The Puranas
make several comments in relation to the hollow Earth which should not be taken
lightly. Although they are but comments in passing, their significance should be
recognized. One such Puranic comment has to do with the narration of the Kalki
avatar- that at the end of Kali Yuga, the Kalki Avatar will be born in the best
of Brahmin families of the city of Shamballa to annilate miscreants on the
surface of the globe. Afterwards, the general Puranic version goes that Vedic
culture will be re-settled on the surface of the Earth from the interior of the
planet. It is noteworthy that Shamballa is depicted in the Puranas as a city of
the planet’s interior. Not only in the Puranas, but in Tibetan collective
memory also, Shamballa is deemed to be a city in the Earth’s interior.
There are
other prominent Puranic stories which openly make reference to the hollow
portion of the Earth such as the one relating to the avatar Parasurama, and may
be found in the Ninth Canto, Sixteenth Chapter, Texts 19 - 21, of the Bhagavatam
Purana. The 19th text says that He confronted the warrior caste 21 times and
banished them to
the face of the Earth. The word Prithivim was used to indicate the
“face“ of the Earth.
Then it is explained that Parasurama distributed the eight points of the compass
to certain rishis. This only makes sense as
he was rather disgusted with the
warrior caste. Rishis are different than warriors, of course- they are members
of the priestly caste. For example, they are tolerant, intellectual, they
practice goodness, etc.
After mentioning the eight points of the compass and the rishis whom received
lordship over these areas, the " madhyayatah ", the middle portion,
was then mentioned; the Bhagavat
Purana says that the middle portion was distributed to Kashyapa Rishi. So while
adopting a descriptive tone of narration, and after having mentioned the surface
or the " face " of the world, the Bhagavata Purana went on to contrast
by mentioning the middle portion, practically in the same breath.
The wording and story line of this narration about the avatar Parasurama is
directly indicative of the Hollow Earth Theory.
And yet
another is the story of the sons of Maharaj Sagara. It seems that Indra had
stolen the sacrificial horse meant for the ashvamedha
sacrifice ( a type of fire sacrifice ). As the story goes, the sons of Sagara
went searching after the horse and came to a
northern ocean, which they traveled
over, and entered into the interior of the Earth. There, they found the horse at
the hermitage of Kapila Rishi. The sons of Sagara manhandled the the rishi even
though he swore that it wasn’t him who had stolen the horse. What can we
conclude from this story?
Well, first
of all, because they manhandled a rishi, we can conclude that the sons of
Maharaj Sagara were a rough bunch indeed! On a more serious note, though, a
correspondence exists in that hollow
earth investigators indicate the existence
of openings near the polar areas of this planet ( and support such allegations
with various evidences, for example, Polar anomalies such as warming ). This
would account for having to cross a Northern ocean in order to enter into the
interior of the planet.
The Bhagavat Purana doesn’t go into as much description as other Puranas do; the Bhagavat just says that the sons of Sagara went in the Northeast direction. From what exact point we don't really know. But even this statement seems to confirm the placement of the opening by hollow Earth investigators, who place it in the Arctic Ocean between Ellesmere Island and the Russian peninsula Severnaya Zemlya.
Another
noteworthy point to be gleaned from this narration is that Vedic culture existed
in the hollow Earth, as none other than Kapila Rishi had his hermitage there.
How congruent with the descriptions given by Olaf Jansen, the Norwegian youth
who claimed to have wandered into the opening with his father on their sailboat.
Olaf described a human society which seemed to correspond to Puranic
descriptions from before the start of the Kali Yuga. He described humans being
12 to 14 feet tall, with life spans of almost 1,000 years, photographic memories,
who spoke Sanskrit and worshipped the Sun, albeit the interior sun.
An obvious
question arises, however- why don’t the Puranas just come out and explain to
us about the hollow Earth, then? Well, remember that these Puranas were
originally compiled at the juncture between two yugas, before the effects of the
Kali Yuga, such as forgetfulness and ignorance, had completely come to manifest.
Maybe it is for this reason that the Puranas speak of the hollow Earth in such a
way that they assume people naturally know about it, and therefore don’t offer
any special explanations. By way of analogy, if a writer were to narrate the
story of the deciding battle of the American Revolution, the Battle of Yorktown,
he or she might explain that the French cut off any possible retreat by the
British by way of sea; and then the writer would probably go on with the story.
But the writer would assume that the reader knows who the French are and that
they come from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and that such an ocean
indeed exists. It would not occur to the writer to try to explain and
substantiate the existence of the French people or of the ocean in the middle of
the narration, obviously. It seems that, similarly, the Puranas simply mention
the “ bowels “ of the Earth and Kapila Rishi’s hermitage there in the
course of their narrations, without offering any special explanations.
But the
Puranic evidence is actually of much interest to the adherents of the Hollow
Earth Theory; it actually constitutes a landmark addition to the body of hollow
Earth evidence. This is interesting because the Tibetan lore refering to the
hollow Earth became popularized among the proponents of the theory a long time
ago, even spawning a major motion picture production entitled “ Shangri La “
in the 1930s, which was re-done in the 70s. Maybe this was due to the impact of
a book written by Nicholas Roerich entitled simply “ Shambala,” which was
published in 1930. He had traveled in Tibet and related the rich hollow Earth
folklore in his book, which mentions the cities of Shambala, Shangri La, and
the kingdom of Agharta. Quite possibly the Tibetan hollow Earth collective
memory has been better conserved because
of the tunnels that are said to run between Agharta and Tibet- it is possible
that the Tibetans received influence from the hollow
earth for a longer period
of time for this reason.
The Puranic
hollow Earth content hasn’t been much recognised because we in the West have
always experienced the Puranas through the filter of
westernized Indologists,
who weren’t much aware of hollow Earth folklore, nor were they exactly looking
for clues about the true geological configuration of our planet as they went
about their studies of the Vedic literature.
These
comments about the hollow Earth must have passed them by, as did a lot of
comments in the Vedic literature. When the British first studied the Vedic
literature after their invasion into India 200 years ago, they noticed comments
about things such as aircraft ( vimanas ), arrows and disks which were able to
pursue fleeing targets, weapons born of mantras, as well as beings from other
planets with incredible life spans who were identified as the progenitors of
humanity. Well, the British naturally disregarded such comments as poppycock.
But now we have seen some of these
things come true; we have seen the advent of flight, guided missiles and
voice-activated weapons. Thus it might behoove followers of Vedic dharma to
revisit the Puranic narrations with a wide-angle lens- These comments about the
bowels of the Earth, the hermitage of Kapila Rishi, the Parasurama Avatar and
about Shambala certainly merit specific focus.
