Mount Kailash

Mount Kailash (also Mount Kailas; Kangrinboqê or Gang Rinpoche; Tibetan: གངས་རིན་པོ་ཆེ, Sanskrit: कैलाश Kailāśa) is a peak in the Kailash Range (Gangdisê Mountains), which forms part of the Transhimalaya in Tibet China. It lies near the source of some of the longest rivers in Asia: the Indus River, the Sutlej River (a major tributary of the Indus River), the Brahmaputra River, and the Karnali River (a tributary of the River Ganga). It is considered a sacred place in four religions: Bön, Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. The mountain lies near Lake Manasarovar and Lake Rakshastal in Tibet.

Name

The mountain is known as Kailāśa (कैलाश) in Sanskrit. The word may be derived from the word kēlāsa (केलास) which means "crystal". In his Tibetan-English dictionary, Chandra (1902: p. 32) identifies the entry for 'kai la sha' (Wylie: kai la sha ) which is a loan word from Sanskrit 'kailāśa' (Devanagari: कैलाश).

The Tibetan name for the mountain is Gangs Rin-po-che. Gangs or Kang is the Tibetan word for snow peak analogous to alp or himal; rinpoche is an honorific meaning "precious one" so the combined term can be translated "precious jewel of snows".

Kailash: A Journal of Himalayan Studies

Kailash: A Journal of Himalayan Studies (ISSN 0377-7499) is a scholarly journal that started publication in 1973. The journal focuses on the history and anthropology of the Himalayan region. Printed on traditional rice paper in Kathmandu, Nepal, it is difficult to acquire and only a handful of university libraries have assembled a complete set. Some articles are available in PDF or HTML format.

References

Kailash (disambiguation)

Kailash may refer to:

Mountains

Places and buildings