These fascinating excerpts, referring to Kinnaur, are from a website about the Dharma fellowship in Canada. Click here for the complete page.

THE Legendary 'LAND OF CINA' , now Kinnaur.

The location of the "Land of Cina" has been the cause of considerable confusion for both Tibetan historians and modern Western scholars.. . The geography of a mysterious seventh century Himalayan country called Suvarnadwipa and its southern neighbor, the Kinnaur Valley.

The Golden Matriarchy and the Land of Cina

It is little known that before the Tibetan people swept from the East into the regions of trans-himalaya, there once was a land in Western Tibet known by the name of "The Land of Women". Because the rivers of this land were rich in gold, this country was also known as the Golden Land (suvarnadwipa). Yet another name for this country appears to have been the "Golden Matriarchy".

The ancient Greeks held many myths concerning the Amazons, a tribe of warrior women, and their land called Amazonia. Dionysus was said to have encountered them on his travels to India, and supposedly Heracles successfully fought against them, capturing their queen Antiope.

As Prof. R. A. Stein says, the Western Land of Women was "a mysterious region mentioned by Chinese and Indian authors." Apparently this matriarchy, with its capital at the Silver Castle of Khyunglung (east of present day To-lung) in Western Tibet, was the same as the land of Zang-zung. The latter is the Tibetan name of the land. Zang-zung or Suvarnadwipa was an ancient Indo-European nation, said to have been ruled by a royal lineage of women.

This matriarchy or 'queendom' once existed along the valleys of the upper Sutlej and the Indus rivers, from Tirthapuri, west of Mount Kailash, as far as the borders of modern Ladakh. In Ladakh itself, matriarchal lineage has been known during various periods of Ladakhi history. It is likely that Suvarnadwipa once consisted of the whole of Western Tibet and Ladakh, prior to conquest by the Tibetan people invading from the east.

Apart from gold and matriarchy, the Golden Land of Suvarnadwipa (or Zangzung) was famous for manufacturing and exporting to India a peculiarly fine wool cloth known as cina-patti, or in other words, "fabric (patti) from Cina." Thus we find in Kautilya, for example, the mention of Cina as a valley within the territory of Suvarnadwipa, from whence cina-patti was brought to India. At present this same extra-fine cloth, no longer manufactured in Suvarnadwipa, but instead in Kashmir, is known as cashmere.

"How far [Zang-zung] stretched to the north, east and west is a mystery,". "It seems to have dovetailed into two countries mentioned by T'ang historians as Lesser and Greater Yang-t'ung." This only confuses the matter further, since Pelliot and Tucci consider Yang-t'ung to be Zang-zung itself.

Today, the territory in Tibet that once was ancient Suvarnadwipa, is more or less a dry barren wasteland. In Sri Simha's era, however, it was apparently rich, not just in gold, beautiful Amazonian women and fine cloth, but in verdant gardens, herds of sheep and goat, and apple orchards.

The researches of Marcelle Lalou have sufficiently shown that the territory of the Indian Kailasa, south of Western Tibet (below Suvarnadwipa), comprising modern Kinnaur, was known in ancient times as the valley of Cina. Ancient Cina (or modern Kinnaur), south of the 15,400 ft Shipki Pass (known to the Tibetans as Sarang-la), was apparently a vassal state of Suvarnadwipa. In present times this extensive but isolated valley, hemmed in by the Himalayas, now belongs to India. It is pierced by a major India-Tibet roadway, originally commissioned by Lord Dalhousie in 1850. The valley is home to both Buddhist and Hindu temples.

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The Kinnauri tribal group consider themselves distinct not only from Tibetans but also from their Indian cousins to the south. Homskad, the language spoken in Kinnaur, is dispersed into about 12 different dialects. Kinnauris are traditionally farmers, who adhere to a mixture of Hindu and Buddhist customs, with most villages having both Saivite Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist temples. The present culture is probably not much different than when Sri Simha lived there in the 8th century.

Cina definitely is the Kinnaur Valley, also known as the Kunnu Valley; a Himalayan district, today within India. Suvarnadwipa lay to the north of this valley, in what now is Western Tibet. "So-khyam" is the Tibetan rendering of the name "Su-gnam", the latter a prosperous village at the nine thousand foot level, deep in the Kinnaur Valley.

And the gold? Yes, a large deposit is still there to be mined. The largest lode may be found at Shok Jalung, on the Tibetan side of the mountains, and should you possess a dream about going there to seek your own fortune, we will even give you the precise co-ordinates: latitude 32° 24,' longitude 81° 34'. There is however, at least one major obstacle for the hopeful prospector to face: the location is at 16,000 ft above sea level, and virtually impenetrable.

Sri Simha promulgates the Dzogchen teachings in Cina

After attaining full realization, Sri Simha became the principal lineage holder of the Dzogchen Tradition. He was a master who truly understood the inner meaning of all the Tantras.

It is also said that Sri Simha went to Bodh Gaya and extracted from the library of the Diamond-throne Monastery the Pith Instruction of the Dzogchen Tradition that Manjusrimitra had previously deposited there. Sri Simha then took the Dzogchen teachings back with him to his home town in the Cina Valley and there he settled more or less for the rest of his life, becoming a famous teacher.

After attaining full realization, Sri Simha became the principal lineage holder of the Dzogchen Tradition. He was a master who truly understood the inner meaning of all the Tantras.

It is also said that Sri Simha went to Bodh Gaya and extracted from the library of the Diamond-throne Monastery the Pith Instruction (Skt: upadesa, Tib.: men-ngak-de) of the Dzogchen Tradition that Manjusrimitra had previously deposited there. Sri Simha then took the Dzogchen teachings back with him to his home town in the Cina Valley.

It is explained that Sri Simha divided the Pith Instruction into four sub-sections, and these are known as the Exoteric Cycle, the Esoteric Cycle, the Secret Cycle, and the Supreme Secret Cycle. Before his own death he deposited copies of the first three cycles in a rock cut crypt beneath the Bodhivriksha Temple of Sugnam (Sokyam) in the land of Cina.

The texts of the Supreme Secret Cycle, however, he hid separately within the pillar of the "Gate of a Myriad Blessings". It is difficult, however, to clarify as to where these places in the Kinnaur Valley may have actually been. Perhaps future archeological work in the region will help one day to give us a better insight into the facts underlying the half-legendary and half-historical records of early Dzogchen.