At the beginning of the 20th century, the imagination of readers was captured by the mysterious land of Shangri-La - a world of harmony and perfection lost far in the mountains, where all human dreams come true.
Lost utopia. In almost all the legends about paradise cut off from civilization, they are located in valleys covered with lush vegetation, hidden behind impenetrable mountains, shrouded in a haze of fog. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Hilton placed Shangri-La in the Far East, where there are many high mountains and fertile green valleys hidden between them.
When the English writer James Hilton came up with the name Shangri-La for the unknown country where the action of his adventure novel The Lost Horizon takes place, he did not even suspect that he had given his native language a new word that would quickly come into use as a synonym for a beautiful utopia. The novel, published in 1933, captured people's imaginations so much that they believed in the reality of Shangri-La and its utopian society.
The small country, where the two pilots who suffered an accident fell into the novel, was located in an inaccessible area of Tibet. There, on the top of a high mountain, there was a Lamaist monastery, where 50 Buddhist monks (lamas) lived, who spent time in search of knowledge and art. At their head was the Supreme Lama, who discovered the secret of longevity and was able to predict the future. According to one of his prophecies, in the future his country had a lot to endure, including the attacks of the barbarians.
Guided by the principle of moderation in everything, the lamas ruled over a community of 1000 local residents, in which peace and harmony reigned. They lived in a fertile valley spread at the foot of the mountain. Here, on a relatively small plot of land, about 20 km long and 5 km wide, a wide variety of crops were grown, and the gold mine lying right there in the valley provided funds for the acquisition of any goods that could not be produced in Shangri-La. However, no outsiders were allowed to enter the happy valley, and local residents met with traders at designated locations outside of it to make deals.
The very idea of Shangri-La is not at all new - in many eastern cultures there were legends about the lost paradise on earth. Even in the early Buddhist scriptures, the land of Chang-Shambhala is mentioned, which was considered the source of ancient wisdom. Once the belief in such a real embodiment of the ideals of virtue was very widespread - in China there was a legend about a valley hidden in the depths of the Kunlun Mountains, where immortals live in perfect harmony, and the Indians were looking for the abode of "perfect people" called Kalapa to the north of the Himalayas. In Russia, especially among the Old Believers, the legend about Belovodye was very popular. It was believed that it was possible to get to this country, where the holy righteous lived far from the world, by following the path of the retreat of the Tatars to Mongolia. In Tibetan and Mongolian legends, there are also references to an earthly paradise.
If the country of Shangri-La were not a myth, but a reality, then one of the most likely places for it would be Tibet. Its spiritual and secular ruler, the Dalai Lama, lives in his monastery-fortress in Lhasa (since 1904, declared a “closed city” for Europeans). As you know, the inaccessible attracts and excites the imagination, therefore it is not surprising that Lhasa, where only a few Europeans had a chance to visit, over time began to be perceived in the West as a wonderland. In addition, Buddhist monks and mystics in the minds of Europeans were traditionally endowed with supernatural powers. It was believed, for example, that the followers of the "lung gon" doctrine can overcome the force of gravity and, having reduced their own weight, move through space with amazing speed.
According to the testimony of the English traveler Alexandra David-Neil, who lived in Tibet for 14 years at the beginning of the century, she saw a llama who moved with incredible speed, but did not even run: “It seemed that he just rose above the ground, moving in large jumps, bouncing off earth like a ball. When the Englishwoman tried to stop the monk and find out the solution to the miracle, a local companion restrained her from a rash step, explaining that a sudden interruption of meditation would almost certainly kill the lama.
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Similar observations can be found in the Russian traveler and artist Nicholas Roerich, who visited Tibet many times and described what he saw in a book called "Shambhala", published in 1930. Hilton certainly took advantage of this work, as well as David-Neal's notes, when he wrote the novel The Lost Horizon, and Shangri-La became his synonym for Shambhala. The novel The Coming Race (1871) by the English writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton also describes a world located in the depths of the earth, inhabited by the highest race of the Vril.
The idea of a dominant race, endowed with mystical powers and supernatural powers, turned out to be attractive to both occultists and Nazis, who, for the lowest purposes, sought to seek a secret abode. But they were not destined to achieve it, and Shangri-La remains a dream of a kingdom of blissful peace, where all human desires are fulfilled.