I think that is incorrect, the ancient world map means that the four continents lie around Antarctis, which is Mt Sumeru, and they lie neatly around it, that is India, Africa, South America and Australia. They correspond to Jambudvipa, Videha, Kuru and Godaniya. Sun goes around Antarctis, there is no problem with that. Other lands and continents are the outlying border regions.Kai wrote:Buddhist Mythology are largely taken from the earlier Vedas ones, the parallels are striking. Mount sumera = Mount Meru and as anyone would have guessed, its within the Himalayas range. No doubt that ancient Buddhists must have viewed India as the legendary southern continent, Jambudvipa while China is the Eastern one and Persia/Arabs to the west so on. Of course, this is perfectly understandably as ancient Indians tend to view the human of other races as separate human species due to the ignorance of biological science and attachment to superficial difference like skin colours, etc. If we take the Buddhist mythology literally, it would have meant that only Indians, people of the southern continent, are able to attain Buddhahood which is a nonsensical conclusion.Astus wrote: Sure, there are many realms and many "planets". Still, if we go with the sequence of lives there is still a problem. Also, many jatakas and stories about former buddhas are placed in India, including cities from the Buddha's time. We can put all this into the category of "myths", nevertheless, these are the traditional views. Just like anything, this can change too. But it's a good reminder how ANY teaching may be reviewed and changed or forgot for ever.
Furthermore, Buddhist conception of world system (Since the ancient idea behind the four continents only include China, Middle East, India and probably Russia region) doesn't include modern continents like Americas, Africa or Europe in it, for that, it is greatly flawed. And if people try to treat the huge America continent as a separate world system, it will create another problem.......that two world systems sharing the same moon and sun.
For people who argued that the people of northern continent and so on, are found in another planet and not on Earth, then they will face the fact or problem that there are no life found in other planets of our solar system and if they are found in other solar systems, then they have a different sun and moon from the people of the Southern continent. Therefore Northern, Western and Eastern continents must be found on our planet Earth and the fact that great Chinese monk Xuanzang once stated in his record that China = Eastern Continent and so on, support this deduction.
Its about time that Buddhist recognized the fact that their cosmological model require some revising or fine tuning.
I will talk about Chakravartins idea another day....Its something that many Buddhists take for granted without knowing that its another idea taken from their Brahmanism ancestry......
The map is hugely old and there has crept certain misunderstanding into it.