Chronicle
Svayambhu Purana
स्वयम्भू पुराण
Anonymous · 1400
Synopsis
The Kathmandu valley was at first only a lake peopled by divine serpents. A buddha of ancient times sows a lotus there whose flower begins to radiate, and the light draws buddhas and gods. The bodhisattva Manjushri then cleaves the mountain with his sword to drain the water, and the valley becomes habitable; where the lotus had settled the sanctuary of Svayambhu arises. The narrative, presented as a sermon of the Buddha, then devotes chapters to the worship of the sanctuary and to the holy places of the valley.
Context
The text, written in Sanskrit in the Newar Buddhist milieu of the valley, took shape around the beginning of the fifteenth century and circulates in versions of unequal length: a study of 1894 distinguishes versions of eight, twelve and twenty chapters, in verse or mixing prose and verse, and the English edition of 2024 counts ten. It celebrates the glory of the sanctuary of Svayambhu, whose primordial light is said to have been covered with a stupa by the master Shantikar. The earthquake of April 2015 damaged the whole hill, where the sanctuary of Shantipur had to be demolished.
Who it is for
A sacred text of Newar Buddhism, readable in English since 1978; in French, only a part, through the inscriptions of a painting.
Prizes and reception
Copies of it have been kept in Paris, Cambridge and London since the nineteenth century, and the draining of the lake becomes the great scene of its painting.
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