Oḍḍiyāna

Oḍḍiyāna (o rgyan)

• Oḍḍiyāna , the birth-place of Padmākara, is the name of an ancient kingdom, probably situated in the remote north-west of the Indian subcontinent, where a large corpus of tantric literature is said to have been propagated in the human world for the first time. The land of Oḍḍiyāna is associated with a number of great accomplished masters (siddha) including Padmasambhava, Kambalapāda, and Līlāvajra in particular. On the basis of traditional Tibetan pilgrimage accounts, such as that writen by O-rgyan-pa Rin-chen-dpal, modern writers identify Oḍḍiyāna as having been in the region of the Swat valley in Pakistan. The Tibetan form of Oḍḍiyāna, O-rgyan, is also by extension a name for Padmasambhava himself. GD (from the Glossary to Tibetan Elemental Divination Paintings)