![]() ![]() Gnas translates as “place,” but as Toni Huber and others have noted, it has a more active sense of “to abide” or “abode.” Landscape features are the abode of spirit forces and deities of all kinds. One of its most important features is the concept of gnas (pronounced né). Tibetan sacred geography has deep roots in antiquity. This tripartite division of the cosmos is common to many peoples around the world. In between, people live in a middle world of action and ritual. Mountains are the abode of gods and deities in both Tibetan Buddhist and pre-Buddhist belief systems, while spirits live beneath the water. ![]() Ethnographers of the Himalayas have noted a duality of sacred categories-a fundamental distinction between up into the mountains and down into the lowlands below the peaks or beneath the surface of water. Mountains, lakes, rivers, boulders, vistas, and caves have symbolic and sacred meanings. Tibetans, like most people around the world, categorize the natural and built environment. To better understand these caves I turned to indigenous Tibetan and Buddhist thought for insight into how caves are perceived. ![]() Some are clearly habitation sites, while others are probably meditation caves, and still others have ritual architecture within them. At Piyang-a key site in this process-over 1,100 caves of varying shapes and sizes have been discovered. Understanding how caves are used is an important aspect of my research on the re-introduction of Buddhism to the Tibetan plateau after AD 1000 (Expedition 47(2):28-34). Work in the major cave complexes has also been limited because most have active religious structures within them. Until the 1970s, when Chinese archaeologists began systematic work on the plateau, there was no real sense of a Tibetan prehistory, and only recently has any research focused on the Buddhist era. In great part, this is due to a relative lack of archaeological research. Indeed, the large majority of caves on the plateau, both natural and artificial, are key elements in the sacred geography of Tibetan Buddhism.ĭespite the importance of caves to both pre-Buddhist and Buddhist belief systems, we know surprisingly little of the antiquity of cave use on the plateau. For the past two millennia at least, rock faces have been hollowed and used for domestic purposes and, more commonly, as shelters for monks, lamas, and other religious figures. Many caves and rock shelters in Tibet have also been created by people. Much of the plateau near Lhasa has a limestone geology, ca where natural processes create caverns and rock shelters. Although most of us think of Tibet as a high plateau riven by high mountain chains wide open to the skies, it has a deep, hidden, and underground dimension as well-numerous caves with extensive dark zones. ![]()
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