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Internet site - 'Sumeru and devaloka explained'

Sumeru is the name of the central world-mountain in Buddhist cosmology. The concept of Sumeru is closely related to the Hindu mythological concept of a central world mountain, Meru, but differs from the Hindu concept in several particulars.

Sumeru is said to be shaped like an hourglass, with a top and base of 80,000 yojanas square, but narrowing in the middle (i.e., at a height of 40,000 yojanas) to 20,000 yojanas square.

The square top of Sumeru - devaloka - is the highest plane. Below this is a sheer precipice, narrowing in like an inverted mountain.

From this point Sumeru expands again, and we get the familiar stepped mountain shape going down in four terraced ledges, each broader than the one above.

The first terrace constitutes the "heaven" of the Four Great Kings, and is divided into four parts, facing north, south, east and west. Each section is governed by one of the Four Great Kings, who faces outward toward the quarter of the world that he supervises. This is also the height at which the Sun and Moon circle Sumeru in a clockwise direction. The next three terraces down the slopes of Sumeru are each longer and broader by a factor of two. They contain the followers of the Four Great Kings, namely nāgas, yakhas, gandharvas, and kumbhaas.

Sumeru is the center of a complex of seas and mountains. The square base of Sumeru is surrounded by a square moat-like ‘ocean’, which is in turn surrounded by a ring (or rather square) wall of ‘mountains’, which is in turn surrounded by a ‘sea’, each diminishing in width and height from the one closer to Sumeru. There are seven ‘seas’ and seven surrounding ‘mountain-walls’, until one comes to the vast ‘outer sea’ which forms most of the surface of the spiritual world, in which there are merely small ‘islands’.

The physical non spiritual world, known as Jambudvīpa, is directly south of Sumeru.