> [[beckwith]]. *Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia*. Princeton University Press, 2015. [pdf](a/c-beckwith2015.pdf) `c-beckwith2015-n-b-i` ## Notes ### Wandering Asceticism and Nomadic Religion > The Scythians were nomads (from Greek `νομάδες` ‘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. [link to beckwith!](https://www.google.com) [n17: 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]. (c-beckwith2015p6) ### Buddhism is not based on the Upanishads. > (c-beckwith2015p8) The traditional view (r-gombrich1996p51) 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 (bronkhorst1986) ### Relation to Zoroastrianism & Brahmanism > (c-beckwith2015p9) Both Early Buddhism and Early Brahmanism are the direct outcome of the introduction of Zoroastrianism into eastern Gandhāra 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. > (c-beckwith2015p10) These specific “absolutist” or “perfectionist” ideas [of Zoro] are firmly rejected by the Buddha in his earliest attested teachings, as shown in Chap- ter One. In short, the Buddha reacted primarily (if at all) not against Brahmanism,36 but against Early Zoroastrianism. ### Pyrrho was influenced by Buddhists, and his doctrine is the earliest source text of Buddhist thought. > (c-beckwith2015p63) Early Pyrrhonism (Greek testimonies): things have no inherent self-identity (no differentiations), they are unstable, and they are unfixed (Trilakṣaṇa); both perceptions (induction) and views (deduction) are unreliable; rejection of difference between absolute Truth and abso- lute Lying; “no views”; passionlessness; undisturbedness, calm; yoga; celibacy; wandering; piety (eusebeia). ### Buddha vs Theism, & Pure Land > (c-beckwith2015p105-7) The Buddha says not a word about God or about Heaven and going there, he rejects the idea of inherent personal identities (including the “soul”), and he talks about *nirvāṇa* instead, Pyrrho’s *ataraxia*—calm, undisturbedness—here on earth, in this life. Buddha and Pyrrho say one should have “no views” and just rely on custom and the phenomena, which is what people actually do anyway. [...] If the “missing God” and related elements in Normative Buddhism. If the missing element were put back in, one would have **a monotheistic Central Eurasian Culture Complex belief system, with the God of Heaven, the lord and his comitatus, suicide of the latter on the death of their lord, and rebirth for them all in Heaven**. This must seem rather close to the sect of Calanus [...] The earliest historically attested theistic Buddhist sect is Pure Land. The sect first appears in the *Pratyutpanna Samādhi Sūtra*, which was translated into Chinese between ad 178 and 189. This is a text radically different not only from Early Buddhism but even from the putatively “early” Normative Buddhist texts of the Pali Canon and the Gāndhārī documents, which mostly date to approximately the same period. Pure Land obviously distinguishes its teachings from something else that it strongly rejects—namely, attested Early Buddhism—in quite the same way that attested Early Buddhism, including its Pyrrhonian offshoot, distinguishes itself sharply from theistic belief systems. [...] The early Pure Land Buddhism of the *Pratyutpanna Samādhi Sūtra* apparently (and effectively) has God (Amitābha), Heaven (Sukhāvatī), and rebirth in Heaven. for a Central Eurasian, all of these are comfort- able old Central Eurasian Culture Complex ideas, and for a Persian, they are (not coincidentally) comfortable old Early Zoroastrian ideas too. [...] Zoroastrianism introduced the idea of the absolute op- position of the Truth and the Lie. Then the Buddha reacted against absolutist-perfectionist distinctions and eternalism in general. When the Pre–Pure Land sect developed, it restored God (as Amitābha or an- other “Buddha”, depending on the text) and rebirth in Heaven, while nevertheless retaining the Trilakṣana teaching of anātman (philosophi- cally expressed as the invalidity of antilogies) and the teaching of anitya ‘impermanence’, as well as the teaching of duḥkha ‘uneasiness’. ### Mannerbunds > **(c-beckwith2015p108)** All of this is remarkably similar to the religious aspects of the Central Eurasian Culture Complex and its core sociopolitical-religious element, the comitatus. [n153: see **c-beckwith1984** & **c-beckwith2009p1–28**. Much written on the comitatus continues to be uninformed and problematic.] The main focus of the comitatus was Heaven. [n154: **c-beckwith2011a**] Its young aristocrat warrior members needed to associate themselves with a Lord to make sure they got to Heaven, because a real Lord had Divine (“sacral”) ancestral blood, and swearing an oath or vow to be “friends” with him in this life and the next ensured rebirth in Heaven. That the comitatus and the lords would, for whatever reason, go to Heaven, explains the persistence and strength of the comitatus system. [n155: **c-beckwith2009p12–26**). Unfortunately, it is rarely said precisely where the “home” to which they would return upon death was. The major Early Old Tibetan historical texts—the Zhol Inscription and the Old Tibetan Annals—tell us that the ruler, the btsanpo, came from gnamgyi lha ‘the God of Heaven (gnam)’, but when he died, they say he gungdu gśegs ‘went to Heaven (gung)’. for an early attempt to explain this terminological discrepancy, see c-beckwith2011a, which must be modified to make it clear that there was only one God of Heaven (cf. **c-beckwith2010a**).] It is thus not surprising that the practice of burial at the stupas of Buddhist holy men156 closely parallels the Central Eurasian practice at the burial mounds of political lords, most famously among the Scythians. ### Sage of the Sakas See also `28634.webarchive` His epithet `Śākamuni` (later Sanskritized as `Śākyamuni`), literally meant ‘Sage of the Scythians' (“Sakas”). It was first attested in the Gāndhāri Prakrit texts [(c-beckwith2015p5-6)](https://ln.sync.com/dl/59313fe50/54fv8ztu-snsnu4ah-yhsxe3w3-jcs7u2cv). See [[saka]]