I was just walking through some documents I had saved over the years, when it struck me that there has been very little new research work or relook into the history of the hill states. One particular format has been the examination of oral ballads, very few of which seem to be available in popular culture today. However, that was certainly not the case in the British era, when much field work seems to have been done by scholars of Europe on the subject, as they panned across the state of the Lahore kingdom and their adjunct territories. Sirmour was a Small Princely state along the Yamuna river's course While their purpose may have been malevolent in nature, many interesting insights got captured over the course of their work, and replication or improvement on the same seems to be rather scarce, especially in the context of what the European scholars used to call the "Punjab Hill States". One such case was on Sirmour, where very little information can be found in the publi...
Padma Sambhava Padma Sambhava, the Vajra Guru in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism, is a widely revered figure, and his imagery is seen in many monasteries, temples and on frescoes and thangkas alike. His contributions to the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet is well recorded in Tibetan Buddhist literature, where a mix of belief and history overlap to identify him as a very powerful mystical figure. It is interesting though that very few people realize and remember the link of Pamda Sambhava with India. Even fewer are aware of the link of Padma Sambhava with Himachal Pradesh. Among Tibetans, Mandi was always known as Zahor, from where the great Guru Padma Sambhava had come at the behest of the then Tibetan king Trisong Detsen somewhere between 750-800 A.D.. As noted by Hutchison and Vogel in their magnum opus on the Punjab Hill States, Padma Sambhava appeared in Tibet in the ancient dress of Mandi, which even today is known as Zahorma by the Tibetans. Zahor is the place from wh...