The Hollow Earth In The Puranas

July 5, 2003

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 impact should be recognised. 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 Shambala to anniliate miscreants on the surface of the globe. It is noteworthy that Shamballa is mentioned in the Puranas as a city of the planet's interior. But not only in the Puranas, in the Tibetan collective memory also, Shambala is deemed to be a city in the Earth's interior. Afterwards, the general Puranic version goes that men will come to the surface from the interior of the planet to re-colonise and re-start Vedic culture.

There is yet another prominent Puranic story which openly makes reference to the hollow portion of the Earth- It is the story of the sons of Maharaj Sagara. Indra had stolen the sacrificial horse meant for the ashvamedha sacrifice ( a type of fire sacrifice ). As the story goes, his sons went searching after the horse and came to a Northern ocean, which they traveled over, and entered into the " bowels " of the Earth. There, they found the horse at the hermitage of Kapila Rishi. The sons of Sagara manhandled the him even though the rishi 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 the rishi, we can conclude that the sons of Maharaj Sagara were a rought lot indeed! On a more serious note, though, a correspondence exists in that hollow Earth investigators indicate the existence of openings in the polar areas of this planet ( and support such allegations with various evidence ). 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. But even this statement seems to confirm the placement of the opening by hollow Earth investigators, which seems to lie North of the Russian penninsula Severnaya Zemiya. How interesting it is that in order to reach this area from India, one would have to travel Northeast! ( For reference, scroll halfway down and see the color map: http://www.ourhollowearth.com/PolarOpn.htm )

Jan Lamprecht ( www.hollowplanets.com ) has recently observed in his book Hollow Planets that all the planets seem to have unusual depressions at one pole or the other. Mr. Lamprecht has even made the point that the depressions on Venus are synonomous with the origin of wind patterns!

Another noteworthy point to be gleaned from this narration is that Vedic culture flourished 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, and who spoke Sanskrit.

An obvious question arises, however- why don't the Puranas just come out and explain to us about the hollow Earth? Well, remember that these Puranas were written at the juncture between two yugas, before the effects of the Kali Yuga, such as forgetfulness and ignorance, had really 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 understand the true configuration of the planet, and therefore, don't offer any special explanations. By way of anology, imagine that a writer were to narrate a story of the deciding battle of the American Revolution, 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 na ocean indeed exists. It would not be natural for such a writer to try to explain and substantiate the existence of the French people or of the ocean in the middle of a narration. It seems that, in the same way, the Puranas simply mention the " bowels " of the Earth and Kapila Rishi's hermitage there such in the course of their narrations, without offering any special explanations.

This Puranic evidence constitutes a landmark addition to the body of hollow Earth evidence. It is interesting because the Tibetan lore referring to the hollow Earth became popularised 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 their rich hollow Earth folklore in his book, which mentions the cities of Shambala, Shangri La, and the kingdom of Agharta. And quite possibly the Tibetan hollow Earth lore has been better conserved because of the tunnels that are said to run between the 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 Westernised Indologists. They weren't exactly looking for clues about the geological nature 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 persue fleeing targets, weapons born of mantras, beings from other planets with incredible life spans who were indentified as progenitors of humanity and who even guided humanity. Well, the British naturally disregarded it all as poppy cock. But now we have seen some of these things come true; we have seen the advent of flight, guided missles and voice-activated weapons. Because of this, reason exists for us to revisit the Puranic narrations with a wide-angle lens in general, not just in relation to hollow Earth comments, though these comments about the bowels of the Earth, the hermitage of Kapila Rishi, and about Shambala and such certainly merit specific focus.