MERU, a mythological mountain of the Hindu religionists, also called Sumeru and Hemadri. It is the Mien-mo of the Burmese, and the Simeru of the Siamese. It is termed by the Hindus in their theogony, the navel of the world, and is the fabled residence of their deities. Hindus, Siamese, and Burmese describe this mountain differently. On one of its three peaks is Kailasa, the heaven of Siva ; and on another is Swarga, or paradise of Indra. In the Ramayana (book i. p. 236), Mera is the mountain nymph, the daughter of Meru and spouse of Himavat, from whom sprang two daughters, the river goddess Gangs., and the mountain nymph Parvati. She is, in the Maha bharata, also termed Syeela, the daughter of Syeel, another designation of the snowy chain, and hence mountain streams are called in Sanskrit silletce. Syeela bears the same attributes with the Phrygian Cybele, who was also the daughter of a mountain of the same name ; the one is carried, the other drawn, by lions.
Meru mountain is famed in the traditions of the ancient Hindus. Pamir is the country about
3feru (upa-tueru). Meru seems to mean strictly the terrestrial orb. The Greeks also metamor phosed Parvat Pamir, or the mountain Pamir,' into Paropamisan, applied to the Hindu Koh west of Bamiara; but the Parvat put Pamir, or Pamir chief of hills,' is mentioned by the bard Chand as being far east of that tract, and under it resided Kamira, one of the great feudatories of Prithivi raja of Dehli.
Until the middle of the 10th century, the Hindus at Bikanir, Rajputana, taught that the mountain 3feru is in the centre, surrounded by concentric circles of land and sea. The Brahmans supposed that, as there is sea at the coasts, there must be alternate circles of land and sea. Some Hindus regard Mount Meru as the North Pole. The astronomical views in the Puranas make the heavenly bodies turn around it.—Cole.41Iyth. Hind. p. 253 ; Moor, p. 270 ; Hindu Theatre, i. p. 241 ; Bunsen, i. p. 431; Tod's Rajasthan, i. p. 24 ; Ramayana, lib. i. p. 236.