Beckwith Christopher I. - 2017;2015;

GREEK BUDDHA

GREEK BUDDHA

Pyrrhos Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia

CHRISTOPHER I. BECKWITH

P RINCETON U NIVERSITY P RESS

P RINCETON AND O XFORD

Copyright 2015 by Princeton University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beckwith, Christopher I., 1945
Greek Buddha : Pyrrhos encounter with early
Buddhism in Central Asia / Christopher I. Beckwith.
pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-16644-5 (hardback)
1. Pyrrhon, of Elis. 2. BuddhismHistoryTo ca. 100 A.D. 3. BuddhismInfluence. 4. Buddhism and philosophy. I. Title.
B613.B43 2015
186'.1dc23
2014044329

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Charis

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Contents

Preface

I n the past few decades a quiet revolution has been under way in the study of the earliest Buddhism. Its beginnings lay in the discoveries of John Marshall, the archaeologist who excavated the great ancient city of eastern Gandhra, Taxila (near what is now Rawalpindi), and published his results in 1951. The evidence was incontrovertible: the Buddhist monastery, the vihra, with its highly distinctive architectural plan, appeared there fully formed in the first century AD, and had been preceded by the rma, a crude temporary shelter that was also found there.traditional notions, and these have prevented a comprehensive, principled account of Early Buddhism from developing.

The most important single error made by almost everyone in Buddhist studies is methodological and theoretical in nature. In all scholarly fields, it is absolutely imperative that theories be based on the data, but in Buddhist studies, as in other fields like it, even dated, provenanced archaeological and historical source material that controverts the traditional view of Early Buddhism has been rejected because it does not agree with that traditional view, and even worse, because it does not agree with the traditional view of the entire world of early India, including beliefs about Brahmanism and other sects that are thought to have existed at that time, again based not on hard data but on the same late traditional accounts. Some of these beliefs remain largely or completely unchallenged, notably:

the belief that ramaas existed before the Buddha, so he became a ramaa like many other ramaas

the belief that there were ramaas besides Early Buddhists, including Jains and jvikas, whose sects were as old or older than Buddhism, and the Buddha even knew some of their founders personally

that, despite the name ramaa, and despite the work of Marshall, Bareau, and Schopen, the Early Buddhists were monks and lived in monasteries with a monastic rule, the Vinaya

that, despite the scholarship of Bronkhorst, the Upanishads and other Brahmanist texts are very ancient, so old that they precede Buddhism, so the Buddha was influenced by their ideas

that the dated Greek eyewitness reports on religious-philosophical practitioners in late fourth century BC India do not tally with the traditional Indian accounts written a half millennium or more later, so the Greek reports must be wrong and must be ignored

perhaps most grievously, the belief that all stone inscriptions in the early Brahmi script of the Mauryan period were erected by Aoka, the traditional grandson of the Mauryan Dynastys historical founder, Candragupta, and whatever any of those inscriptions say is therefore evidence about what went on during (or before) the time he is thought to have lived

we know what problematic terms (such as Sanskrit dukha ~ Pali dukkha) mean, despite the fact that their meaning is actually contested by scholars, the modern and traditional dictionaries do not

These and other stubborn unexamined beliefs have adversely affected the work of even the most insightful scholars of Buddhism. Yet no contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous hard evidence of any kind affirms such beliefs. Moreover, it is bad enough that such ideas have caused so much damage for so long within Indology, but the resulting misinformation has inflicted damage in other fields as well, including ancient Greek and Chinese philosophy, where the traditional construct has been used as the basis, once again, for rejecting the hard data, forcing scholars in those fields to attempt to explain away what seems to be obvious Indian Buddhist influence. This then helps maintain the traditional fiction of three totally unrelated peoples and traditions as cultural islands that had absolutely no contact of any kind with each other until much later times, as used to be unquestioned belief as recently as Karl Jasperss famous book on the Axial Age, and continues, by and large, among those who follow in his footsteps.

Setting aside the traditional beliefs mentioned above, and much other folklore, what hard data might be found on the topic at hand? What sort of picture can we construct based primarily on the hard data rather than on the traditional views? In the present book I present a scientific approach, to the extent that I have been able to do so and have not been mislead by my own unrecognized views.

It is important to note that this book is not a comparison of anything. It is also most definitely not a critique or biobibliographic survey of earlier research. Such a study would be great to have (and in fact, an excellent bibliography on Pyrrhonism was published by Richard Bett in 2010), but I have cited only what I thought necessary to cite or what I was able to find myself, with a strong preference for primary sources.

I have attempted to solve several major problems in the history of thought. The most important of these problems involves the source of Pyrrhos teachings. I would like to call it philosophy, and I have sinnedsometimes willfullyby doing so when I talk about Early Pyrrhonisms more philosophical aspects, but in general to call it philosophy in a modern language is to seriously mislabel it. The same would be true if I called it religion. It was to some extent both, and to some extent neither, and it was science, too.

I first spent a great deal of time reexamining and rethinking the Greek testimonies of Pyrrhos thought, and in 2011 finally published a long article on the topic in Elenchos (reprinted with minor revisions in ). I then looked into the studies which claimin accord with statements of ancient authorsthat Pyrrho acquired his unusual way of thought in India. I also read studies that claimed the exact oppositethat he did not learn anything at all of major importance for his thought thereand other arguments which essentially claim that Indian philosophy is basically Greek in origin. That forced me to investigate Early Buddhism in depth, with the result that I discovered the above problems, among others, and my study became much longer and more involved than I had expected.