The Ancient Tradition

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Music

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You’re listening to The Ancient Tradition.  A Wonk Media Production.  Music provided by Joseph McDade.  He is your host, Dr. Jack Logan.

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Welcome to The Ancient Tradition.  I’m your host,  Jack Logan. It’s great to have you listening in today. It’s another wonderful, beautiful day outside. It’s a great day to talk about the ancient world, so I’m glad that you’ve joined us.

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If you are new to the program, we’re really glad that you dropped in. While you’re listening today, you may start to wonder what we’re talking about when we talk about things like the King of the Four Corners or the Haldi ceremony, the circum-punk,  maat chaos and things like that.  These are important concepts. They constitute some of the core theological and cosmological doctrines that were taught by the ancients.

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doctrines that you need to understand if you want to gain a comprehensive understanding of what the ancients actually taught. Because of that we’ve set up the podcast kind of like a college course where we start with the foundational concepts and then we build upon those in each of the subsequent episodes. So if you want a greater understanding of the things that we’re going to talk about in today’s episode, the overarching theology taught by the ancients, I recommend after you give today’s episode a listen.

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that you start with episode number one and you make your way through the episodes sequentially. I don’t really recommend more than one a day. There’s a lot of information packed in there, so it’s not really bingeable in that way. But you’ll see as you do that, that there is abundant evidence in the ancient record, right in the ancient texts themselves, that a test, an original theologically rich religious tradition was imparted to human beings in deep antiquity.

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If you do this and you give the theology the ancients taught serious consideration, you’re not only gonna learn a ton, but you’re gonna learn things that have the potential to benefit every single aspect of your life. All right,  with that, let’s jump in. Today, we’re gonna talk about umbrellas. Yes,  umbrellas. Now I know that might sound a little bit strange.

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For most of us, an umbrella is just an umbrella. It’s an everyday item that we grab when it rains or when we want some shade at the soccer game. But in the ancient world, umbrellas  weren’t just practical tools. They carried deep symbolic meaning tied to important cosmological and theological ideas, and that’s what we’re gonna explore today. In the last episode, if you remember, we talked about the Hindu marriage ritual. We looked at the Bharat ceremony.

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You might remember that’s when the groom dresses in royal regalia, like a prince mounts a white horse and makes his way to the wedding venue. He’s usually accompanied with a lively entourage of his family and his friends who celebrate with him along the way. It’s a grand procession. What’s important about this for today’s episode is that as part of this procession, you’ll often see an attendant holding a tall, elegant umbrella  over the groom’s head.

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If you’d like to see a couple of pictures of this, I’ve posted them to the webpage for this episode, which you can find at theancienttradition.com under show notes. My guess is that if we were watching one of these processions,  we probably wouldn’t even give the umbrella a second thought. But we are now students  of the ancient world, so we have to. Because the ancients didn’t just use the umbrella to shade the king. They used it as a symbol, a symbol that you’re gonna see

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is packed with deep spiritual and cosmological meaning about kings, the true nature of kings. And what’s really interesting here in the Hindu marriage ritual is that this same meaning is being ritually applied not just to the king, but to every single groom who gets married in Hinduism. That’s what makes this really interesting. So we gotta figure out what the umbrella symbolizes so we can understand what it’s telling us.

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about the true nature of kings and of every groom. Dr. Stuart Gordon, a senior research fellow at the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan says in his article titled, In the Shade of the Royal Umbrella, published in volume 62 of Arab and Islamic Cultures and Connections, the following about the Hindu groom’s umbrella. Quote, this umbrella signifies,

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that at least for this day, the groom  is  a king. What Dr. Gordon says here is important. At first glance, we might think the groom is being presented as a king. He’s dressed in clothing that’s usually reserved for royalty or high nobility,  and he makes a grand entrance on a white horse. But it’s the umbrella held over his head that unequivocally establishes that we

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are to interpret him as a king. It’s the umbrella that marks the groom as a king. Okay, but why? I challenged you in the last episode to give the umbrella as a symbol some thought, which I hope a lot of you did. I hope a few of you came up with some good ideas. If you’ve listened to the podcast for a while, you definitely have enough cosmological and theological background to offer up a couple of

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plausible interpretations. The royal umbrella was used as a symbol across the world. Dr. Gordon notes, speaking of the royal umbrella, quote, for millennia, it has been a common symbol among rulers in a huge portion of the world that includes the Middle East,  Egypt and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Persia, South and Southeast Asia, China, Japan and Korea.

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The royal umbrella flourished in Muslim, Hindu, Confucian, Buddhist, Animaist, and some Christian courts. So today, we’re gonna take a look at the royal umbrella in a few of these locations and see what they reveal about its symbolism and what that, in turn, tells us about kings. Now, scholars don’t know exactly when the umbrella was invented.

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If we go back 5,000 years to the fourth millennium BC, we find that the ancient Egyptians associated a fan,  lifted on a high pole, so not an umbrella like we traditionally think of it, with kingship. Scholars believe this fan was the early version of the umbrella that we have today. When I visited Oxford’s Oshmolian Museum over the summer, the artifact that I wanted to see the most

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After the Sumerian King list was an artifact known as the Macehead of King Scorpion. This is a really important artifact because it’s a late pre-dynastic or early proto-dynastic artifact  dating to around 3100 BC, the period that directly preceded the formal establishment of Egypt’s first dynasty. So when I first laid eyes on it,  I was taken aback again.

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just like the Chewbacca stone by its size. Because when I think mace head, think of an actual mace head in someone’s hand, with the head maybe two inches wide. But the limestone mace head of King Scorpion is huge. It’s almost a foot wide and a foot tall. So if the mace head is that big,  we can only imagine how large the mace itself was. The large size of the mace head is symbolic more than anything, symbolizing King Scorpion’s tremendous power.

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and strength to conquer his enemies. This is a pretty important artifact because it contains one of the earliest depictions that the world has of an Egyptian king. And the king depicted on the mace is known as King Scorpion.  And who was King Scorpion? Well, that’s a matter of considerable debate in the academic community. Some scholars believe that he was the predecessor to King Narmer.

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the first king of dynastic Egypt. Other scholars believe that he was King Narmer’s chief rival. And others believe because in Egypt, kings were given multiple names, that King Scorpion might just be another name for King Narmer himself. Nobody really knows for sure. It doesn’t really matter for our purposes though, because this artifact is really important because it depicts two attendants holding what are known as polyform flabella.

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large half moon shaped fans  on long staffs over King Scorpion. The fact that these fans are held directly over the king clearly indicates that there’s an association between the fan and the king or kingship. When we study the ancient Egyptian polyform phlebellum, we start to get a lot of clues  about its symbolism. Phlebellum comes from Latin and means fan.

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Think of one of those paper fans that unfolds in a semicircular or a half moon shape. That’s what we’re talking about. Except that in ancient Egypt, this type of fan was placed on the tip of a long staff where the fan itself measured a good three to five feet in diameter. Instead of being made out of paper, the fan was made out of palm fronds or feathers. The word palmaform literally means shaped like a palm tree

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or palm frond, where palm refers to a palm tree or its leaves in a form, a Latin suffix means in the form of or shaped like. So already we have a big clue as to what the fan held over King Scorpion was meant to symbolize. It was meant to symbolize a tree. All you gotta do is look at a picture of an ancient Egyptian polyform fan.

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to see that it does resemble a palm tree. If you’ve been listening to the program for a while, this should be  hugely significant to you that the fan symbolizes a tree, because you already know that the tree is a well-established symbol for the king and royal divine beings. So it makes complete sense symbolically to hold a tree over the king. It signifies that the king should be understood symbolically as a tree.

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Up to this point on the program, I haven’t yet explained the larger symbolic meaning behind the tree, but I’m going to in a couple of months. But just know that to hold the fan over the king is akin to saying the king is the tree. A scholar by the name of Nadra Zaki, who  wrote Fans in Ancient Egypt, iconographic and contextual study of fans in the pre-dynastic old and middle kingdoms. It’s quite a long title.

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and was just published in 2024, points out that although many of these fans were made with palm fronds, the king’s fans seem to have been made out of ostrich feathers, which is symbolically significant, as many of you know, because of the association the ancient Egyptians made between  ostrich feathers and ma’at, the cosmic law which enabled the High God Atum in the beginning to impose order on the waters of chaos.

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This suggests that the fans symbolize at least in part the association between Ma’at and the king’s creative cosmic ordering power.  One of the best representations we have of an ancient Egyptian polyform phlobellum was actually found in King Tut’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Egypt Museum describes Tut’s fan like this, quote,

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Stumps of feathers may still be seen in the holes on the outer edge of the palm. From the remains of its feathers,  it was clear that it had been fitted with 30 ostrich feathers, white and brown alternately set. A single ostrich feather represented the goddess Ma’at, who was the personification of truth, justice, and essential harmony of the universe. The artifact is really beautiful.  If you’d like to see a picture of it, you can find it on the webpage for this episode.

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What you’re going to see is a gold embossed half moon shaped palm. It’s called a palm because its mount  is shaped like a semi-circular palm leaf. The ostrich feathers, which have disintegrated, were originally inserted in the palm. Now the fan was not only symbolic of the king’s adherence to or association with mod. Dr. Zaki found that it was iconographically connected to three important ancient Egyptian concepts.

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On page nine, she writes, quote, in addition to their practical function, fans had deeper symbolic meanings. They were often associated with a range of life giving symbols, such as the onk, famously known as the key of life, the was, the scepter that translates to dominion, referring to authority, and the shin ring, a knotted loop of rope that symbolizes eternity.

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This is kind of interesting. If you study the palm of King Tut’s fan, you’re going to notice that King Tut’s throne name and birth names are prominently displayed in cartouches  in the very center of the palm. And a was scepter and a chen ring flank each side of the cartouches. These symbols clearly associate the fan, a symbolic tree, and the king, in this case King Tut, with dominion and eternal or divine protection.

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King Tut reigned as a king during the late 18th dynasty, between 1333 and 1323 BC. Dr. Zaki found that the association between the fan and these symbols dated to much, much earlier, to at least as early as the third dynasty, around 2667 BC, because we can find these symbols depicted with arms. Yes,  arms, just the symbol, the symbol has arms, and guess what the arms are carrying?

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They’re carrying the king’s fan on a long staff. Dr. Zaki writes, quote, examples of all three symbols appear on the panels in Josur’s step pyramid in Saqqara.  Josur is depicted performing the heb-sad ritual with anthropomorphized onk and was symbols holding fans behind and before him to ensure his safety and longevity. So these symbols that we’re talking about holding fans,

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are actually found in the same depiction of the king running the circuit or boundary of the kingdom during the Heb Seb Festival that we talked about really early on in the podcast in episode number seven, the King of the Four Corners. Now listen to this,  while the Shen Ring appears independently in several places to show eternal protection, we can see from this that the fan that shades the king is directly associated with the Ankh.

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the key of life, the king’s ability to ensure life, the was scepter, the king’s authority and dominion, and the Shen Ring, the king either being eternally protected or the king’s ability to ensure eternal protection. If you recall, we discussed extensively  in episode number 53, the cosmic wall, the Ouroboros and the Shen Ring, how the Shen Ring is, at least in part, a symbolic depiction of the barrier

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that surrounds and protects God’s kingdom from the sea of chaos monsters that dwell in the waters on the other side of the wall. The link between the fan and protection is important. Dr. Zocchi notes on page 84 that there’s a metaphoric connection between the words the ancient Egyptians used for fan  and the notion of protection. She writes, quote,

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SWI and SWT with the fan determinatives was used for shade as a metaphor for protection in general. The analogy between the function of SW and SWT in the fans is clear. The fan provides shade and thus protection. So did you follow that? Basically what Dr. Zaki is saying is that the ancient Egyptians used the shade provided by the fan as a metaphor.

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for the divine protection provided by God and or the king. So to be in the shade of the fan was to be divinely protected. Now listen to what she says next. On page 85 she writes, quote, the following example from a literary text will show how SW and SWT are used as a figurative connotation for shade with an interplay on the function of fans to provide shade.

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The example comes from Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, 12th Dynasty, line 44, which reads, quote, I slept under the shelter of the tree and I embraced its shade,  S-W-Y-T, unquote, with the shade acting as a source of protection. This is so interesting. The object that provided the shipwrecked sailor protective

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quote shelter and quote shade, was a tree. And the same words in ancient Egyptian that connotate the shade of a tree  are used to describe the shade provided by the king’s fan. In ancient Egypt, we find clear  linguistic ties between the fan, the tree, and the king.  And in iconographic images, we find clear links between the fan, the tree, the king.

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and symbols for cosmic order, life, dominion, and protection. If you stepped back a couple of yards and you studied a fully preserved version of King Tut’s royal fan, a beautiful spray of ostrich feathers fanning from the palm, you’d see an exquisite stylized version of a palm tree. The long staff representing the trunk of the tree and the fan of feathers representing

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palm tree’s canopy. Now, think  of an actual umbrella. If you step back a couple of yards and you studied an umbrella, what would you see? Well, you’ve probably already figured this out, but you’d be looking at a three-dimensional version of a stylized tree. If we turn to Mesopotamia, we can find iconographic depictions of attendants holding umbrellas or parasols over the king.

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The earliest known example of the royal umbrella in Mesopotamia is found on a stele fragment that’s dated to around 2300 BC. And it depicts an attendant holding an umbrella behind the head of  Sargon I, King of Acad. We can also find depictions of the king’s umbrella in late Assyrian art, which dates to between the ninth and seventh centuries BC.

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We find a depiction of an attendant,  for example, holding an umbrella over King Asher Nasher Paul II’s head. And it looks like he’s just performing some palace duties. There are also depictions of King Asher Bonipol, dated to the seventh century BC, riding in his royal chariot, a beautiful ornate royal umbrella attached to a fixed pole above his head.

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a scholar by the name of Dr. Oscar White Muscarella, an American who specialized in the art and archeology of the ancient Near East, wrote in his article, Parasols in the Ancient Near East, that the royal umbrella was then adopted by the Persians and the Eurasians. Eurasians are ancient people who lived in parts of what are now Eastern Turkey from the Assyrians. On page three, he wrote, quote,

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Assyrianizing scenes decorating late 8th to 7th century BC Phoenician metal vessels depict a king with a parasol, emulating Assyrian royal practice. Absorption  of canonical Assyrian iconography and ideology is also evident on mid-7th century BC Eurasian royal sills depicting King Rusa II attended by a parasol bearer. Muscarella goes on to note how

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In the ancient Near East, the umbrella was solely used by and as an emblem of the king. He writes, quote, the evidence manifests that from its incipients, the ancient Near Eastern parasol was gender and socially oriented. The parasol and its bearer were restricted to the king’s person, his royal prerogative. It was not in common use socially.

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It functions solely as a marker of the king’s rule  and authority. You probably don’t remember this, but we actually saw the royal umbrella in Persia in episode number 48, Uhura Mazda, when we talked about a wall relief found in Persepolis that depicts the Zoroastrian high god Uhura Mazda. And what’s relevant about the relief is that Uhura Mazda is depicted directly above the apex of the royal umbrella.

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the royal umbrella that’s held directly over King Darius  I, the King of Persia’s head by an attendant. Muscarella goes on to note that there are a number of Persian kings found throughout Persepolis that are depicted with parasol attendants. But when these kings are depicted seated on a throne, the umbrella is replaced with a baldacan. A baldacan is a four post canopy.

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like the Hindu Mundap or the Christian Sibirium or the Greek and Roman Sella, like we talked about in the last episode. Muscarella writes, quote, when the king was portrayed enthroned, a baldachin was fixed in place and covered the full throne area. Probably the baldachin, which had already been represented in some royal scenes in Assyrian times, became associated with the charged meaning of the parasol.

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developing into its fixed counterpart,  one that shaded, protected, and defined the space around the king, not merely his body. What Muscarella says here is important, and I agree with his argument. The Baldekin, Mundap, Sibirium,  or Sala  all pretty much represent the same concept. They each represent the sacred,

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protected space around the King, the Universal King, the King of the Four Corners, the King of the entire world.  The Baldakin is a microcosmic  representation of the sacred protected space around the King of the Gods, the Cosmic King of the Four Corners, the King of the entire cosmos who reigns as God and King in the sacred center of the cosmos. The Earthly King,

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Under the baldekin is a microcosmic representation of the macrocosmic god king who sits enthroned in the protected sacred center or holy holies of the cosmos. As above, so below. Muscarella is essentially arguing that it seems, at least in Persia, that the umbrella was used as a baldekin,  kind of like a portable baldekin, if you will.

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that carried the same meaning as the baldachin itself. Which like I just pointed out was a microcosmic representation of the sacred center. So hold on to the connection between the umbrella and the sacred center, because I’m gonna come back to it in a couple of minutes. If we turn to India, we see that a rich history of the royal umbrella can be found there. Albert Henry Longhorst,  a British archeologist and art historian who worked primarily in India.

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and who wrote several books on Indian architecture. In particular, on the influence the royal umbrella had on the development of the stupa. A stupa is a dome-shaped sacred monument that was created to house the relics of the Buddha. He wrote the following on pages one and two of his book, The Story of the Stupa. Quote, we do not know how or when the umbrella first became the recognized symbol of authority in India.

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But from the singular resemblance between the umbrellas portrayed in the earliest Buddhist sculpture and those portrayed in the still earlier Assyrian and Persian bas reliefs, there seems good reason to assume that it was from Persia that the idea first came, which led to its adoption in India as the emblem of sovereignty. Interestingly, Longhurst notes, quote, in the earliest Buddhist sculptures,

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the umbrella is reserved exclusively as a mark of distinction for the monarchs or princes portrayed in the Barali’s, except where it appears in the service of religion, when it’s used as a means of denoting the presence of the Buddha. Here we learned that in India, the umbrella served as a mark for the king  or the Buddha. We’ve talked a little bit on the program about Buddhism, but not a whole lot.

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it’s important to know a little bit about the origin of Buddhism so you can get a feel for how Hinduism and Buddhism are connected. See, Buddhism emerged sometime around the sixth to fifth centuries BC when Siddhartha Gautama, who would become Buddha, challenged the philosophical and social structures found in Buddhism. In other words, Buddhism rose as a response to Hinduism.

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Siddhartha challenged Vedic authority.  He didn’t like the strict ritualism and the caste hierarchy that was inherent in Hinduism. Yet he borrowed key ideas like karma and reincarnation and reframed them as personal insight or ethical conduct and meditation. He taught that by following the four noble truths and the eightfold path, practitioners could ultimately reach enlightenment or nirvana.

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a state of liberation from the cycle of  birth, death, and rebirth. When this happened, when one achieved full personal enlightenment or nirvana, that individual was known as an arhat or a bodhisattvas. Now, many people outside of Buddhism might interpret this enlightened state, where one reaches perfect wisdom and inner peace and compassion,  as a type of deification. But Buddhists don’t.

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at least modern Buddhists don’t. Buddhists don’t believe in God or in a creator God. And they likewise don’t believe that the process of enlightenment requires God  or a God’s help. They see enlightenment as something that is possible for one to achieve all by themselves. At some point on the podcast, we’re going to talk about this a little bit more, but  despite the Buddhist’s rejection of God, Buddhism has retained a remarkable number of symbols and myths

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that attest to the same stubborn bits we see across the ancient world. Some of which we’ve already talked about on the program, like the Buddha’s eight-leafed lotus throne, the sacred Bodhi tree, and Siddhartha’s marriage to Yazodora, like we talked about in episode number 59, where the king of the Shakyat takes his son, the crown prince, Siddhartha, and his bride, Yazodora, to the summit of the Himalayan mountains and places them on a mound of silver and anoints them with the oil of consecration, crowns them,

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with the royal diadem and gives them the whole kingdom. This is ancient tradition material. In fact, in much of Buddhist art, mythology, philosophy, and symbolism, the Buddha occupies the position  where God  once sat. And this is especially evident when we examine  the royal umbrella. In Longhurst’s article, The Influence of the Umbrella on Indian Architecture,

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published in  volume 16 of the Journal of Indian Art and Industry, Longhurst reveals that the umbrella, like we saw in ancient Egypt, symbolizes a tree. He then connects the umbrella tree to the Buddha’s sacred Bodhi tree. On page 122, Longhurst writes, quote, in Asia, the umbrella plays an important part in the life and history of the people.

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Here it is not only a symbol of sovereignty, but partakes of a religious character and is often an object of veneration. This is particularly the case in Buddhist countries like Burma, China, Japan, and Siam. Siam is now Thailand. The primary idea of the umbrella is undoubtedly derived from a shady tree with pendant bows drooping from an upright stem or the circular cluster of long fronds

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which crown the slender stem of each member of the great families of tall palm trees and tree ferns. So closely has this primitive model been adhered to by the peasants of India and Burma that their great clumsy chatras, which are umbrellas, consists simply of a framework of bamboo covered with leaves, bark, or else thatched with dry grass.

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The ingenuity of man was not long in devising in advance  on the original idea. So while the form of the tree is still retained in the strong bamboo handle and framework of a split bamboo, grass, matting, or cloth have been substituted for the primitive green leaves. And did you follow what Longhurst was saying here? He’s telling us that even the peasants,

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understood that the umbrella was meant to symbolize a tree, because when the peasants built their own umbrellas, they used organic materials like leaves to cover the canopy. They wanted their umbrella to look like an actual tree. Longhorst goes on, quote, in tracing the singular reverence bestowed upon the umbrella as proved by the earliest sculptural antiquities which survive in India.

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None are more interesting than those which suggest the retention of primitive tree worship in the earliest days of pure Buddhism. The sacred flower laid in salt tree, beneath which Buddha is said to have died at Kasyunara, and the celebrated Bodhi tree at Bodhgaya, under whose shade Buddha is said to have attained complete enlightenment in the 35th year of his age.  In Sanskrit, Bodhi means enlightenment.

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So Bodhi Tree means the tree of enlightenment or the tree where enlightenment took place. In terms of the species of the tree, we’re talking about a banyan tree. The story of the Buddha’s enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree  is recounted in volume three, chapter 24 of the Buddhist Mahavastu,  a canonical text dated sometime between the second century BC and the fourth century AD.

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Mahavastu means great event or great story in Sanskrit. Chapter 24 is too long to recount, so I’m just going to read a couple of lines. This comes from the J.J. Jones English translation. Quote, after the exalted one had awakened to the incomparable enlightenment, he sat for seven days on his bed of straw at the foot of the Bodhi tree with his legs crossed.

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Here, said he, at the Bodhi tree,  I won preeminence  after seven days, woke up to enlightenment. Here I broke Mara of the lusts. Here I broke Mara the deva. I don’t have time to develop all of this here, but I want to point a couple of things out. First, take note of the location where Siddhartha gained enlightenment. Where did he gain it? The text tells us he gained it

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quote, at the foot of the Bodhi tree. This is significant because we know in the ancient world that the sacred tree was understood to grow  in the very center of the world. Like the ancient Egyptian sacred Ished tree that grew in the temple of Heliopolis, the temple that marked the center of the earth where the first dry land rose out of the primordial waters, or the Norse mighty ash tree, Yggdrasil, that grew in the center of Midgard.

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or the giant seba tree that the myotella stood in the center of the earth, or Zeus’s oak tree that stood in the middle of the earth between the celestial realm above and the underworld below. In fact, as you’re gonna see down the line, it’s  only under such a tree  in the sacred center of the earth that true enlightenment takes place.

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I’ll develop that more down the line. Just take note that Siddhartha’s enlightenment took place beneath  just such a tree in its culturalized location in the village of Bodhgaya in Northeastern India. What we want to know is whether or not Buddhists believe the Bodhi tree grew in the center of the world too. The Jatakas, which are part of the canon of sacred Buddhist literature,

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dated to the third century BC, tells us in Book 13, 479, the  following about the Bodhi Tree. Quote, beyond the circuit around the great bow tree, the throne of victory of  all the Buddhas, which has become the very navel of the earth. So there you go. In this passage, we’re told that the Bodhi Tree marks, quote, the very navel

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of the earth, the center of the earth. And this is not surprising. We already suspected that this would be the case. Again, this is ancient tradition material. I also want you to note that the Jatakas tell us that the quote, throne of victory of all the Buddhas is also located at the base of the Bodhi tree. And this is not surprising either. We know the tree itself grows out of the center of the earth.

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where the four cardinal points intersect. And we know from what we’ve covered on this podcast that this is precisely the spot where the King of the Four Corners sits  on his throne. So it’s no surprise that the throne of victory, which clearly has royal connotations, is located in the same spot. In fact, in 250 BC, the King of the Maurean Empire, which covered most of the Indian continent,

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built an actual throne. It’s known as the Diamond Throne at the foot of the Bodhi Tree in Bodhgaya. It’s still there today. You can go and see it. It’s at the foot of a beautiful banyan tree that the Buddhists tell us is a direct descendant of the original Bodhi Tree. Now the next thing I want you to notice is that the Buddhist throne that sits atop the navel of the world is called in the Jatakas the quote throne of  victory. Throne of victory.

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Well, what victory? If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you probably have a really good idea what victory we’re talking about. But the question  is, are the Buddhists talking about the same victory  that we think they are?  And the answer to that is yes, yes they are. If we go back to the account given by Siddhartha’s enlightenment in the Mahavastu, Siddhartha tells us, quote,

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At the Bodhi tree I won preeminence after seven days. Woke to enlightenment. Here I broke  Mara of the lusts. Here I broke Mara the deva. So here Siddhartha tells us he quote,  won preeminence  after he quote,  broke Mara of the lusts. So who is this Mara? Is he the cultural expression of who we think it is?

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Well, yes, yes, he is. Mara is first mentioned in the Hindu vidas in the Atharva Veda, where he’s described as the, quote,  evil one who kills. The glossary of Pali in Buddhist terms says Mara is, quote, generally regarded as the personification of death, the evil one,  the tempter, the Buddhist counterpart of the devil or

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principle of destruction. Right in the Mahavastu, Siddhartha tells us that it was only after he quote broke Mara or in the vernacular of this program slayed the dragon that he gained enlightenment and won as it’s referred to in the Jatakas the quote throne of victory. And note how  all quote  Buddhas plural human beings who conquer Mara

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can gain the throne of victory in this way. All of this, all of it is ancient tradition material. While we’re talking about Buddhism, I want you to take note of a couple more things. In the Jatakas we read earlier, Siddhartha tells us that  after, quote,  seven days, seven days we assume he spent battling Mata, he, quote, won preeminence.

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and quote, woke to enlightenment. Pay attention to the number seven in this passage. There’s a symbolic connection between the number seven and conquering the dragon. We’ll talk about this in great detail when we get to ritual. I want you to take note of it here so it’s on your radar. The association between the number seven and conquering the dragon has its origin in deep antiquity, its ancient tradition material too.

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If you visit Bodh Gaya today, you’ll see the sacred Bodhi tree. You’ll see the diamond throne at the foot of the tree. And right next to the throne, you’ll see a magnificent Buddhist temple, which is also very much in keeping with what we would expect. As we’ve discussed several times on the program, the center is sacred space.  In sacred space, the space cut off from the profane  is by definition a temple. The Buddhist temple

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built next to the Bodhi tree and the diamond throne is called the Mahabodhi temple, which means great awakening temple or the temple of great enlightenment. And it marks the location as the holiest site in  all of Buddhism. The temple is very old. Parts of it were built at least as early as 200 BC, but most of it dates to the sixth century AD and later.

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When you lay your eyes on this temple, the first thing that you’re going to notice is that a massive central tower, a stratified pyramid that tapers as it climbs, rises 180 feet above you. And four smaller towers that are practically identical to the central tower occupy the four corners around it. The entire temple is adorned with layers of niches and arc motifs and carvings.

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I want to talk about the architecture for a minute because sacred architecture matters. And that’s because sacred architecture is nothing less than cosmology and theology in stone. If you stood back and took the entire Mahabodhi temple in, your first impression would likely be, this temple looks like a mountain. And if that’s what you thought, you’d be spot on. The Mahabodhi temple’s central tower is called a shikara.

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which in Sanskrit actually means mountain peak. So the temple architecture  is indeed meant to symbolize a mountain, a sacred mountain, no less. And if you’ve been listening to the program for a while, you know the mountain motif we see here is significant because literally all over the world, from the pyramids of ancient Egypt to Mount Olympus in Greece to the Mayan pyramids in Tikal, Guatemala,

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God or the gods always reside on the summit of the mountain. In fact, the mountain is a symbol for a temple. So even though modern-day Buddhists are  non-theistic, they have in fact retained the mountain temple symbolism that dominates the ancient world. If you recall, in Hinduism, the mandala is a symbolic representation of the sacred Mount Maru, on the summit of which live the Hindu gods.

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Hindus believe that Mount Maru marks the center of the universe and that this mountain serves as a stairway to Svarga, heaven. If you look closely at the central tower of the Mahabodhi temple, the Shikara, the mountain peak, you’ll notice that there are seven distinct architectural strata to the mountain. This is intentional. Each architectural strata is believed to be a reference to one of the seven days

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it took Siddhartha to gain enlightenment. The connection between the mountain and the number seven will be important down the line. A scholar by the name of Elena Pakhautava highlights another really important architectural feature of the Mahabodhi temple. In an article she wrote for the Rubin Museum, she writes, quote, the notable structural layout of four smaller towers placed around the central one

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identifies it as a sacred site of the enlightenment. Buddha Virochina resides at the center of his mandala or sacred realm. Like we’ve discussed on the podcast, the four cardinal points, or in this case, the four towers on the corners,  draw us to and designate the center. From what Pakhautava said, we see that  after the Buddha gained enlightenment, he occupied the very center.

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Vairachina mandalas illustrate this and they depict the Buddha in the center of the mandala seated on the apex  of the sacred mountain. If you’d like to see a couple of pictures of Vairachina mandalas you can find them on the webpage for this episode. Okay so  how is all of this linked to the royal umbrella?  Ah this is where the architecture of the Mahabodhi temple gets interesting.

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If we zone in on the very top of the central tower, the Shikara, we see that it’s crowned with a stupa. A stupa is a rounded mound that scholars believe was patterned after prehistoric megalithic round mound burials. In fact, the word stupa itself means heap or mound in Sanskrit. These mounds traditionally covered the remains of important individuals like the Buddha.

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Buddhist stupas were built  all over India to mark the sacred sites where the Buddha’s relics were enshrined. The stupa crowning the Mahabodhi temple is a little more elongated than is traditionally found, but it’s still a stupa. If you look below the stupa, you’ll notice that it sits atop a square base. This square base represents the Buddha’s throne. So you can probably surmise that the stupa itself

46:01

came to represent  the Buddha. You’re also gonna notice that a band of undulating garland decorates the circumference of the base of the dome. This represents the full blooming of the Buddha’s enlightenment, which is why he is depicted most often in Buddhist iconography seated on a lotus throne. If you look on the very top of the stupa, you’ll notice that a series of seven tapering disks  rise

46:30

from the very center of the dome, each disc a bit higher than the one below it and a little bit smaller. So the seven discs actually kind of look like a pyramid. But these aren’t discs at all. They’re actually seven  umbrellas stacked one atop the other. When we put it all together, the architecture found on the peak of the mountain is meant to symbolize the Buddha seated on a throne

46:58

beneath the royal umbrella, or in this case, a pyramid of seven royal umbrellas. And don’t ignore that the architecture itself places Buddha’s throne  on the peak of the mountain, much like the rest of the ancient world. Okay, so why seven umbrellas? Longhurst, who wrote The Influence of the Umbrella on Indian Architecture, provides pictorial evidence

47:27

that the Buddhist stupa was originally topped by a single royal umbrella. But then over time, more and more umbrellas were added from two to three to seven to nine to 11 to as many as 13. Now all kinds of people, scholars, adherents, and laymen offer up interpretations for these stacked umbrellas. But the overall consensus seems to be that each tier either represents a stage on the path to enlightenment where each successive step

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quote, requires progressive sacrifice or that they represent a progression of sacred precincts in the heavens, layers of Svargas or heavens, which is kind of similar to the notion of seven heavens. So when seven umbrellas are depicted above the Buddha, this signifies that he is one who has obtained the highest stage of enlightenment or the highest heaven.

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Take note in this interpretation how the canopy of the umbrella, the dome of the umbrella, like the canopy of a tree, serves as a symbol of heaven. Okay, so I’m gonna come back to that in a couple of minutes. There’s one more really fascinating tidbit about the royal umbrella. Are you familiar with pagodas? Pagodas are those tiered towers or buildings that are found all over Asia, in China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal. Well, guess what?

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Pagodas actually trace their design back to the stacked royal umbrellas you see on Buddhist stupas. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But it’s true. Pagodas are basically architectural versions of the tiered umbrellas that crown the Buddhist stupa. In the influence of the umbrella on Indian architecture, Longhurst lays out all of the architectural evidence for this. And on page eight, he concludes,  commencing with the regal umbrella of a king.

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placed above the stupa as a mark of profound respect, the memory of the Buddha. We eventually find this simple ornament, finally transformed into a mini roofed pagoda of great height. I find this pretty darn fascinating. So just remember, every time you see a pagoda, you’re really looking at a stylized architectural version of a stack of royal umbrellas, which in turn,

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are meant to represent trees, the sacred tree. I hope you can see from this that there’s a lot of cosmology and theology wrapped up in sacred architecture.  I can’t believe we’re almost out of time. There’s so, so much more I wish I could tell you about the royal umbrella and its use in Mongolia and Japan and Korea and even Africa among the Ashanti, Socat and Benin peoples.

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but I’ll just have to leave it up to you to study that on your own if you’re interested. I do want to take a second and talk about the royal umbrella in Thailand and then touch on its use in China before I close out the episode. In Thailand, in the throne hall located in the Grand Palace in Bangkok, there are actually two  magnificent gilded thrones. The larger of the two thrones is actually very, very interesting because the throne itself is shaped like a

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Yes, a boat where the king’s throne is placed inside the boat in the center of the boat,  just like we saw in ancient Egypt. The throne itself is covered by a four post canopy like a baldachin with curtains that can be used to veil the king. And the throne itself is flanked by two seven tiered umbrellas. The entire throne sits on an elevated pavilion, which represents

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Mount Meru. So  note here how the King of Siam or the King of Thailand’s throne sits  on the summit of the sacred mountain. Also just like we saw with Atum in ancient Egypt. All of this is fascinating, especially the boat. When we consider the cosmic significance of the boat or ark in the ancient world,  this is pretty remarkable. Now

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I haven’t studied the history of the Thai throne in depth. So I don’t know if all of this is just coincidence, but I will say that the symbolism the Thai people are using here aligns perfectly with how we would expect it to be used based on what we’ve learned from the ancient world. In front of this throne sits another throne. This throne is magnificent too. You really need to check out the pictures I’ve posted on the webpage.

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for this episode, the thrones are stunning. This throne like the previous throne is elevated and it’s centered in the middle of four stylized gilded trees, one on each corner and directly behind where the king sits, the shaft of a beautiful nine tiered white umbrella rises directly above the king so that the center of the umbrella  rests directly above the king’s head.

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This umbrella is known as the Royal Nine-Tiered Umbrella.  Now, don’t forget that the umbrella is a symbolic representation of the sacred tree. So when the staff of the umbrella rises from the king’s back, this is akin to saying that the king  is the tree. So why nine tiers? Well, the nine-tiered umbrella represents, quote, the king’s power and prestige, which extends in eight.

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directions, the four cardinal directions  and the four subcardinal directions. And where does the king sit? He sits in the center making nine. So note how this makes an eight pointed star. A scholar by the name of Eugenie Moreo out of the University of Paris  notes in her article, a constitutional ethnography of monarchy, Buddhist kingship published in the Asian journal of law and society,

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that the Thai King’s coronation distinguishes him  as a quote, King over both the kingdom  and the universe  as a Chakra Vartan. Remember that? We talked about that in the last episode, a universal  monarch. If you remember, it’s the umbrella that marks the King as a Chakra Varti, a King of the universe or a cosmic King.

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And it’s worth noting Thai kings are anointed as part of the coronation rite and are crowned with the quote, great crown of victory. The crown’s name, the crown of victory, alludes to the Buddha’s  spiritual triumph over Mara, the demon who impedes the Buddhist’s pursuit of enlightenment by way of desire and delusion and obstacle. The great crown of victory

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represents that the king is now a deva rajah, a god king, a deified monarch. You can find a picture of the great crown of victory on the webpage for this episode. The towering,  multi-tiered, canonical design,  as we’ve discussed before in the program, represents the sacred Mount Maru. If we turn to China,

55:11

The royal umbrella symbolized imperial authority there too. It was carried in ceremonial processions and it was raised whenever the emperor rode his chariot. The Metropolitan Museum of Art houses this remarkable little  3D model from the mausoleum of China’s first emperor established clear back in 2021 BC. This is the same site where the famous terracotta army was found. This model depicts the emperor

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seated in a chariot beneath a large  majestic umbrella. I’ll talk a lot more about China and the use of the royal umbrella in a couple of months. Just know that it was used as a mark of royal distinction in China too. We’ve covered quite a bit to this point, but there’s even more to the symbolism of the umbrella than I’ve mentioned. It’s related to the tree, but you might have to give it a little thought.

56:09

So let’s give the umbrella another look. Let’s start with an aerial view. If you look down at an umbrella from above, what would you see? Would it remind you of any other symbol we’ve discussed on the program? Because it should. If you look down at an umbrella from above, you should notice, first of all, that the umbrella creates a circle. And the second thing that you should notice is that in the very center of the circle,

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There’s  usually either a small circular cap or a button of some sort marking where the tip of the shaft stops. Sometimes the shaft actually protrudes through the center of the umbrella a little bit, like a half an inch or so, and it creates an even more prominent center. So when we look at it from above, we see a center circumscribed by a circle. What do we call this? Yes.

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a circumpunked. What we see when we look down at an umbrella from above is a circumpunked. On page 702 of the History of Cartography, volume two, book two, published by the University of Chicago Press, the author Joseph F. Schwartzberg notes that in a Malaysian text belonging to one Abdul Razak, the size of heaven was associated with the diameter of an umbrella.

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This text reads, quote, heaven is of the width  of an umbrella. This is a fascinating text because it reveals that the umbrella  was indeed understood to be a symbolic depiction of heaven or the heavens. But it’s also important because when it says heaven is the width of an umbrella, it attests to the notion that heaven  has a defined boundary. It only extends to a certain width.

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After that, there’s something else, something that is not heaven-like outside the boundary, which the ancients have been telling us all along. So when we talk about the umbrella as a symbol, what we really have is a cosmic umbrella. We’ve discussed this several times on the program, but for the new listeners, the circum-punked is a cosmological symbol.

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It’s meant to be a symbolic representation of how the cosmos are structured. Technically it’s referred to as a cosmographic symbol because it’s a symbol that gives us a map or a blueprint of how the cosmos are actually structured or ordered. In this case, the circumpunk attests that the cosmos has a center. And the ancients tell us that this center is very special because it is the holiest place in all of the cosmos  because

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It’s the location where God dwells. The outer ring or the outer circle represents the border, a firm border or barrier of some type, which we discussed in episodes number 51, 52, and 53, that surrounds God’s entire cosmic kingdom. It has a width. Everything inside the circle, from the center to the border,

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represents cosmicized  sacred space. And because that space is sacred, completely cut off from the profane waters of chaos, it is by definition a temple. In this case, everything within the circle is part of a cosmic temple. A temple by definition demarcates and separates all that is sacred from all that is profane. And all of this corresponds with the sacred tree.

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Because as we’ve already established in today’s episode, the sacred tree grows  in the center. The royal umbrella ties  all of this symbolism directly to the king. The king is to be understood as  or a representation of the tree. God growing in the center of the cosmos. He is understood to be a cosmic king like God.

01:00:26

He’s made the  arduous climb to the summit of the sacred mountain and come off victorious.  Now he can wear the great crown of victory and claim his kingdom.  At its core, the umbrella is first and foremost a symbol of the sacred center. But like we’ve pointed out on the program, there are layers to symbols. The umbrella is not just a symbol of the sacred center.

01:00:53

It’s also a symbol of the structure of the cosmos, of the sacred tree, of God, of God’s cosmic kingdom, of sacred space versus profane space, et cetera. But note how all of these layers that we find in the umbrella tell the same cosmological and theological story.  And there’s even more to the symbolism of the umbrella that I haven’t hit on today, which I’m gonna say

01:01:23

for down the line. So just know that there is more to come. When we think  of the Hindu groom, robed in royal regalia, processing to the marriage arena, with the royal umbrella raised above his head, we have to ask some important theological questions. Does this convey that every Hindu groom has the potential to become a Chakravarthi?

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a universal or cosmic king? Because it sure seems like it does. And that’s some pretty astounding theology. But that is  the theology of the ancient tradition. So the next time you hold an umbrella over your head, think on that. Think of your cosmic potential. That’s it for me. I’ll leave you with the words of William Shakespeare.

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Knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.  I’m Jack Logan.

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You’ve been listening to the Ancient Tradition.  A Wonk Media Production.