Razing Arizona

When you see what the Hopi tribe of Native Americans called Ongtupqua (since 1871, the "Grand Canyon") you see that which is rightly reckoned holy. Here is an inexpressible temple of the earth needing no artifice to sustain. Photographs do it no justice, and painters can only try; so, what chance is afforded mere words? The palettes there are not only of color, but of possibility. The songs are silence. 

The best way to leave possibility is to leave it alone. The silence is absence, the way mantra is absent from mantra: a full, rich resonance without beginning, middle, or end. This is what a river does if you leave it alone. Never the same river twice.

The first human habitation of this region is reliably dated to 1200 BCE. In this holy place that has been inhabited by peoples of varying persuasion for over 3,200 years, it is likely we can agree on almost anything, and call it "history." Much evidence points to the Anasazi as the first inhabitants; "Anasazi," being the Navajo word for "Ancient Ones." Thus does the canyon become home to the Native American Nyingmapa, if you like to romanticize things that way.

So, then --

Amongst the comings and goings, there comes in 1885 a remarkable book entitled An Inglorious Columbus; or, Evidence That Hwui Shan and A Party of Buddhist Monks from Afghanistan Discovered America in the Fifth Century, A.D. The book's author is one Edward Payson Vining: a freight manager for the Union Pacific Railroad, noted as being of such avarice that contemporaries refused to have anything to do with him.

Vining seems to have been inspired by the 1875 publication, in London, of a work by Charles Godfrey Leland entitled, Fusang; or, The Discovery of America by Buddhist Priests in the Fifth Century.

This work was preceded by the mid-eighteenth century investigations of the French sinologist Joseph de Guignes ("Le Fou-Sang des Chinois est-il l'Amerique?" Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Vol. XXVIII, 1761).

The de Guigne investigations led to those of the mid-nineteenth century conducted by Prof. Carl Friedrich Neumann, at the University of Munich.

Leland's book seems, in fact, a translation of Neuman's 1841 translation of de Guignes's translation of an interpolation of Hui Shan's reputed 746 character report to his Emperor! The hermeneutic niceties of all this are eloquently studied in a Village Voice article (of all places) by Ed Park, which I now commend to your eager attention.

For the consequent, late date literature survey of it all -- a link that purports to no longer be missing, and the work that drags in Arizona -- try a 1953 work by Henriette Mertz, Gods from the Far East: How the Chinese Discovered America.

Photograph from Grandview Point taken 2009

To boil it all down to a single postulate, sometime around 485 or so, Hui Shan (慧深) introduced Buddhism to the native peoples in and around the Grand Canyon, known to the Celestials as a place called Fusang ( 扶桑).

"In former times, the people of Fusang knew nothing of the Buddhist religion, but in the second year of Da Ming of the Song dynasty (485 CE), five monks from Kipin (Kabul region of Gandhara) travelled by ship to that country. They propagated Buddhist doctrine, circulated scriptures and drawings, and advised the people to relinquish worldly attachments. As a result, the customs of Fusang changed."
           --Liang Shu, as quoted by Lily Chow, Chasing Their Dreams (2001)

So, then --

I will be the first one to tell you, scholarship leading to the postulate above stands better scrutiny by the dons at St. Syllogism's School of Wishful History than by those of Oxford or even those to let at SOAS. Ms. Mertz was an attorney and World War II codebreaker who liked to wring similarity and sense out of words whether by force or a penny in a fountain.

There we might leave it, save for an alleged 5 April 1909 front page article in the Arizona Gazette: "Explorations in the Grand Canyon," reporting on a 1908 discovery by G.E. Kincaid of Lewiston, Idaho:

"The recent finds include articles which have never been known as native to this country, and doubtless they had their origin in the orient. War weapons, copper instruments, sharp-edged and hard as steel, indicate the high state of civilization reached by these strange people"

And also, of rather more interest, the following purported statement:

"Over a hundred feet from the entrance is the cross-hall, several hundred feet long, in which are found the idol, or image, or the peoples' god, sitting cross-legged, with a lotus flower or lily in each hand. The cast of the face is oriental, and the carving this cavern. The idol almost resembles Buddha, though the scientists are not certain as to what religious worship it represents. Taking into consideration everything found thus far, it is possible that this worship most resembles the ancient people of Tibet. Surrounding this idol are smaller images, some very beautiful in form -- others crooked-necked and distorted shapes, symbolical, probably, of good and evil. There are two large cactus with protruding arms, one on each side of the dais on which the god squats. All this is carved out of hard rock resembling marble."

Oh, here we have the makings of a marvelous adventure. That Buddhist archaeology may take its turn in the United States is a wonderful dream!

Of course, the above may -- more probably than not -- turn out to be crap, but what pleases me in the above accounts are the references to Afghanistan, and copper.

Like most of you, I do have a friend from a Copper-Colored Mountain who had no trouble traveling from place to place, and liked to leave behind things for others to discover.