Excerpt from Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter With Early Buddhism in Central Asia
by Christopher I. Beckwith
2015
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GAUTAMA BUDDHA, THE SCYTHIAN SAGE
The dates of Gautama Buddha are not recorded in any reliable historical source, and the traditional dates are calculated on unbelievable lineages including round numbers such as one hundred, so they are not reliable either, as noted already by Fleet, Hultzsch, and many others.11 [ Fleet, in JRAS 1909: 333, 335, cited in Hultzsch (1925: xxxiii): Scholars' continued insistence on following such dates anyway led to a 1988 conference devoted specifically to reconsideration of the dates of the Buddha, which however largely continued to take the fanciful, ahistorical, traditional accounts as if they were actual historical accounts, with the significant exceptions of the papers by Hartel (1995) and Bareau (1995).] His personal name, Gautama, is evidently earliest recorded in the Chuangtzu, a Chinese work from the late fourth to third centuries BC.12 [See Chapter Three.] His epithet Sakamuni (later Sanskritized as Sakyamuni), 'Sage of the Scythians ("Sakas")', is unattested in the genuine Mauryan inscriptions13 [See Chapter Two and Appendix C.] or the Pali Canon.14 [However, it has been demonstrated that the caretakers of the Pali tradition systematically expunged references to various ideas and practices to which they objected, especially things thought to be non-Indian (Sven Bretfeld, p.c., 2012).] It is earliest attested, as Sakamuni, in the Gandhari Prakrit texts, which date to the first centuries AD (or possibly even the late first century BC).15 [Baums and Glass (2010), a work in progress, when checked in July 2013, included three occurrences, each in a different manuscript. It also occurs in Sanskrit in much later texts from Gandhara, as well as once, in a fifth-century AD Bactrian Buddhist text, as [x], without the characteristic -y- of the Sanskritized form of the name (Sims-Williams 2010: 73).] It is thus arguable that the epithet could have been applied to the Buddha during the Saka (Saka or "Indo-Scythian") Dynasty -- which dominated northwestern India on and off from approximately the first century BC, continuing into the early centuries AD as satraps or "vassals" under the Kushans -- and that the reason for it was strong support for Buddhism by the Sakas, Indo-Parthians, and Kushans.
However, it must be noted that the Buddha is the only Indian holy man before early modern times who bears an epithet explicitly identifying him as a non-Indian, a foreigner. It would have been unthinkably odd for an Indian saint to be given a foreign epithet if he was not actually a foreigner. Moreover, the Scythians-Sakas are well attested in Greek and Persian historical sources before even the traditional "high" date of the Buddha, so the epithet should presumably have been applied to him already in Central Asia proper or its eastern extension into India-eastern Gandhara. There are also very strong arguments -- including basic "doctrinal" ones -- indicating that Buddhism had fundamental foreign connections from the very beginning, as shown below. It is at any rate certain that Buddha has been identified as Sakamuni ~ Sakyamuni "Sage of the Scythians" in all varieties of Buddhism from the beginning of the recorded Buddhist tradition to the present, and that much of what is thought to be known about him can be identified specifically with things Scythian.16 [Walter (2012). The tradition by which Buddha was from a local Nepalese Sakya "clan" in the area of Lumbini is full of chronological and other insuperable problems, as shown by Bareau (1987); it is a very late development.]
Moreover, it must not be overlooked that we have no concrete datable evidence that any other wandering ascetics preceded the Buddha. The Scythians were nomads (from Greek [x]; 'wanderers in search of pasture, pastoralists') who lived in the wilderness, and it is thus quite likely that Gautama himself introduced wandering asceticism to India, just as the Scythians had earlier invented mounted steppe nomadism.17 [Beckwith (2009: 58ff.). Considering the mostly Anatolian origins of Greek philosophy, and the long domination of that region by the Medes and Persians, it must be wondered if the peripatetic tradition in Greek philosophy also reflects the Iranic penchant for wandering.] One way or the other, it would seem that the Buddha's teachings were unprecedented mainly because they opposed new foreign ideas -- the Early Zoroastrian ideas of good and bad karma, rebirth in Heaven (for those who were good), absolute Truth versus the Lie, and so on -- which were previously unknown in "India proper". He did this because he himself was foreign, and people actually understood and accepted that by calling him Sakamuni.
Buddha therefore must have lived after the introduction of Zoroastrianism in 519/518 BC, when the Achaemenid ruler Darius I invaded and conquered several Central Asian countries and then continued to the east, where he conquered Gandhara and Sindh, which were Indic-speaking, in about 517/516 BC.18 [Shahbazi (1994). Although the exact date of his invasion of Gandhara and Sindh is unknown, it probably happened shortly after his Central Asian campaign, so around 517 (Briant 1996: 153). In any case, there is no doubt about the conquest of the region during the early part of his reign (Kuhrt 2007: 182, 188-189). See also the extensive complementary treatment in the Epilogue of the present book.] In the process of firming up his rule over the new territories, he stationed subordinate feudal lords, or satraps, over them, and some of the army was garrisoned there. Darius had come from conquering much of Central Asia proper, including Bactria and Arachosia, as well as the Saka Tigraxauda 'the Scythians wearing pointed hats', a nation of Scythians whose king, Skunkha, he captured19 [Kuhrt (2007: 157n122, 150, figure 5.3).] and is portrayed in a captioned relief accompanying the Behistun Inscription. From then on Scythians formed the backbone of the imperial forces together with the Medes and Persians,20 [Briant (1996: 50).] so some of the soldiers in the Indian campaign must have been Scythians, that is, Sakas. Herodotus details the dress and equipment of the Central Asian and Indian troops, who are listed by nation including, among others, Bactrians, Sakas ("that is, Scythians"), Indians (Indoi), Arians (more correctly Hareians,21 [Herat, in modem northwestern Afghanistan, preserves the ancestral name of the region, Old Persian Haraiva.] neighbors of the Bactrians), Parthians, Khwarizmians, Sogdians, and Gandharans.22 [Herodotus VII; 64.1 to VII, 66.1.]
Gandhara became an important part of the empire. It is regularly included in the lists of provinces from the beginning of Darius's reign on to the end of the empire along with Bactria, Arachosia, the Sakas, and other neighboring realms.23 [Briant (1996: 50).] There was a Persian satrap in Taxila, and official travellers went frequently between the Persian capital and one or another provincial locality in India,24 [Briant (1996: 777, 370).] as attested by accounts preserved in the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, which detail the payments in kind to the travellers.25 [Meadows (2005: 186).] Moreover, "the Indians", one of the twenty financial districts of the Persian Empire recorded by Herodotus, paid by far the greatest sum in "tribute".26 [Meadows (2005: 183).] The Achaemenid influence in Gandhara was strong and long-lasting.27 [Briant (1996: 778).]
The conquest by Darius introduced the Persians' new religion, reformed Mazdaism, or Early Zoroastrianism,28 [I call it "Early Zoroastrianism" because it did not exist for very long in its pristine state, but also because it was very different from fully developed Late Zoroastrianism (one could call it "Normative Zoroastrianism", following the terminology developed in this book for Buddhism). Soudavar (2010: 119), emphasis added, remarks, "Zoroastrianism as we now know [it], with its complicated rituals and canonical laws, had not enough time to develop between the lifetime of its prophet and the advent of Darius in the year 522 BC."] a strongly monotheistic faith with a creator God, Ahura Mazda, and with ideas of absolute Truth (Avestan asa, Old Persian arta) versus 'the Lie' (druj), and of an accumulation of Good and Bad deeds -- that is, "karma" -- which determined whether a person would be rewarded by "rebirth" in Heaven. These ideas are all found in the Gathas, the oldest part of the Avesta, which are attributed to Zoroaster himself, and all are expressed openly and repeatedly in the Old Persian royal inscriptions as well. Essentially the same ideas occur in the Major Inscriptions of the Mauryas in the third century BC in India.29 [See Chapters Two and Three.] The traditional view30 [E.g., Gombrich (1996: 51).] is that the Buddha reinterpreted existing Indian ideas found in the Upanishads, but the Upanishads in question cannot be dated to a period earlier than the Buddha, as shown by Bronkhorst31 [Bronkhorst (1986).] and discussed below. Just as Early Buddhism cannot be expected to be similar to the Normative Buddhism of a half millennium or more later, so Early Brahmanism cannot be expected to be similar to Late Brahmanism (not to speak of Hinduism), attested even later. "Zoroaster was ... the first to teach the doctrines of ... Heaven and Hell, the future resurrection of the body ... , and life everlasting for the reunited soul and body",32 [Boyce (1979: 29).] and Early Zoroastrianism was the faith of the ruling nation of the Persian Empire. Both Early Buddhism and Early Brahmanism are the direct outcome of the introduction of Zoroastrianism into eastern Gandhara by Darius I. Early Buddhism resulted from the Buddha's rejection of the basic principles of Early Zoroastrianism, while Early Brahmanism represents the acceptance of those principles. Over time, Buddhism would accept more and more of the rejected principles.
Darius also sponsored the creation of a completely new writing system -- Old Persian cuneiform script, which is partly modeled on Aramaic script, one of the main administrative scripts of the Persian Empire -- and the practice of erecting monumental inscriptions.33 [In addition, he built imperial roads with rest houses provisioned for travellers. These three actions were prominently imitated by the early rulers of the Mauryan Empire in India, the northwestern part of which had been part of the Persian Empire until Alexander's conquest.] In the great Behistun Inscription at the top of Mount Bagastana,34 [This is the ancient name, which means 'place of gods' (Razmjou 2005: 153) or 'the place of God'.] Darius I repeats over and over how he achieved what he did because the early Achaemenids' monotheistic God of Heaven, Ahura Mazda 'Lord Wisdom', helped him. He insists that what he did was True, it was not a Lie, and repeatedly says that those who opposed him "lied". Druj 'the Lie' made them rebel and deceive the people, they were "lie-followers", and so on. The obsessive repetition of this litany throughout the inscriptions is striking. Anyone familiar with these basic Zoroastrian concepts could hardly contend that Darius was not an Early Zoroastrian. He could not have been anything else.
While, not surprisingly, the ordinary generic human contrast between truth and falsehood is found in the Vedas, the specifically Early Zoroastrian form of the ideas, including the result of following one or the other path, is completely alien to them. In the early Vedic religion, ritually correct performance of blood sacrifices was believed to be rewarded in this life, but the reward had nothing to do with one's virtuous actions or one's future in the afterlife. These ideas thus seem to have been introduced by the Achaemenid Persians into eastern Gandhara and Sindh, the western limits of the ancient Indic world and southeastern limits of the Central Asian world, just as they were introduced into Near Eastern parts of the vast Persian Empire. In fact, Early Zoroastrianism is attested in Achaemenid Central Asia and India in the earliest Persian imperial written documents from the region.35ii [Benveniste et al. (1958: 4), based on two inscriptions in Aramaic. Cf. Bronkhorst (2007: 358), who remarks, "In the middle of the third century BC, it was Mazdaism, rather than Brahmanism, which predominated in the region between Kandahar and Taxila". For Bronkhorst's views on Brahmanism and early Magadha, see Endnote ii.]
These specific "absolutist" or "perfectionist" ideas are firmly rejected by the Buddha in his earliest attested teachings, as shown in Chapter One. In short, the Buddha reacted primarily (if at all) not against Brahmanism,36 [Cf. Bronkhorst (1986; 2011: 1-4), q.v. the preceding note. From his discussion it is clear that even the earliest attested Brahmanist texts reflect the influence of Buddhism, so it would seem that the acceptance of Early Zoroastrian ideas in Gandhara happened later than the Buddhist rejection of them, but before the Alexander historians and Megasthenes got there in the late fourth century BC.] but against Early Zoroastrianism. At the lower end of the chronological scale, the Buddha must have lived before the visit of the two best known and attested Greek visitors of the late fourth century, Pyrrho of Elis, who was in Bactria, Gandhara, and Sindh from 330 to 325 BC with Alexander the Great and learned an early form of Buddhism there, and two decades later the ambassador Megasthenes, who travelled from Alexandria in Arachosia (now Kandahar) to Gandhara and Magadha in 305-304 BC and recorded his observations on Indian beliefs, including Early Buddhism and Early Brahmanism, in his Indica.37 [See Chapter Two for a detailed study of the relevant fragments of his book preserved in Strabo's Geography.]
The word bodhi 'enlightenment', literally 'awakening', is first attested in the Eighth Rock Edict of the Mauryan ruler Devanampriya Priyadarsi (fl. 272-261 BC), who says that in the tenth year after his coronation he went to Sambodhi -- now known as Bodhgaya (located about fifty miles south of Patna, ancient Pataliputra) -- where according to tradition the Buddha achieved enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree. The ruler says that after this visit he began to preach the Dharma around his empire.38 [Kalsi VIII, 22-23 (Hultzsch 1925: 36-37). Cf. Chapter Three.] The inscription thus can only refer to the ruler's acceptance of a form of the Early Buddhist Dharma -- not the more familiar Normative Buddhism, which is attested several centuries later. The inscription also establishes that reverence for the Buddha existed by this time at Bodhgaya, in Magadha.39 [This makes it likely that the comment in Megasthenes' account about the Sramanas interceding between the kings and 'the divine one' also refers to reverence for the Buddha. See Chapter Two.]
The dates of Darius's conquest of Gandhara and Sindh (ca. 517 BC), and the late fourth century -- marked by the visit of Alexander (330-325 BC) along with his courtier Pyrrho, followed by Megasthenes two decades later -- are the chronological limits bracketing the enlightenment-to- death career of Gautama Buddha. It is possible to further narrow this down to some extent.
The shock of the introduction of new, alien religious ideas in the traditionally non-Persian, non-Zoroastrian environment of Central Asia, eastern Gandhara, and Sindh must have happened fairly soon after Darius's conquest and the establishment of his satrapies, when the satraps were undoubtedly still ethnically Persian and strongly Zoroastrian, and would have needed the ministrations of their priests. That would place the most likely time for the Buddha's period of asceticism and enlightenment within the first fifty years or so of Persian rule, meaning ca. 515 to ca. 465 BC, and his death after another forty years or so -- following the dubious tradition that he lived eighty years40 [His traditional life span is undoubtedly fictitious, as 8, 80, 108, etc. are holy numbers in later, Normative Buddhism.] -- making the latest date for his death ca. 425 BC. This chronology would also leave enough time for Early Buddhism to spread from Magadha (the region where Sambodhi, or Bodhgaya, is located) -- assuming it was first preached there by the Buddha -- northwestward into western Gandhara, Bactria, and beyond, and (as shown in Chapter Three), for his name Gautama and some of his ideas and practices to travel all the way to China and become popular no later than the Guodian tomb's end date (terminus ante quem) of 278 BC. Among the things that the scenario presented here explains are the striking alienness of Buddhism in India proper,41 [Independently mentioned to me by Michael L. Walter (p.c., 2010) and Michael Willis (p.c., 2012).] its earliness in Gandhara and Bactria,42 [This is one of several problems with Bronkhorst's "Magadha" theory of the origin of Buddhism. Though he points out that Gandhara is one of the earliest regions in which Buddhism is attested (Bronkhorst 2011: 20-21), it is actually attested there far earlier than anywhere else; cf. above.] and the difficulty of showing that the Buddha was originally from Magadha.
This brings up the problem of the Buddha's birthplace. Not only are his dates only very generally definable, his specific homeland is unknown as well. Despite widespread popular belief in the story that he came from Lumbini in what is now Nepal, all of the evidence is very late and highly suspect from beginning to end. Bareau has carefully analyzed the Lumbini birth story and shown it to be a late fabrication.43 [Bareau (1987). The lone piece of evidence impelling scholars to accept the Lumbini story has been the Lumbini Inscription, which most scholars believe was erected by Asoka. However, the inscription itself actually reveals that it is not by Asoka, and all indications are that it is a late forgery, possibly even a modern one. See Appendix C.] There are reasons to put the Buddha's teaching period -- most of his life, according to the traditional accounts -- somewhere in northern India, in a region affected by the monsoons. In particular, the eventual development of the primitive arama, the temporary seasonal shelter of the Buddha's lifetime, into the samgharama (an arama specifically for Buddhist monks)44 [This is the traditional understanding. Later, in the Kushan period, the fully developed monastery (eventually called the vihara) was introduced from Central Asia, as known from the excavations at Taxila (Marshall 1951). The idea of the "monastery" must have developed slowly within Buddhism -- no other religious or philosophical system anywhere is known to have developed it earlier. It clearly cannot be dated until well after the time of Megasthenes' account, which mentions explicitly where the sramanas lived but says nothing about monasteries or anything similar. The earliest identifiable group living centers, even if they were samgharamas (unlikely, since the stories about them are clearly ahistorical), are primitive affairs that can hardly be called "monasteries", as pointed out by Schopen (2004: 219; 2007: 61; cf. Bronkhorst 2011), partly on the basis of the early donative inscriptions at Sanci, which -- unlike later donative inscriptions -- do not mention viharas, indicating that the monks lived in villages. It is now clear that fully developed organized monasticism must have come first, and preceded any samgharamas, but it developed in Central Asia, whence it was introduced to India and China in the Kushan period (Beckwith 2014; forthcoming-a). Cf. Chapter Two.] -- the received historical trajectory, based on tradition, the "early" sutras, and archaeological data45 [Dutt (1962); see Chapter Two and the discussion in Beckwith (2012c).] -- actually requires an original location in the monsoon zone. That is to say, if aramas were necessary, then monsoons were necessary too, meaning Early Buddhism must have developed in a monsoon zone region of early India. However, that could be almost anywhere from the upper Indus River in the west -- including ancient eastern Gandhara -- to the mouths of the Ganges in the east.
Of course, actual Early Buddhism (i.e., Pre-Normative Buddhism) did not entirely disappear in later times, and constitutes a significant element in the teachings and practices shared by most followers of Normative Buddhism and thus by most Buddhist schools or sects known from the Saka-Kushan period down to modern times. At the early end of the spectrum, the doctrinal content of the Gandhari documents dating to the early Normative period agrees closely with the doctrinal content of what are believed to be the earliest texts of the Pali Canon,46 [Stefan Baums (p.c., 2012); I am of course responsible for any misunderstanding about this.] with the main exception that some Mahayana texts have been found among the materials from Gandhara.47 [For some of the best-preserved examples, see Braarvig and Liland (2010). Most are however in Sanskrit and from about the fourth to the sixth century AD, approximately a millennium after the Buddha.] However, one may safely assume that the Buddha must have passed away well before 325 to 304 BC, the dates for the appearance of the earliest hard evidence on the existence of Buddhism or elements of Buddhism. This is still three centuries before even the earliest Gandhari texts and the traditional (high) date of the Pali Canon. Despite widespread belief that the latter collections of material, both of which are from the Saka-Kushan period or later, represent "Early Buddhism", the work of many scholars has shown that even by internal evidence alone it must be already quite far removed from the earliest Buddhism -- the teachings and practices of the followers of the Buddha himself and the next few generations after him, up to the mid-third century BC -- which is referred to in this book as Early Buddhism.