Gauda. He is the monk who covered the self-arisen light with a stone, built the Swayambhu stupa, and later ended the drought.

The name means maker of peace, and the book gives it to him only after he has done the work it describes. It is the name he is most commonly known by in the Kathmandu Valley today. The book says there has never been, and never will be, another master of mantras like him.

Verses 9.24-9.25

The fifth of the shrines on the Swayambhu hill, and a real sealed chamber on the north side of the stupa, entered by a stair and opened only in times of drought.

Shantikar is said to be inside it still, sitting in meditation and waiting for an age with no teacher left.

Verses 7.158, 9.68

The second of the seven Buddhas. In his age the thousand-petalled lotus rose out of the lake and the self-arisen light appeared on it.

Verses 2.6, 2.22-2.26

The modern name for the ridge the book calls Shankha hill, closing the northern rim of the valley. The Bagmati rises on its slopes. See Shankha hill.

Verse 4.14

A domed shrine. The word the text uses for it is caitya, and the two mean the same thing.

At Swayambhu a stone was laid over the self-arisen light and a brick stupa raised above the stone, which is the building that stands there now. The word also covers the separate shrine on the hill northwest of it that holds Manjushri's ashes.

Verses 1.67, 7.151-7.152

Well-gone. Another word for a Buddha, used throughout.

Verse 1.27

The Land of Bliss: a paradise, and the closest thing in this book to what most readers would call heaven. It is the realm of the Buddha Amitabha, and being born there is the goal of an enormous devotional literature across Asia. The book names it once, in the list of offerings, as a reward.

Verse 2.139

Self-arisen. The word names three things at once in this book: the light that appeared by itself on the lotus, the stupa built over it, and the hill they stand on.

Verses 1.58-1.59

Another word for a Buddha. The Five Tathagatas are Vairocana, Akshobhya, Ratnasambhava, Amitabha and Amoghasiddhi. Calling the light their seat is what makes the Swayambhu stupa a complete mandala rather than a monument.

Verse 2.26

The pond on the southern edge of Kathmandu where the serpent king Karkotaka is said to live. It is one of the two lakes Manjushri left behind, the one the book calls Dhanadaha.

Verse 3.72

Where the Bishnumati runs into the Bagmati at the southern edge of old Kathmandu. It is the bathing place the book calls Chintamani, and it has been a cremation ground and pilgrimage site for centuries.

Verses 5.59-5.61

The Buddha, the Dharma and the community of practitioners. The book makes an unusually strong claim in half a line: the stupa is not a monument to the Three Jewels, it is the Three Jewels.

Verse 1.125

One of the twenty-four sacred sites of the tantric geography of India. Naming the valley as one of them puts it on a map that a practitioner anywhere in Asia would have recognized.

Verse 3.78

The monk at Pataliputra who answers Emperor Ashoka's questions. He is the middle of the book's three storytellers.

Verse 1.83

A name of the Swayambhu shrine, meaning lord of speech. It was given after what happened to the monk Dharmashrimitra, whose story turns entirely on what one man said and did not say.

Verse 6.183

A master of the vajra; acharya means teacher. In Vajrayana Buddhism the title belongs to someone who has taken the necessary initiations, is expert in the rituals and in the meaning behind them, and is qualified to confer empowerments and pass on tantric teaching. It is used that way across Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese and Newar Buddhism alike.

In the Kathmandu Valley it is also a hereditary title, held by the married priests who perform those rituals for the community. The book gives it to Manjudeva, making him the first of that line.

Verse 3.110

The Swayambhu hill's name in the Treta age, the second of the four, and the name given to it again when the lotus hardened into stone after the lake was drained. See Gopuccha.

Verses 1.51, 3.77

A deity of both Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, and one of the central figures of the Newar Buddhist tradition this book comes from. The name means diamond being. He is the deity of purification, and he stands for the ideal teacher.

Newar priests invoke him daily in the guru mandala, the ritual that opens every other ritual, which is why he matters to the Vajracharya lineage this book traces back to Manjudeva. Traditions differ on how to rank him: some treat him as a bodhisattva, others as the primordial Buddha from whom all the rest come.

In this book he appears only once, at the birth of the Bagmati. The river's water is said to have flowed from his thumb on the summit of Shankha hill.

Verse 4.54

King of the serpents. He is the one who takes offense at the kingdom's collapse and holds back the rain, and he is also the serpent who lives at the bathing place called Chintamani.

Verses 5.61, 8.41

The deity of the earth and of wealth, installed at Vasupura, one of the five shrines on the hill. She is still among the most worshipped deities in Newar households.

Verse 7.157

The five shrines Shantashri set into the platform around the stupa, holding wind, fire, the serpent lord, the earth deity Vasundhara, and Samvara. All five are still there, and most visitors walk past them without knowing what they are.

Verses 7.155-7.158

Adepts who fly through the air by mastery of spells. The name means holders of knowledge.

Verse 2.47

One of the great monastic universities of eastern India, founded in Bihar around 800 CE and destroyed around 1200. Dharmashrimitra taught there, which places his story in real institutional history.

Verse 6.29

The first of the seven Buddhas. In his age the valley was still a lake, and he blessed the place and said a light would one day rise there on its own.

Verses 1.139, 1.164

The third of the seven Buddhas. In his age Manjushri came south and drained the lake.

Verse 3.10

The passionless ones. Eight more lights that appeared on their own around the rim of the valley, with no shape and nothing holding them up. All eight are real places and pilgrims still walk a circuit of them.

Verses 4.71-4.75

Nature spirits, generally harmless and occasionally dangerous. In the valley they are attached to particular trees, springs and stones.

Verse 3.166

An old measure of distance, several miles. It is the depth given for the chamber Shantikar sealed himself into beneath Shantipura.

Verse 9.68