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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
SARVATATHĀGATĀDHIṢṬHÄNAVYUHAM
from which people sailed to Ceylon was on its north-east. If we take Dhanuskoti to be that port, Potalaka should be located somewhere between the Malaya mountains and Dhanuskoți. In the Gaṇḍavyuha (leaf. 28b) occurs the name Sāgara nāma Lankāpatḥam and in leaf 27a Sagaramukha, a place suitable for meditating upon the vastness of the sea. It seems that these forsaken places near the border of the sea and amid the mountains became the haunt of the meditating monks, and many Mahāyāna sūtras came into existence in those places. Watters (II, p. 230) dismisses away the Malaya mountain as a 'poetical creation' but Nundolal Dey gives ample evidence to show that it really existed and constituted the southern part of the Western Ghats (see his Geographical Dictionary, p. 132). He further states that one of the summits of these mountains bore the name of Pothigei, the Bettigo of Ptolemy, the abode of Agastya, and was also called Agasti-kūta or Potiyam, which was the southernmost peak of the Annamalai mountains where the river Tamra-parni has its source (see Ibid., Map). Can this Potiyam be our Potalaka?
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
The tradition recorded by Taranatha about the location of Potalaka, the abode of Avalokitśvara, also points to its existence somewhere in the southernmost corner of India. The upāsaka Sāntivarman' wanted to go to Potala from Sridhanakatakacaitya, the identification of which has been placed beyond doubt by the finds at Amarāvatī and Nāgārjunikonda. He had to traverse a long perilous way over uninhabited regions and had to cross rivers, forests, lakes and so forth. Superstitious as the people must have
I
See Schiefner, Geschichte etc., p. 132.
2
It is located in Dhanaśridvipa. The Tib. word is Dha.na.sri.i.glin, glin being usually restored as Sanskrit dvipa. According to S. C. Das's Dictionary, it may also mean "an isolated large monastery." Taranatha, I think, has used the word glin in the sense of a 'monastery. In that case, Dha.na.śri.i. glin would refer to the large monastic establishment at Amaravati or Nāgārjunikonda.
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