There are references to Meru, the Mountain in the Vedas, Purans.
In Sankalpa we say ‘ Mero: Dakshina Pasve/Uttar Parsve :”the South,North of the Meru.
In the description of Devi Lalitha’s Abode, Her Chinatmai Gruham is described,
Sumeru Mandala Madhyasthaa Sriman Nagara Nayikaa’
The Sumeru may mention the Physical Meru as well.( Su Meru means , The Meru, which is Auspicious’,
Is Meru a Physical location?
In the description of Brahmanda, the description of the Earth, Jambooth Dweepa, contains the reference to Meru.
Jainism and Buddism also refer to it.
Meru finds a place in Africa Spain as well.
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‘The Hindus at Bikanir Rajputana taught that the mountain Meru is in the centre surrounded by concentric circles of land and sea.
Some Hindus regard Mount Meru as the north pole.
The astronomical views of the Puranas make the heavenly bodies turn round it.’
Description by Jainism.
The whole wide universe is seen by the knowledge of omni-knowledge.
There is a Tircha Lok within it. The road leading to it is both long and wide.
The height is 1800 yojans, of which 900 yojans are on flat land, while the other 900yojans are on height.
In this 900 yojans the last 110 Yojans contain a jyotis circle, where the Jyotishi gods abode.
The aircrafts of these gods move around the Meru Mountain.
One Yojana is about 8 Miles.
Meru Mountain is located exactly in the center of Jambudwip between East and West Mahavideh.
In the north isDevkuru situated and Uttarkuru in south.
Meru Mountain is like a pillar, which is wider at base and gets narrower and narrower as it grows up.
The height of Meru Mountain is one lakh yojans, of which 1000 yojans are below earth and 99,000 yojans are above.
The wide is 10090 yojans in the root within the earth whereas it is 10,000 yojans wide on the earth level.
Gradually the width becomes less and less as it grows up, and on the top peak it is 100 yojans wide.
Thus the Meru Mountain is very wide in its root, gets less wider in the middle and becomes least wide at the top.
The shape is similar to the tail of a cow. The whole mountain is very clean, full of diamonds, lakes and forests. Above the peak is a chulika.
Meru Mountain is divided into three divisions (Chulika apart). These are called Kands:
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First Kand is called Adhyostankand.
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Second Kand is called Madhya (Middle) Kand.
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Third Kand is called Uparitan Kand.
The lowest Kand has a height of 1000 yojans, that of Middle Kand is 63,000 yojans and that of top Kand is 36,000yojans.
There are four forests on Mountain Meru:
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Bhadrasha Van: It is located at the foot hill of the mountain on flat land.
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It is surrounding the Mountain Meru on all four sides. Its North and south width is 250 yojans and its east-west width is 22,000 yojans. The whole forest is divided into eight sections with four tree-shape mountains, viz. Saumanas, Vidyut, Prabh, Gandhmadan andMalyavan and two rivers, viz. Sita and Sitoda.
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Nandan Van: It is 500 yojans higher than the Bhadrashal Van and 62,500 yojans below the Somansvan.
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Its area is 500 yojans. In exact the middle of this section is Abhyantar Meru and in a distant of 50 Yojans are eightKut of Dishakumaris. There are eight Palaces of eight Dishakumaris of Urdhva Loks; there is a Kut 500 yojansabove it where a palace of the goddess is situated. Thus, the goddess stays 1000 yojans above the flat earth. 900 yojans of this section belong to Tirchha Lok while the 100 yojans above belong to Urdhva Lok (upper Lok);so the Goddess belongs to this upper Lok. Besides, in Nandanvan, there are four temples (Chaitra) on four sides of it. In other directions are two palaces of Ishanendra.
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Somvan: Somvan is situated 62,500 yojans above of Nandanvan. This is another series of Meru Mountain which is 500 yojans wide.
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Pandagvan: Pandagvan is 3600 yojans above Somvan. It is circularly 494 yojans wide.
Meru in Hinduism.
Mount Meru (Sanskrit: मेरु), also called Sumeru (Sanskrit) or Sineru (Pāli) or Kangrinboqe to which is added the approbatory prefix su-, resulting in the meaning “excellent Meru” or “wonderful Meru” and Mahameru i.e. “Great Meru” (Chinese: 須彌山 Xumi Shan, Japanese: 須弥山 Shumi-sen, Pāli Neru, Burmese: မြင်းမိုရ် Myinmo), is a sacred mountain with five peaks[1] in Hindu, Jain as well as Buddhist cosmologyand is considered to be the center of all the physical, metaphysical and spiritual universes.
Many famous Hindu and similar Jain as well as Buddhist temples have been built as symbolic representations of this mountain.
The highest point (the finial bud) on the pyatthat, a Burmese-style multi-tiered roof, represents Mount Meru.
The dimensions attributed to Mount Meru, all the references to it being as a part of the Cosmic Ocean, along with several statements like that the Sun along with all the planets (including Earth itself) circumambulate the mountain, make determining its location most difficult, according to most scholars.[2][3]
Some researchers identify Mount Meru or Sumeru with the Pamirs, north-east of Kashmir.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]
The Suryasiddhanta mentions that Mt Meru lies in ‘the middle of the Earth’ (“Bhugol-madhya”) in the land of the Jambunad (Jambudvip). Narpatijayacharyā, a 9th-century text, based on mostly unpublished texts of Yāmal Tantr, mentions “Sumeruḥ Prithvī-madhye shrūyate drishyate na tu” (‘Su-meru is heard to be in the middle of the Earth, but is not seen there’).[14] Vārāhamihira, in his Panch-siddhāntikā, claims Mt Meru to be at the North Pole (though no mountain exists there as well). Suryasiddhānt, however, mentions a Mt Meru in the middle of Earth, besides a Sumeru and a Kumeru at both the Poles.
There exist several versions of Cosmology in existing Hindu texts. In one of them, cosmologically, the Meru mountain was also described as being surrounded by Mandrachal Mountain to the east, Supasarv Mountain to the west, Kumuda Mountain to the north and Kailash to the south.[15]
Mount Meru of Hindu traditions has clearly mythical aspects, being described as 84,000 Yojan high (which is around 1,082,000 km (672,000 mi), or 85 times the Earths’s diameter), and having the Sun along with all its planets in the Solar System revolve around it as one unit.
One Yojana can be taken to mean about 11.5 km (9 mi) though its magnitude seems to differ over time periods. E.g. the Earth’s circumference is 3,200 Yojanas according to Vārāhamihira and slightly less so in the Āryabhatiya, but is given to be 5,026.5 Yojanas in the Suryasiddhānta. The Matsya Purana and the Bhāgvata Purāna along with some other Hindu texts consistently give the height of 84,000 Yojanas to Mount Meru which translates into 672,000 miles or 1.082 million kilometers.
Mount Meru is also the abode of Lord Brahma and the Demi-Gods (Dev).
Citations.
Meru in Hinduism
Meru, Sacred Texts
Meru in Jainism
Images Credits, in addition to the links mentioned above, are due, to
http://quadralectics.wordpress.com/
http://migungaadventures.com/
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