Daois as an offshot of Early Buddhism

[Aithrobates]

I've been reading that recent book:

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10500.html

It has an interresting theory about the origins of Daoism.

There's a long linguistic examination, that is far too complicated for me to abstract in a few lines, but roughly:

Lao Tan (the name of Lao Tzu) is the modern prononciation of an alternate, more chinese sounding, spelling of "Kao Tan" which indicates an old chinese *Gotama / Gowtama/ Gautama.

And Dao in the same way is reconstructed as old chinese *Darma.

He latter compares the teaching of Lao Tzu and Chang Tzu with what we know of what appears to be a very early form of Buddhism in India and Central Asia, as documented by the greek sources in the 4th BCE.  And shows profound similarities.

So according to the author it means that an "Early Buddhism" that in fact was not even yet called Buddhism , but simply refered as "Dharma" reached China long before Buddhism proper did. And that this Dharma participated to the shaping of Daoism.

I'm not supporting this view, nor the opposite. I don't claim the knwoledge to pass a jugement on such complex matters.

But I find the hyphothesis fascinating enough to be discussed.
 

Edited July 14, 2015 by Aithrobates

[hod]

There are plenty of books out there to saying Jesus and Buddha were the same person. I feel there is a tendency in Buddhism to want to tie things up in a nice neat box, but that's usually not the way of the world.

 

If you believe in collective consciousness, then of course similiar ideas are going to spring up in different places around the same time.

 

I for one have no idea, but there is always food for though.

[Taoist Texts]

I've been reading that recent book:

 

 

Lao Tan (the name of Lao Tzu) is the modern prononciation of an alternate, more chinese sounding, spelling of "Kao Tan" which indicates an old chinese *Gotama / Gowtama/ Gautama.

 

And Dao in the same way is reconstructed as old chinese *Darma.

 

 

 

 

Folk etymology, pseudo-etymology,^[1] or reanalysis is change in a word or phrase over time resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} Unanalyzable borrowings from foreign languages, like asparagus, or old compounds such as samblind which have lost their iconic motivation (since one or more of the morphemes making them up, like sam-, which meant "semi-", has become obscure) are reanalyzed in a more or less semantically plausible way, yielding, in these examples, sparrow grass and sandblind.^[8]

The term folk etymology, a loan translation from the 19th-century academic German Volksetymologie,^[9] is a technical one in philology and historical linguistics, referring to thechange of form in the word itself, not to any actual explicit popular analysis.^[8]

[Taomeow]

For one thing, taoism is several millennia older than Laozi.  Taoists proper (unlike laoists, secular admirers of Laozi, and religious adherents of the deified aspect of Laozi in some more recent taoist sects) and historians of taoism alike credit Fuxi with its creation -- that's about 4,000 years before Laozi.  The first canonized book of the taoist canon is the I Ching, not the Tao Te Ching (which if memory serves was sixths in line).  But of course taoism existed much longer than its formalized written versions.  One has to know its fundamentals (derived from Hetu and Luoshu) to realize that the word "tao" didn't have to be articulated ("the tao that can be told is not the eternal tao" -- have you noticed?) for the foundational ideas of this teaching to be grasped.  

 

Also, a linguist familiar with reconstructions of the Indo-European language and its transmutations will tell the author of that book that "dao" and "dharma" are about as related as chopsticks and ball bearings. 

 

Buddha and Jesus may or may not be the same person, but Nicola Tesla and Thomas Edison -- definitely not. 

[Aithrobates]

There are plenty of books out there to saying Jesus and Buddha were the same person. I feel there is a tendency in Buddhism to want to tie things up in a nice neat box, but that's usually not the way of the world.

 

If you believe in collective consciousness, then of course similiar ideas are going to spring up in different places around the same time.

 

I for one have no idea, but there is always food for though.

 

Well in that case the author is not saying that Shakyamuni actually came to China, but that his teaching did, and so that the caracter Lao Tan was invented to express that.

 

And he is clearly angainst the hypothesis of collective consciousness. He thinks that iranan peoples, both on the iranian (Mede/Persian) empires and the scythian domain where in a good position to connect Near East, India and China. So that it's no wonder if similar ideas appears at the same time if remote places. It's just that there are people to carry them.

 

 

Folk etymology, pseudo-etymology,^[1] or reanalysis

 

Well in that case it is not folk ethymology, not at all, the author is working out of linguistic theories, not out of some traditionnal etymologies. It's (perhaps good, perhaps false or misguided) scientific etymology.

 

For the reader who wonders what is the difference, here's an illustration:

 

Near a village I know there's a place called "Pechafilou". Folks in the village are well aware that in the local dialect "pech" is a hill, but they believe "filou" to be the french word for trickster. And that there used to be tricksters, thieves, etc... on that hill. That's folk etymology.

 

The historian on the other hand knows that the medieval lord of that hill was Lord Fillon, and that in the modern language the final -n is lost, the -ll- is depalatized in -l-, and the o closed to an "oo" ( ) that in french spelling is "ou'. So Fillon > Filou. That's scientific etymology.

 

 

For one thing, taoism is several millennia older than Laozi.  Taoists proper (unlike laoists, secular admirers of Laozi, and religious adherents of the deified aspect of Laozi in some more recent taoist sects) and historians of taoism alike credit Fuxi with its creation -- that's about 4,000 years before Laozi.  The first canonized book of the taoist canon is the I Ching, not the Tao Te Ching (which if memory serves was sixths in line).  But of course taoism existed much longer than its formalized written versions.  One has to know its fundamentals (derived from Hetu and Luoshu) to realize that the word "tao" didn't have to be articulated ("the tao that can be told is not the eternal tao" -- have you noticed?) for the foundational ideas of this teaching to be grasped.  

 

Yep that's a weak point in that argumentation. The author seems to write that Daoism started with DDJ. He sould be more nuanced and say that (perhaps, in that hypothesis) at some point Daoism integrated this "Early Buddism" thing. And even took its formal name from there. But the Dao that can be named is not...

 

Also, a linguist familiar with reconstructions of the Indo-European language and its transmutations will tell the author of that book that "dao" and "dharma" are about as related as chopsticks and ball bearings. 

 

The linguistic passage in the book almost gave me a headache. I know nothing about chinese linguistics, and how you're supposed to reconstruct the old pronunciation from the modern one. Of course I know nothing about how a sanskrit or prakrit word was pronnounced in old chinese. A headache I tell you...

[Apech]

There are plenty of books out there to saying Jesus and Buddha were the same person. I feel there is a tendency in Buddhism to want to tie things up in a nice neat box, but that's usually not the way of the world.

 

If you believe in collective consciousness, then of course similiar ideas are going to spring up in different places around the same time.

 

I for one have no idea, but there is always food for though.

 

 

Obviously Jesus and Buddha cannot be the same person since they lived 500 years apart.  I think the usual theory is that Jesus went to Kashmir during his forgotten years and picked up some Buddhist ideas then.  This is a nice idea but probably rubbish also.  It is not though, the Buddhists who come up with these ideas but the Christians or at least Western 'scholars'.  I have never heard any Buddhist utter a view on these things ... although some point out similarities in Mahayana ethics and Christian ethics.  But even here the basis for those ethics is completely different.

 

The usual basis for linking Lao Tzu with Buddha is the idea that Lao Tzu left China and went west where he taught the Buddha thus creating Buddhism.  This also is probably a construct by the medieval Chinese Taoists to assimilate Buddhism as a kind of Junior partner in the three systems approach (Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism).

[Taoist Texts]

He latter compares the teaching of Lao Tzu and Chang Tzu with what we know of what appears to be a very early form of Buddhism in India and Central Asia, as documented by the greek sources in the 4th BCE.  And shows profound similarities.

 

 

I for one would be curious to know what are the exact similarities  between this

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huang-Lao

 

and this

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milinda_Panha

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism

Edited July 15, 2015 by Taoist Texts

[Aithrobates]

His greek sources are not Greco-Buddhism which flourished later in the Bactrian Kingdom. There are the accounts of Alexander's visit to India, Magasthenes' Indica, and Pyrrho.

[Taoist Texts]

from the link above

 

Several philosophers, such as Pyrrho, Anaxarchus and Onesicritus, are said to have been selected by Alexander to accompany him in his eastern campaigns. During the 18 months they were in India, they were able to interact with Indian ascetics, generally described asGymnosophists ("naked philosophers"). Pyrrho (360-270 BCE) returned to Greece and became the first Skeptic and the founder of the school named Pyrrhonism. The Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtius explained that Pyrrho's equanimity and detachment from the world were acquired in India.^[6] Few of his sayings are directly known, but they are clearly reminiscent of śramanic, possibly Buddhist, thought: "Nothing really exists, but human life is governed by convention. ... Nothing is in itself more this than that"^[7]

Another of these philosophers, Onesicritus, a Cynic, is said by Strabo to have learnt in India the following precepts: "That nothing that happens to a man is bad or good, opinions being merely dreams. ... That the best philosophy [is] that which liberates the mind from [both] pleasure and grief".^[8]

 

 

nothing that happens to a man is bad or good,

 

 

 

 

^{So is this  Lao-zi's point of view? Or Buddha's? I would say neither.}

[Aithrobates]

I can't answer that... I was just saying the the world that this hypothesis existed. If I had read the book seriously, like a second of third time, with all the notes, and had a firm opinion on its view I could argue.

 

If you want to dive into that topic... read the book... So that I'll have someone to talk about it ^^

 

As always those wiki pages are a good starting point. But they generally abstract classic if not outdated theories, so it's not exactly the good material to criticize a just published, state of the art academic research, which precisely tries to challange those older views.

 

Anyway the Dao-Protobuddhism link is not even the core of the book, it is just one of the elements that (if true) helps proving the main point of the author. That is: "Buddhism" in its oldest manifestations was very different that what we came to know as Buddhism.

 

So in a sense Pyrrhonism is not Buddhism, not if by "Buddhism" we think of the classic "layers" we know form the Pali and Chinese canon. But there are older "layers": the traditions which gave birth to Buddhism "proper", as we know it, and perhaps nourrished other traditions as well.

[Taoist Texts]

I can't answer that... I was just saying the the world that this hypothesis existed. If I had read the book seriously, like a second of third time, with all the notes, and had a firm opinion on its view I could argue.

 

If you want to dive into that topic... read the book... So that I'll have someone to talk about it ^^

 

Thanks i probably would read it if it falls into my lap but otherwise to me this author is highly unappealing. Back in 1950s it has become fashionable to bash the Europeans. Which is this guy's bread and butter apparently

 

 

Warriors of the Cloisters tells how key cultural innovations from Central Asia revolutionized medieval Europe and gave rise to the culture of science in the West. Medieval scholars rarely performed scientific experiments, but instead contested issues in natural science, philosophy, and theology using the recursive argument method. This highly distinctive and unusual method of disputation was a core feature of medieval science, the predecessor of modern science. We know that the foundations of science were imported to Western Europe from the Islamic world, but until now the origins of such key elements of Islamic culture have been a mystery.

 

In this provocative book, Christopher I. Beckwith traces how the recursive argument method was first developed by Buddhist scholars and was spread by them throughout ancient Central Asia. He shows how the method was adopted by Islamic Central Asian natural philosophers--most importantly by Avicenna, one of the most brilliant of all medieval thinkers--and transmitted to the West when Avicenna's works were translated into Latin in Spain in the twelfth century by the Jewish philosopher Ibn Da'ud and others. During the same period the institution of the college was also borrowed from the Islamic world. The college was where most of the disputations were held, and became the most important component of medieval Europe's newly formed universities. As Beckwith demonstrates, the Islamic college also originated in Buddhist Central Asia.

 

Using in-depth analysis of ancient Buddhist, Classical Arabic, and Medieval Latin writings, Warriors of the Cloisterstransforms our understanding of the origins of medieval scientific culture. 

 

You see, the Europeans were stupid so they could not possibly on their own get a group of students and profs together and call it 'a college', they had to borrow it from the Arabs. Also everybody else never reasoned logically before Buddhists invented the recursive argument which the stupid Europeans got to use. Like i said it is' lets bash the Europeans' galore, this is not science.

[Aithrobates]

I'm perfectly aware that at some point the abuses of eurocentrism lead to an equally abusive "euro bashing" as you call it. But Having read a bit of his work I dont think it's the case with this one.

 

I've not read W. o.t. C. ,  but fail to see how saying that something was invented somewhere is bashing elsewhere. That the influence of Avicenna spread to Europe too is a well established fact, not a provocative theory.  Same thing for the presence of Buddhism in Central Asia way before Islam, and the influence it left. And same thing for the cultural importance of the iranian part of C.A. (Khorasan) during the Middle Ages. So the basic ingredients of the recipe do seem OK to me.

 

That being said I don't work for him, so I'm not trying to persuade you to read his books

 

 

BTW. If you want a book on Pyrrho & Buddhism that is not by Beckwith, there's always:

http://www.indologica.de/drupal/?q=node/131

Edited July 15, 2015 by Aithrobates

[Taoist Texts]

for me personally this turns out to be a very educative thread. Thank you Aithrobates.

 

 

 

Forty times, it is said, he read through the Metaphysics of Aristotle, till the words were imprinted on his memory; but their meaning was hopelessly obscure, until one day they found illumination, from the little commentary by Farabi, which he bought at a bookstall for the small sum of three dirhams. So great was his joy at the discovery, made with the help of a work from which he had expected only mystery, that he hastened to return thanks to God, and bestowed alms upon the poor.

 

 

so who owes what to whom?

[Aithrobates]

Indeed Plotinus was translated to arabic, but under the name of Aristotle, and was widely known in the islamic world.

 

 

so who owes what to whom?

 

 

That's a tricky question ^^

 

Greek wisdow was lost the the medieval West. It was reintroduced via alchemy, in a new form via authors like Avicenna and Averrhoes, and more massively so when the Byzanthines took the original ancient greek texts to North Italy.

 

So some islamic authors nourrished medieval European philosophy, but they were themselves dependant on platonism, which has his roots in pythagorism, which owns a lot to Persia and Central Asia...

 

We're talking about millemniums of civilisations interracting with each other. So the important thing is to see that East and West are one, and that all the traditions related. But having a precise historical view of how it happens...

 

What can be said is that Central Asia, as it stands in the middle of Eurasia played a major role. Because if something was inventend in that center it could spread from there to the "peripheries" (Europe, NE, India, China). And if it was invented in one of the periphery, it was by that center that it will travel reach the others.

Edited July 15, 2015 by Aithrobates

[Taoist Texts]

Greek wisdow was lost the the medieval West. It was reintroduced via alchemy, in a new form via authors like Avicenna and Averrhoes, and more massively so when the Byzantine took the original ancient greek texts to North Italy.

 

Βασιλεία Ῥωμαίων was the  West, and after it fell the modern history started. The dark ages were recast as a 1000 years of darkness interspersed only by the pyres of inquisition and an occasional glimmer of culture from the enlightened Islamic east. I read somewhere that this picture of the dark ages is a myth invented in the early modern times for ideological purposes.

 

 platonism, which has his roots in pythagorism, which owns a lot to Persia and Central Asia...

 

hmm gotta look into this sequence

 

We're talking about millemniums of civilisations interracting with each other. So the important thing is to see that East en West are one,

a certain Mr Kipling would disagree

 

What can be said is that Central Asia, as it stands in the middle of Eurasia played a major role. Because if something was inventend in that center it could

it could. if it was. but it never did..

 

, it was by that center that it will travel reach the others.

the reality was different, the invention traveled on a one way ticket round the Cape of Good Hope.

 

[gendao]

Thanks i probably would read it if it falls into my lap but otherwise to me this author is highly unappealing. Back in 1950s it has become fashionable to bash the Europeans. Which is this guy's bread and butter apparently

 

You see, the Europeans were stupid so they could not possibly on their own get a group of students and profs together and call it 'a college', they had to borrow it from the Arabs. Also everybody else never reasoned logically before Buddhists invented the recursive argument which the stupid Europeans got to use. Like i said it is' lets bash the Europeans' galore, this is not science.

Well the facts are the facts, whether you like them or not.

 

For millenia, spiritual wisdom and technology has traditionally flowed mostly from the East (Far, Mid & Near) to the West slowly over time and distance. Ever notice the Biblical archetype of "wise men from the East?"

 

In fact, based largely upon Joseph Needham's work, Robert Temple states that "possibly more than half of the basic inventions and discoveries upon which the 'modern world' rests come from China." And more specifically:

As Joseph Needham documented, and his student Robert Temple summarized in The Genius of China, about 90 percent of the technologies that underlay the West’s industrial revolution were actually invented in China.

The reasons for this Eastern dominance are probably manifold, but 2 likely ones are that East Asians have higher IQs on average and while Westerners tend to be more sociopolitically open-minded (think Roman orgies), the Chinese tend to be more open-minded with regards to life in general (think about their vastly expanded medicinal and dietary range alone, for instance).

 

For example, while Europeans are immediately disgusted by urine, the ancient Chinese discovered 2000 years ago how to extract hormones from it for medicinal purposes. Or have no problem sticking needles into people like Voodoo dolls or sucking stagnant blood out using suction cups. Most modern Europeans have a "natural" cultural aversion to such practices that they deem "bizarre & exotic."

 

While such greater Chinese tolerance can lead to some genuinely weird oddities, it also opens the door to some amazing discoveries that more "proper" Western sensibilities would never have even explored to begin with.

 

 

But of course now, capitalism, science & some brilliant minds, acid-tripped, & Grey aIien technology have temporarily replaced Chinese source technology as China is also recovering from centuries of warfare and Communism. So, the tables have turned for the time being..

Edited July 15, 2015 by gendao

[Taoist Texts]

 (think Roman orgies), 

 

i do. all the time.

[Taoist Texts]

BTW. If you want a book on Pyrrho & Buddhism that is not by Beckwith, there's always:

http://www.indologica.de/drupal/?q=node/131

Merci. Very illuminating.

 

 

The major drawback of this study is that it might have been more successful had Kuzminski further developed his comparative approach in a more thorough manner without making unnecessary historical claims that could not be adequately supported and developed in the space of this book. His characterization of Pyrrhonism rests almost exclusively on late Greek sources such as Diogenes Laertius and Sextus Empiricus and depends upon the acceptance of Pyrrho as the originator of Pyrrhonism and not just its nominal founder. The same goes for Kuzminski’s treatment of the question of historical diffusion. To a certain extent, Kuzminski exculpates himself from this charge by reminding his readers on several occasions that the scenario he is presenting is only a plausible one. His choice of the word ‘reinvented’ in his subtitle to describe the Greek adoption of Buddhist philosophy is deliberately intended to avoid the more ambitious claim of direct transmission (p. 5). However, this appears to be an attempt to justify the suggestion of a historical relationship while excusing the lack of more substantial textual evidence. Despite the relatively few focused treatments on this topic, Kuzminski is also not particularly thorough. He briefly mentions Thomas McEvilley’s work on this topic but neither addresses nor refutes his counter-thesis that the primary direction of diffusion was from Greece to India.

 

Reviewed by M. Jason Reddoch University of Cincinnati

[Aithrobates]

Reviewed by M. Jason Reddoch University of Cincinnati

 

I'm allways confused when people are citing other's people book reviews in a topic... I just don't get what it means. In general, or in that case.

 

Do you post that in order to add some material as an illustration for the topic, like when you copy/past relevant bits and pieces of Wiki ? In that case at least compile different reviews with pro an con.

 

Or do you think that a negative review proves that the book is bad, and so that we should think, in that case, that whole idea about Pyrrho and India is false ? Because I'm sure there are positive reviews out there...

 

I've read McEvilley, and know his thesis on greco-indian philosophical similarities. I find there are a lot of flaws in it. I'm sure you can find negative reviews about McEvilley as well...

 

When I post the reference of book, it's to say "This one speaks about this topic, it could be intresting", I'm just sharing, NOT saying "Hey! This works prove what I'm saying is true. Read it and you'll see I'm right". So there is no need to find a had oc way (a negative review, some article, etc... ) to show the book is false, in order to prove a point.

 

It may be the way other posters work, trying to win, to prove that theirs views are the best. But that's not what I'm doing.

[Michael Sternbach]

Regarding several topics that have been raised here:

 

The Greek philosophers and natural scientists inherited a lot of their knowledge from ancient Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Babylonia.

 

Later, for neo-Platonism and Hermeticism, the cultural melting pot of Alexandria played a key role.

 

Despite the reputation of the European middle ages as a dark epoch, there was a "small renaissance" occurring with the influx of that kind of knowledge as passed on by the Arabs via Spain and Sicily, and revolving around minds like Roger Bacon, Raymond Lull and Albertus Magnus.

Edited July 15, 2015 by Michael Sternbach

[Aithrobates]

 

What can be said is that Central Asia, as it stands in the middle of Eurasia played a major role. Because if something was inventend in that center it could

it could. if it was. but it never did..

 

 

>it was by that center that it will travel reach the others.

the reality was different, the invention traveled on a one way ticket round the Cape of Good Hope.

 

 

So you think that before colonization there was no contacts, and that Europe, India and China were isolated systems ?

 

That is the standard view. An evolutionnist view. That only recently this contacts where made possible because Europeans were the first to have the travelling means and the liguistic skills to conduct such expeditions. That before it was impossible to travel that far, and unlikely that people would learn new languages.

 

Of course to think that you have to think that nothing ever happens in the Iranian plateau and Central Asia. No great empires, not commercial roads, no brillant civilisation, no important philosophies. Nothing to connect East and West. So you have to wait untill the modern times to see Europeans crossing the void and connect directly to India or China...

[Taoist Texts]

I'm allways confused when people are citing other's people book reviews in a topic... I just don't get what it means. In general, or in that case.

 

Do you post that in order to add some material as an illustration for the topic, like when you copy/past relevant bits and pieces of Wiki ? In that case at least compile different reviews with pro an con.

yes. thats what i do it for, for illustration. i post it for my own reference, please do not mind me.

 

, to prove that theirs views are the best. But that's not what I'm doing.

of course not, its all in good fun. hey what does your nick mean?

[Aithrobates]

i post it for my own reference, please do not mind me.

 

Ok ^^

 

 hey what does your nick mean?

 

 

It's ancient greek, something like "Skywalker". As a reference to the links the mediterranean had with the East. As of course we generally have this name from the East, like in Dakini. And as it was a nick given to Abaris, an Easterner that went from the heart of Asia to meet Pythagoras.

 

The avatar is Apollo riding a griffon, griffons in greek lore are from Central Asia.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

I downloaded the first Chapter of the book, which is available on the page cited in the first link:

Greek Buddha in the Princeton University Press Online Catalog

First Chapter PDF
 

Pyrrho’s tripartite statement is completely unprecedented and unparalleled in Greek thought. Yet it is not merely similar to Buddhism, it corresponds closely to a famous statement of the Buddha preserved in canonical texts.²⁸  (Greek Buddha, Chapter One, page 28, from PDF, Emphasis Mine, ZYD)

 
As a piece of Rhetoric this is great.  As Scholarship it disintegrates under the weight of its own footnote:
 

28 The canonical Nikāya texts of the Pali Canon are traditionally thought to reflect Early Buddhism—meaning, in theory, the state of the teachings close to the time of the Buddha. However, the actual dates of the Nikāya texts are unstated, and in general traditional studies do not reveal when they were composed, pace Wynne (2005) and many others. Their acknowledged doctrinal similarity both to early translations of Buddhist texts into Chinese and to the recently discovered Gāndhārī texts does not affirm the picture of Buddhism presented in them as being close to the time of the Buddha because these Chinese and Gāndhārī texts both date to the late Kushan period. Their similarity to the “early” Pali canonical texts tells us only that all three sets of texts date to the same period, thus confirming that traditional “early” Buddhist canonical literature reflects Normative Buddhism (q.v. below), a product of the same Saka-Kushan period. Because the Nikāya texts are also far from homogeneous in their representations of the teachings of the Buddha, scholars have determined that some elements are earlier or later, while study of the inner logic of the Buddha’s own teachings (to the extent that it is agreed what they were) also allows inclusion or exclusion of various elements. (Greek Buddha, Chapter One, note pages 28-29, from PDF, Emphasis Mine, ZYD)

 
Basically meaning that we have no way of knowing whether Buddha really said this or not.
 
I am also at a loss as to know what exactly about Pyrrho's "Three Part Statement" is unprecedented and unparalleled in Greek thought.  Since "doubt" about "conventional" beliefs were the chief characteristics of the Pre-Socratics, from Heraclitus to Parmenides to Democritus, of whom it is well known that Phyrrho was a follower, before his trip to India with Alexander, and who was accompanied on the trip by another well known Democritan Atomist, Anaxarchus:
 

Pyrrho, along with Anaxarchus, travelled with Alexander the Great on his exploration of the East, and studied under the Gymnosophists in India and the Magi in Persia. This exposure to Eastern philosophy seems to have inspired him to adopt a life of solitude; returning to Elis, he lived in poor circumstances, but was highly honored by the Elians and also by the Athenians, who conferred upon him the rights of citizenship. (Wikipedia on Pyrrho)

 
Of course all of this is left out of Beckwith's discussion, which by the way is a really good analysis, but it exists within a rhetorical framework which not merely completely neglects the Greek background, but denies its existence, and not a scholarly framework, which might ask how one would get from what is know about the "doubt" of the atomist school and how it might lead to such a concise statement and then examine both the reasons for attributing these statements to the earliest strata of Buddhism, and examine the possibility that it may have been the Greeks who introduced this to the Buddhists, especially bearing in mind that these "doubting Democritans" were in India more than 350 years before the founding of the Kushan Empire, according to the footnote, the earliest possible reliable dating of this material, giving plenty of time for people to fool with texts.

and given this:

 

And as it was a nick given to Abaris, an Easterner that went from the heart of Asia to meet Pythagoras. (Emphasis mine, ZYD)

I have to ask, are you particularly influenced by Peter Kingsley?

 

So, you wanted to talk about the book, I have pointed out a problem with it.  I hope that meets your needs.

[Aithrobates]

 

I have to ask, are you particularly influenced by Peter Kingsley?

 

He's one of my favourite, for sure. Needless to say that I found the idea for my nick and avatar in one of his books.

 

So, you wanted to talk about the book, I have pointed out a problem with it.  I hope that meets your needs.

 

Indeed.

 

I see plenty of other flaws in this work. I think the general idea is good, but many things bother me here and there.

 

Like you said he does not take the similarities with greeks philosophers  into account.

The basis of his work is that Central Asia was very influencial (I agree with that) - and that Buddhism came to India from C.A. scythian traditions. Why not working with the idea that other people in greece were influenced by Scythians, a statement that has been made many times. So there is no contradiction in saying the Pyrrho is both related to other greeks, and to scythian derived indian proto-Buddhists, if they are all depend on a common source, that is iranian influence.

 

The problem is that he does not speak of iranian influenced philosophers after Anacharsis and before Pyrrho.

 

Some italian scholar (I forgot his name) described Pyrrho as some kind of Eleatic, and I can't help but seeing the compatibilty of Pyrrho with Parmenides and Gorgias. Heraclitus too is not far, according to Marcel Conche's work. And McEvilley wrote on the compatibility of Heraclitus and Buddhism.

 

Another problem is his references to Zoroastrism, which are at the minimum, while he argues that Buddhism was born as a reaction to the dominant Zoroastrism of the Achemenid empire. I expected more flesh here to support this strong hypothesis. Perhaps he does not elaborate here because he thinks the reader will refer to "Empires of the Silk Road" where he exposes more fully his views on iranian religions ?

 

And there is that Daosim thing that was the reason of this topic. What to think of this linguistic theory about Dao = Dharma and Lao Tan = Gautama ?

 

The author has a good philosophical intuition, but he wrote an history book. Nonetheless it is a very stimulating read and if I find it problematic, it is in a good way, because I made me aksing a lot of interesting questions.