The Nikaya schools of early Buddhism, which split many times after the Buddha’s death, developed various philosophical ideas away from the Buddha’s original teachings and compiled a vast collection of treatises called the Abhidharma. One such treatise describes the worldview of Sumeru.
According to the Abhidharmakosha theory, in the void, which is the macrocosm, there is a wind wheel (風輪) made of gas, literally the size of the cosmos, floating. Above it floats a liquid water wheel (水輪) with a diameter of more than eight million kilometres, six times the diameter of the sun, and above it floats a solid gold wheel (金輪) with the same diameter. Above the gold wheel is filled by a sea of salt water, surrounded by an outer wall of iron mountains (鉄山). At the centre of the vast sea rises Mount Sumeru (須弥山), which is ringed by the Seven Gold Mountains (七金山). Surrounding it are four island continents, somewhat separated from each other, with Jambudwipa (閻浮提) in the south being the world inhabited by the ancient Indians. The bottom of the island is connected underwater to the lower level of the Gold Wheel, and deep beneath the Gold Wheel lies the Hell Realm (地獄). Mount Sumeru is said to be inhabited by gods including Indra and Brahma, and the sun (日天) and moon (月天) revolve around its peak.
I will refrain from going into further detail because it would be too complicated, but if you look at the naming of the Golden Wheel, the Water Wheel, and the Wind Wheel, as well as the conceptual diagram above, you will notice that it is clearly based on a wheel (in Pali this wheel world is called “cakka-vāla”: cakka=chakra=wheel), and also very similar to the composition of Shiva Lingam. Here the central axle lingam is replaced by the Sumeru Mountain.
Incidentally, it is known from archaeological sites that during the reign of King Ajatashatru, who appears in the Buddhist scriptures, the wooden wheels of the Ratha chariot were surrounded by iron tyres. The iron enclosure surrounding the great sea of Sumeru may be association with this.
The similarity between Mount Sumeru and the Shiva Lingam is not only in form. There is a fact that the design of Shiva Lingam widely used in Western India, particularly in Maharashtra, often comes with the Surya-Sun and the Chandra-Moon. This would correspond to the images of the Sun and Moon revolving around Mount Sumeru as its central axis.
Based on the assumption of the spread and overlap of the pan-Indian chakra=wheel idea described so far, it would be inferred that the whole composition of Shiva Lingam was closely related to the image of Mount Sumeru, in its formation process.
The worldview of Mount Sumeru is also shared in Hinduism and Jainism under the name Maha Meru (or Sumeru), but as explained previously, the Hindu version of Mount Sumeru was embodied as a three-dimensional representation of the Shri Chakra. This Shri Chakra is a yantra symbolising Shiva’s partner, the divine consort Devi Shakti.
As I might guess, the wheel-based form, originally designed for the Mount Sumeru worldview, has been appropriated by Shaivaists to represent Shiva’s centrality. However, Mount Meru itself must not be lost. Therefore, by making her into a mountain in three dimensions, Shri Chakra the symbol of Shiva’s partner Goddess may have been appropriated for Maha Meru.
The small triangle located at the centre of the Shri Chakra contains a Bindu-dot, which symbolizes the union of Shiva and Shakti, and Shiva’s centrality is still not compromised.
The worldview of Mount Meru is also shared in Jainism, and in March 2010, I was able to see its physical model in Ajmer, Rajasthan. It was a design that added a spoke-like radial pattern to the previously mentioned Buddhist schematic diagram, providing strong support for the hypothesis that the worldview of Mount Meru is based on a wheel.
Jainism is a valuable witness to the preservation and inheritance of various ancient religious ideas and designs, including Buddhism, which has died out in India, to the present day. Confirming that this real-life ‘Meru Mountain Model’ was the form of the Shiva Lingam itself, the hypothesis that the Shiva Lingam was based on an axle and wheel also became a certainty in my mind.
The origin of Mount Meru is very ancient, as evidenced by the fact that its original image is already found in the Pali Canon of early Buddhism. Although it should be noted that the details vary considerably from period to period and sect to sect, this worldview is shared by pan-Indic, in the name of Mount Meru, its centrality and the supremacy of the God’s and Buddha’s abode. And this Meru worldview is also the ideological and structural basis for the Angkor Wat Hindu Temple in Cambodia and the Borobudur Buddhist temples in Indonesia.
Of course, Sumeru, the centre of this world, would overlap not only with Sri Chakra and Shiva Lingam, but also with ‘Skambha, the Universal Pillar of All Things’, detailed in the previous article. Underlying all of those is nothing other than the centrality of the Axle (as the Supreme) in the “Wheel World”.
In fact, the Hindu version of Mount Meru has several patterns in terms of design, including a dome-shaped form that could be considered a Buddhist Stupa itself. I had witnessed the real one of it in South India on my last trip.
The Stupa-like Mount Meru with its domed shape touched something, deep within me.
It may sound abrupt, but what I was remembering at that moment was the five-storey pagoda of Horyuji Temple in Japan. In fact, in the ground floor hall of the five-storey pagoda, a realistic sculpture of Mount Sumeru is placed around the central pillar called “Shinbashira”. It is quite interesting, that the five-storey pagoda, which is essentially a Stupa, has “Mount Sumeru, the Centre of the World” built in the centre of its interior, and the central pillar rises high from the centre of Mount Sumeru.
The five-story pagoda at Horyuji Temple: Official Description
The foundation is buried deeply in the ground, and a cavity containing sacred relics is made within the foundation, and on top of it, the Shinbashira (central pillar) is erected. The first floor of the pagoda features a sculpted model of Mount Sumeru, built from clay around the Shinbashira, with various Buddhist tales and teachings depicted in sculpture on each of the four sides of the hall facing north, south, east, and west.
Asukaen: Nara National Treasure Map
The correspondence between the stupa type of Mount Meru, the centre of the world, and Mount Meru placed at the centre of the interior of the five-storey pagoda, which was originally a stupa, was very profound.
Let’s look back at this five-storey pagoda again, as it was previously introduced in the post ‘The Buddha, who turns Dharma Wheel at its centre‘.
The five-storey pagoda of To-ji Temple in Kyoto, one of the most famous in Japan along with Houryu-ji Temple, is 54.8 metres high and is said to be the tallest wooden pagoda in Japan. It has a legend about the central pillar, Shinbashira.
Inside the ground floor are the Shumidan (Sumeru altar) and a Shinbashira, in the same construction as that of Horyu-ji. The Shumidan enshrines statues of the four Buddhas of the Vajrayana world and the eight great bodhisattvas, but there is no image of Dainichi Nyorai, the principal deity of Shingon esoteric Buddhism. According to the temple history, Kukai himself, who directly oversaw the construction of the five-storey pagoda, positioned Shinbashira, the soaring central pillar, as the Dainichi Nyorai, the principal deity.
The ‘Shumidan’ here refers to the ‘Alter of Mount Sumeru’, and in traditional Japanese Buddhist temples the Shumidan is the place where the minor deities and the main deity are enshrined. In the case of the five-storey pagoda of To-ji Temple, the many Buddhas are arranged on the altar, which resembles Mount Sumeru, and the central pillar, meaning Dainichi Nyorai, rises in the middle.
Dainichi Nyorai is the representative of the Super Buddha in esoteric Buddhism, a so-called Supreme One who, as an extension of Shakyamuni Buddha, also integrates elements of the Hindu main deities such as the sun god Vishnu, and the primordial one or creator god, Brahman.
The base of the central pillar housed the Buddha relics, which most likely represented not only Dainichi Nyorai but also the Buddha himself as its origin. In this light, it may be said that the ancient architecture of Far Eastern Japan, thousands of kilometres away from India, has preserved evidence that the Buddha, as the principal deity, was Skambha=Stambha, the central axle pillar of the world.
This raises a hypothesis. The five-storey pagoda architecture of Japan was an East Asian development of the stupas that once conquered ancient India. If this is the case, then the original Indian stupa may also have contained Mount Sumeru, the centre of this world.
As for the central pillar (or Skambha, Stambha), clear axial pillar structures have already been identified in Nepal, Tibet, and in the estimated internal structure of stupas in South India. What about the case of Mount Meru?
In this regard, I would like to explain below an extremely interesting discovery made in the internal structure of the Sri Lankan Stupa called “Dagaba”, which I visited in November 2010.
This is an exhibition at the National Museum in the capital Colombo, where it clearly shows that a sacred chamber space was set up in the internal centre of the Stupa=Dagaba, and the seven-storey stone pagoda of Mount Sumeru was enshrined there.
On each of the four sides around this Mount Meru are the guardian deity, and this structure is exactly the same as that found in many five-storey pagodas in Japan.
Furthermore, a golden stupa container is placed on the top of this stone Mount Meru, which would be thought to represent the highest heaven (or the world of Nirvana?) further up Mount Meru, in terms of composition. In other words, the stupa or the Buddha himself was put like a crown on the top of Mount Meru which rises in the centre of the world.
This fact lead me to wonder what the Stupa itself, which contained Mount Sumeru in such a way, represented.
What became the breakthrough in this regard was the fact that the white domed body of the stupa was called ‘anda’, or ‘egg’. It is true that the hemispherical white dome does look like an egg cut in half. But what context could there be for Mount Sumeru, or the Buddha himself, to be housed in a giant egg cut in half?
The first clue was again in the Rig Veda.
Chapter 4, Formation of the world: 2. Form of the universe
Regarding the shape of the universe, there is no clear description, but it is once likened to two overlapping bowls (Rig Veda 3.55.20), and also, it is said that Indra separated heaven and earth like supporting the wheels of a chariot with an axle (Rig Veda 10.89.4), which suggests that they considered the surface of the earth to be circular.
Nakamura Hajime’s Selected Works, Vol. 8, “The Thought of the Vedas”, p. 451
I have said this in the other post, but Indian thought is a kaleidoscopic world that overlaps with various meanings and is congested and tangled. In the above quote, “the universe described metaphorically as two overlapping bowls of heaven and earth“, and the depiction of “Indra separated heaven and earth and supported them like the axle of a Ratha chariot supports its two wheels”, were juxtaposed. This does not mean that one or the other is absolute, but rather, depending on the mood of the moment in each ritual ceremony, each one was metaphorically expressed as such in the heightened poetic imagination.
What important here is the first description of the “two overlapping bowls”. What exactly are these “bowls”? The original text on the internet and its English translation reads as follows.
mahī sam airac camvā samīcī ubhe te asya vasunā nyṛṣṭe | śṛṇve vīro vindamāno vasūni mahad devānām asuratvam ekam ||
Wisdom Library
He has filled the two vast receptacles (heaven and earth) united (with creatures); they are both penetrated by his lustre; the hero spoiling the treasures (of the foe) is renowned; great and unequalled is the might of the gods.
Commentary by Sāyaṇa: Ṛgveda-bhāṣya
The two vast receptacles: camvau, the two vessels in which gods and men eat.
In conjunction with the above commentary, it can be inferred that what Dr Nakamura refers to as a ‘bowl’ is a round bowl (or receptacle, vessel) used as tableware. So what exactly did these bowls look like? When I hear the word ‘bowl’ for eating in an Indian context, I first think of an alms bowl…
This reminded me that the common stupas found in ancient India, Nepal and Sri Lanka are known in academic terms (in Japanese) as shape of ‘bowl-upside down’. This ‘bowl’ and the Rig Veda’s ‘two bowls of heaven and earth’ seem to be related…
The next thing that caught my attention was the following description in the Upanishad.
Chandogya Upanishad 3.19.
1. This universe was at first non-existent, being without names and forms. Slowly it manifested itself, as a shoot comes out of a seed. Next it developed into an egg and remained for a whole year like that. It then split in two, one half becoming silver and the other half becoming gold..
2. Of these two parts of the egg, the one that is silver is this earth, and the one that is gold is heaven. The thick membranes are the mountains. The thin membranes are the clouds and mist. The veins are the rivers, and the fluid in the bladder is the ocean.
Wisdom Library
So far, this paper has focused on the Cosmic Chakra = Wheel World, but in fact the ‘Primordial Cosmic Egg’ was also important as a parallel ancient Indian worldview.
The idea that the cosmic world unfolded from this primordial egg = anda is shared by many ancient scriptures and is also referred to as ‘Brahma-anda = Brahman’s egg’. This would be a perfect parallel to the fact that Brahman’s wheel universe was called “Brahma Chakra”.
And this image of a divided egg, split in two, top and bottom, is consistent with the previous Rig Veda’s expression of “the two bowls overlapping”. In other words, ‘overlapping two bowls’ meant the image of one bowl placed normally, with the other bowl, which has been overturned, stacked face down on top of it.
Is the ground surface, where we live, the cut plane of the lower hemisphere when an egg is separated in two? If so, the upper half could be the magnificent heavenly hemisphere.
This is a hypothesis, but could it be that the overturned bowl-shaped dome of the white Stupa was the celestial hemisphere itself, the upper half of a magnificent white eggshell, and that the inner space of the Stupa dome was the world itself?
An analogy that is familiar to us is the dome of a planetarium.
Of course, ancient India did not have the technology to build such a ‘hollow dome’. But there must have been the ‘idea’ that the stupa dome was a hemispherical canopy of heaven, and its virtual inner space was ‘the whole world, or universe, itself’. That’s precisely why, Mount Meru was placed at its inner centre and the Buddha relics were consecrated on its summit.
In my previous post, ‘The Buddha, who Turns Dharma Wheel at its centre’, I had suggested that the ancient stupa of Nagarjuna Konda had a wheel-like inner foundation structure, which was the Dharma Wheel, and that it was a metaphor for the turning of the Dharma Wheel by its central axle, the Buddha. Perhaps it also represented the magnificent Cosmic Chakra-Wheel Universe, along with the Dharma Wheel.
Looking back at the Sumeru worldview model shown at the beginning of this article, it is clearly a wheel-like circular shape, with an axle-like Mount Sumeru rising in the centre. The Stupa could be the shape, with the heavenly hemispherical bowl completely covering on top of this composition.
With this in mind, re-examining photos of the above-mentioned Dagaba, the moon and sun were depicted on the upper Harmika portion of the Stupa, and above it was the abode of the gods. This was exactly the same as the structure of Mount Sumeru.
The Mount Meru set in the inner centre of the Dagaba was small, but ideologically it must have been the same kind of central pillar within the five-storey pagoda, or Cosmic Skambha Pillar, with a height reaching the top of the Dagaba (meaning heaven), and around its summit, the Moon and the Sun revolved.
Unfortunately, I have never seen a Stupa with a Mount Meru at its inner centre in this way, except for the Dagabas in Sri Lanka. And I have not yet been able to confirm any examples of Dagabas with a wheel-like design in their foundation structure or with a central pillar rising in the centre of their interior (currently under investigation).
The central pillar in five-storey pagodas in Japan, the axial pillar at the inner centre in Nepalese and Tibetan stupas, the wheel-axis design in the foundation structure of some ancient stupas in the north and south India, and the inner-centred Mount Meru in Sri Lankan dagabas. At present, I have no way of proving whether or not these overlap with each other in the context of “the Buddha as the central axis pillar of the Universal Dharmic Chakra”.
But I can’t help feeling that there is a pan-Indian universality or commonality to these stupas that is not the historical or regional particularities, but one that makes sense consistently, and I wonder how readers will take this.
I am reminded here of a report by the British archaeologist A. H. Longhurst, which I discussed in my previous article, ‘The Buddha, who rotates the Dharma Wheel at its Centre’. There, the dome structure of the stupa itself was explained as a huge chhatra umbrella..
Unlike the stupas of Northern India which were usually built of solid brick-work, those discovered at Nagarjunakonda are constructed in the form of a wheel on plan, with hub, spokes and tyre all complete and executed in brick.
The open spaces between the radiating walls forming the spokes being filled in with earth before the outer brick casing of the stupa was built up and the dome closed.
In section, the curved brick walls forming the spokes of the wheel must have appeared in much the same manner as the spokes of a giant umbrella executed in brickwork. Thus of plan, the stupa was in the form of wheel, but in section, its construction resembled that of an umbrella.
In the smaller supas the central pillar forming hub of the wheel was sometimes square on plan, but in the larger stupas it was usually circular like the staff of an umbrella which it seems to have been purposely designed to resemble.
from the Archaeological Survey Booklet
Yes, indeed, the canopy of the Chhatra umbrella also, was a likely origin of the stupa’s dome structure. Then, I searched again for information about the Chhatra in the Indian religious context and the following contents came up.
In Buddhism and Hinduism, the chatra symbol – also called the “precious parasol” and the “sacred umbrella” – is a symbol of kingship/royalty and protection.
The chatra symbol is consistently represented as the Sahasrara in Ayurvedic diagrams, dharmic tradition iconography, and traditional Tibetan medicine thangkas.
The chatra in Buddhism is also seen as a symbol of spiritual protection. In depictions, this symbol is typically placed above the head of an important deity. This symbolical representation means that beneath the chatra is the center of the universe. This is why some consider the chatra as a “mobile temple.”
In Hindu mythology, the chatra is the insignia of Varuna. It is seen as an embodiment of royalty or kingship.
Various Hindu gods are depicted with the chatra. Vishnu gave the white parasol as insignia of royalty to Kamesvara, one of the god Shiva’s many forms.
In Indian culture, only high dignitaries were allowed to use umbrellas. The largest ones, usually white in color, were reserved for the king and the gods. This is why the parasol has come to represent spiritual power.
Originally, the chatra was employed to symbolize its protective qualities since a parasol or umbrella is supposed to shield or protect one from the heat of the sun.
The chatra also represents the canopy of the sky, thus symbolizing the element ether and the vastness and unfolding of space. It also signifies the protective quality of the Sahasrara or the crown chakra.
The chatra, also spelled chhatra, is the Sanskrit word for “parasol” or “umbrella.” According to the Sivapurana, “chatra” refers to the parasol or umbrella which forms part of the royal paraphernalia.
Chatra is also defined as one of the fourteen gems or ratna serving the Cakravartin, the universal king who rules the world in ethical and benevolent ways.
This chatra is a glittering white umbrella. It is not only used as a symbol of the Cakravartin’s dignity as a ruler, but also as a protective symbol since it is supposed to cripple his foe by its look.
Symbolsarcive
The reliability of this site is unknown, and it seems to lean towards Tibetan Buddhism as a source of information, so I don’t know how far it can be applied to the original ancient Indian view of chhatra, but there are some very interesting terms in there.
The chhatra is a ‘symbol of royal protection‘, referred to in various contexts as ‘sahasrara’, a ‘symbol of spiritual protection’, beneath the chhatra is the ‘centre of the universe’, the largest and highest chhatra is a ‘white parasol’, It is the ‘canopy of the sky’, symbolising ‘the protection of the Sahasrara chakra’ at the top of the head, and is also depicted as a ‘dazzling white umbrella’ as one of the treasures of the Sacred King of the Turning Wheel, ‘Chakra Vartin’.
(The characteristic ‘white’ colour here could imply the purity of Brahman).
Although it is not possible to check all the sources of these descriptions right now (some of them can be found on Wikipedia), the information is highly suggestive when considering the dome structure of the Stupa and its significance, and I personally do not feel at all uncomfortable, but rather have a strong sense of “this is it!”.
Let’s summarise that below, albeit very roughly.
First, the dome of the stupa itself is seen as a cosmically gigantic chhatra umbrella. This corresponds to the canopy of the upper half of the cosmic egg, Brahma-anda, described earlier.
This Cosmic Chhatra signifies the protection of the Buddha Dharma or the umbrella of Buddha’s compassion, while at the same time its axis handle is Skambha Pillar and Mount Sumeru as the axle rising at the centre of the wheel world.
Its shining white colour represents the highest chhatra and at the same time the whiteness of the cosmic eggshell (or egg white), which may possibly imply the purity of Brahman also.
The name Stupa (Pali: Thūpa) itself represents the supremacy of the Buddha’s enlightenment, as it also means the top or summit, symbolised by the umbrella of the chhatra held up by an axis pillar at the top of the stupa (the apex of the heavenly hemisphere).
And ideologically, the central pillar supporting them all from the foundation is none other than Buddha himself, who was enshrined as an object of worship in a form of chief deity before the advent of Buddha statues in human form.
I found a verse in the Rig Veda that could be said to be the origin of this kind of mental world, which I quote below.
Rig Veda 4.13.5 Agni（Same sentence in 4.14.5?）
ánāyato ánibaddhaḥ kathā́yáṃ níaṅṅ uttānó áva padyate ná
Sanskrit original from University of Texas LRC, English translation from Intratext
káyā yāti svadháyā kó dadarśa divá skambháḥ sámr̥taḥ pāti nā́kam
How is it that, unbound and not supported, he falleth not although directed downward?
By what self power moves he? Who liath seen it? He guards the vault of heaven, a close-set pillar.
The original Sanskrit for the English “vault” is “nā́kam”. This is nothing other than a domed circular canopy, and the presence of an axial column called Skambha is also clearly stated there.
Considering the ambivalence of Skambha, the Brahman, as the divine pillar rising at the centre of the universe and at the same time, that the body of Brahman was the whole world itself (in analogy to the cosmic tree, Brahman was both the supporting trunk and the great tree as a whole = the world itself), the stupa, which encompasses the central pillar of the Buddha and develops as a circular dome, would be this ‘Wheel Universe’ itself protected by the Buddha or the Buddha Dharma, and at the same time (from an esoteric point of view), it could also be the body of the divine Buddha himself.
This time, starting with the title ‘Mount Sumeru’, the stupa eventually became the main theme, but I think it’s gradually becoming clear that ancient Indian cosmology was based on the common idea of ‘the central axle (as Supreme) and the wheel universe that developed around it’, and that various ideas and symbolism were created on this foundation.
There was certainly an ideology that regarded the world’s structure and its foundations as a ‘chakra = wheel body’, and its central axle as the supreme God or Buddha.
I would like to conclude this post by describing some of the memorable episodes experienced during the journey.
In early April 2010, I came to Sarnath, northern India. Here, there was the Dharma Chakra Vihara, a Japanese temple that I was most familiar with during the past days of wandering in India, and it was a place that could be said to be the origin of my own “chakra consciousness”.
When I met the abbot, Ven. Goto Esho, for the first time in two years, he welcomed me with his unconventional unique nature as usual, and we talked about subjects related to this book. During the daytime, while he was raising funds for the school he runs, I revisited the State Museum and was moved again by the lion head of the national emblem, then worshipped at the statue of Buddha’s Dharma Chakra Pravartana.
Then, in the natural flow, I wandered around the adjacent Deer Park Archaeological Site and reflected on my various relationships with India over a period of 15 years.
I casually stopped, looked up and saw the Dhamek Stupa standing in front of my gaze. It was a stupa said to have been built by King Ashoka to commemorate Buddha’s first sermon, the Dharma Chakra Pravartana.
But the moment I saw the Stupa, it struck a chord in my heart. I had seen this shape somewhere just recently. Then I realised. Yes, it looked much like the model of Mount Meru in Jainism that I had seen in Ajmer.
The Dhamek Stupa belies its name, being shaped more like a cylindrical tower than the domed stupas commonly seen. It reminded me of Mount Meru, a rising tower in the centre of the world.
What is this feeling? Something else is tugging at my mind… The next moment I thought that, with a momentary flash of inspiration, suddenly my consciousness became a bird then soared into the sky, and I found myself standing on the top of the Dhamek Stupa.
In contrast to the scorching heat of the ground, there blowing a bit of strong wind back and forth and the heat is not so intense. All around that is the great plain of northern India. In the distance, the horizon is a far-off hazy arc.
Tracing the horizon, I slowly moved my gaze and saw that the earth is cut off 360 degrees by the horizon and looked as if it were a huge round disc. And in the middle of the disc, a Dhamek Stupa, which seems to have pierced through the earth and poked its head out, towering tall, like an axle, Mount Meru or a giant Shiva Linga.
I understood all this from a bird’s-eye view of the world as a circular wheel from the Stupa (or Thūpa), the “summit” that rises in the centre of the earth. This is the primal landscape of Mount Sumeru, which the ancient Indians depicted by superimposing the wheel motif on the world.
Coming back to myself from the simulation in my head, I took a deep breath. Yes, whether it is a Stupa or an isolated rocky mountain towering above the earth, if you climb far high the ground and look around you, the earth is nothing other than a 360-degree circular disc. Realising this simple fact, the ancient Indians naturally superimposed this world onto the sacred wheel, or “Chakra”.
And when it was grasped as a set with another ‘Wheel of the Heavens’ coupled with the motion of the revolving celestial bodies such as the stars, moon and sun, naturally, a divine ‘Axle Column Skambha’ connecting and supporting the two wheels of Heaven and Earth was envisioned, and the axle-like Mount Sumeru was also conceived in parallel.
While staring at the Dhamek Stupa, I was a little stunned by the all-too-simple answer to the riddle. However, upon reflection, I realized that this perception has a universal applicability even today.
If you were to board the space station and look down at the Earth from its far-reaching orbit, you would come to understand that the Earth is indeed round – in fact, it is spherical.
However, as long as our vision is limited to perceiving objects from a single perspective, even with binocular vision enabling pseudo-stereopsis, the spherical Earth appears to be nothing more than a round disc. This is analogous to the moon and the sun, which despite being spherical in shape, appear as round discs when viewed from the ground.
Then, if one were to look down at the Earth from a high altitude above the North Pole and visualise and image the axis of rotation and lines of longitude, it would indeed appear to be a giant rotating wheel itself.
Wasn’t the ancient Indian view of the world as a wheel-axle not far off the mark?
The wheel-axle-based Sumeru worldview eventually evolved into the Padma-Garbha, or Lotus Realm cosmology, which is an amazing development in terms of its vast and complex scale.
~to be continued~
INDIA~The Land of Holy Chakra 
