Searching for Udyana
Searching for the Kingdom of Udyana The kingdom of Udyana (or Oddiyana) is considered as the historical source of many spiritual traditions and teachings of great importance. From Udyana have emerged the teachings of Buddhist Tantra and Mahasandhi (Dzogchen), and also many of the great accomplished saints and siddhas of the past have their origin in this mysterious kingdom, such as Padmasambhava the founder of Tibetan Buddhism and Prahevajra the first teacher to present the teachings of Mahasandhi, among many others. However Udyana is not simply a mythological place, a place of legends and old stories, Udyana is known to refer to a concrete historical kingdom and references to its existence are found in many historical sources. In this article I will try to review some of the known historical information about Udyana in an attempt to explore the main prevailing views regarding the location of Udyana. So far in our current times two theories circulate regarding the location of Udy...