KUBLA KHAN: like Amarbayasgalant, Mongolia

Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; photog Frank Jones (faj2323); Wiki

Golden lamas in space (akasha-deva-loka) garb (Frank Jones/faj2323/flickr)

An overview of Amarbayasgalant Monastery, with a large golden statue of the Buddha in the foreground (Frank Jones/flickr.com)

The "pleasure-dome" Buddhist stupa on the fertile ground (Frank Jones/faj2323/flickr)

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Echoes of XANADU: The Western poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, while on prescription opium (Laudanum tincture), read vague tales of splendor from the British geographer, cleric, and author Samuel Purchas reporting on stories by returning travelers from Asia. He made one relative of the Northeast Asian Mongol marauder/emperor Genghis Khan most famous:
 

Frank Jones

"Kubla Khan" reportedly had a wondrous summer capital -- much as Prince Siddhartha who later became the Buddha had three palaces in his vast Indo-Scythian territory of Shakyaland or Sakastan in Central Asia, modern Afghanistan, one of them being Kapilavastu (but people act as if this capital, in the vicinity of modern Bamiyan, comprised the Shakyas' entire "country" or janapada).

Kubla Khan (theromantics.weebly.com)

It was transliterated from Shangdu into "Xanadu." Fortunately, Dr. Ranajit Pal figured out the campaign to minimize and confuse pre-Indian Buddhist history. Was there a pre-Buddhist history? Yes, it arose simultaneously in the Buddha's country, which Wisdom Quarterly calls Shakyaland (Sakastan, Afghanistan, Indo-Scythia, Gandhara) because one of its capitals was in Kapilavastu, which Dr. Pal suggests quite convincingly was likely in Bamiyan, Afghanistan.

Kubla Khan (alicedraws)

We conjecture, based on recent archeological finds, that another seasonal capital was at Mes Aynak and another possibly in modern Kabul (Kapil'). The region, like neighboring India, has three seasons necessitating various capitals (like the moving head of government in modern Jammu & Kashmir state in Himalayan India): hot, cold, and rainy.

Kublai Khan was in faraway Asia, which centered around a stupa (chorten) or Buddhist burial mound. This reliquary Coleridge referred to as a "pleasure-dome" with caves of ice in arguably his most intriguing and acclaimed work:

KUBLA KHAN
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (poetryfoundation.org)

Xanadu of Coleridge's imagining or Purchas' writing with a peace pagoda (jazbalive.com)

  
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
   Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round;

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery....

And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

   The shadow of the dome of pleasure

   Floated midway on the waves;

   Where was heard the mingled measure

   From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! More

• Q: Hey, Seven, why don't you write a poem about the real Xanadu in Bamiyan?
• A: Way ahead of you guys, "Shakya Clan," and instead of Xanadu, Kapilav'u.

Scythian hats, blue eyes like the Buddha (faj2323/flickr)

The "Monastery of Tranquil Felicity" or Amarbayasgalant Monastery (Mongolian Амарбаясгалант хийд, Amurbayasqulangtu keyid; Manchu Urgun Elhe Sy, Chinese 慶寧寺) is one of the three largest Buddhist monastic centers in Mongolia.

The monastic complex is located in the Iven Valley near the Selenge River, at the foot of Mount Büren-Khaan in Baruunbüren sum (district) of Selenge Province in northern Mongolia.

The nearest town is Erdenet, which is about 60 km to the southwest.
 

The monastery was established and funded by order of Manchu emperor Kang Xi or Enkh-Amgalan Khan to serve as a final resting place for Zanabazar (1635-1723), the first Jebtsun-damba Khutuktu, or spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism for the Khalkha in Outer Mongolia.

Scythian "Sun Emperor"

According to tradition, while searching for an appropriate site to build the monastery, the exploratory group came across two young boys, Amur and Bayasqulangtu, playing on the steppe. They were inspired to build the monastery on that very spot and to name it after the two children, Amur-Bayasqulangtu.

Construction took place between 1727 and 1736 and Zanabazar's remains were transferred to a newly created temple in 1788. More

• A Shakyan/Scythian Warrior Princess: "The Golden Maiden" (Issyk Kurgan, originally mislabelled as "Golden Man" but whose frame suggests it was a female) would seem to be Coleridge's hallucinated "Damsel with a dulcimer" in the second half of the poem:

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw

It was an Abyssinian maid
[Afro-Asiatic Ethiopian Empire=Kurgan Empire]

And on her dulcimer she played

Singing of Mount Abora
[a reference to John Milton's Paradise Lost] 

Could I revive within me her symphony and song
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That I would build that pleasure dome in air
That all who heard should see it there...
 

Why did the Buddha have blue eyes?

Blue and green eyed Central Asians are not uncommon even today (Blue_agava/flickr.com)

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Buddhist Birth-Stories

He was a Scythian (Shakyan), and that was not so uncommon. The Shakyans, also referred to as the Sakas, Sakkas, and Sakyas, controlled territory between Iran to the west, India (Gandhara, modern Pakistan) to the east, and as far north as Kazakhstan and Ukraine (all called Scythia by the ancient Greeks), going from Central Asia up to Northern Asia and Russia's East.

The Buddha said it of himself -- in The Story of the Lineage (Nidana Katha, translated by Rhys Davids and included in his Jataka Tales work, Buddhist Birth-Stories) -- that he was of the "solar race," a noble (aryan), which was taken in India to mean a kshatriya (warrior)-caste nobleman (royal).

Eurasian Middle Eastern Indo-Scythians? (TIC)

The Shakyan Prince Siddhartha Gautama (matrilineal name from his mothers, the Gotami/Gaumata sisters) came from the "Middle Country" (Majjhima-desa), which refers to Central Asia and Middle East, in line with Northern India (Gandhara, Indo-Scythia). Dr. Pal claims the mothers were from Seistan-Balochistan (not Nepal), a province in Southern Afghanistan between Iran and Pakistan.

Boudanath Stupa, Kathmandu, Nepal

But in Buddhism aryan went from the concrete meaning Indo-Iranian (ariyan) to ennobled in the sense of "enlightened." This gets into the ugly subject of the "Aryan Invasion" theories, as if India and the glorious Indus Valley Civilization that preceded it could not have developed (with the usual aid of akasha-devas), without European or Northern Asian intervention, the conquerors bringing technological advancements like Romans overtaking and uplifting backward Israel.

Clearly sudden advancements come to Earth not from Earth but from more mysterious origins, then everyone tries to take credit for them as created by their group.

Map of Indo-European migrations from ca. 4000 to 1000 BCE according to the Kurgan model. The Anatolian migration (indicated with a dotted arrow) could have taken place either across the Caucasus or across the Balkans. The magenta area corresponds to the assumed Urheimat (Samara culture, Sredny Stog culture), the red to the area that may have been settled by Indo-European-speaking peoples up to ca. 2500 BCE, when Buddhism began, and the orange area by 1000 BC (wiki).