Dear listmembers,

Thank you, Stephen, for your welcome citations, which I have added to my list. I'm especially appreciative of the one by Hippolytus on the Encratites. You also wrote: "It is quite probably an Alexandria but not the famous Alexandria in Egypt. Ever the modest ruler, Alexander founded over a dozen cities called Alexandria, many of them in Asia Minor and Bactria (covering much of present-day Afghanistan). These cities include present-day Herat, Ghazni and Kandahar. It was most likely from one of these Alexandrias that, according to the Mahavamsa, Dhammarakkhita and his large entourage of monks travelled to Sri lanka for the inauguration of the Great Stupa."

Rene: True. The ever-modest ruler founded Alexandrias all over the place. Malalasekera has a short article on Alasandaa. According to him, it "is generally supposed that Alasandaa was the name of an island in the Indus in the territory of Bactria. Geiger (Mhv. trs. 194, n.3) thinks that it is probably to be identified with the town founded by the Macedonian king in the country of Paropanisadae near Kabul." Malalasekera also writes that Alasandaa was "A city in the land of the Yonas." In an entry on the Yonas, he writes that Yona is probably a Pali corruption < Ionia. "Yona" (also Yavana, Yonaka) was apparently an Indic approximation for "Greek," and "the land of the Yonas" = the Greek world. This might include Bactria (and Bactrian Greeks like King Milinda), but would, ISTM, not exclude the distant Mediterranean world, which was Hellenistic.

'Yona' appears a couple of times already in the Rock Edicts of Asoka (my English edition translates it as "Greek"). This was long before the Kushan dynasty made Bactria a center of Buddhism in I CE. This returns us to the original derivation Yona < Ionia. "Ionia" was the name for western Asia Minor, a conglomeration of flourishing city states and islands famous for its seafaring traders. Ionia belonged to the Persians, then to Greece (after Alexander), then to the Romans. Megasthenes was a Greek historian from Ionia. He was a Yona. The Hellenistic king Seleucus I sent him about 300 BCE as an ambassador to the court of King Chandragupta Maurya in India. Seleucus I was also a Yona. A half-century later Asoka sent a Buddhist mission to "the Yavana king Antiochos," whose capitol was Seleucia, near Babylon (Rock Edict 13). "In later times," Malalasekera writes, "the name Yavana or Yona seems to have included all westerners living in India, and especially those of Arabian origin." Thus we see that the word "Yona" expands in geographical meaning from "Ionian" --> to "Hellenist" --> to "westerner." The Mahaava.msa (ca. 500 CE) was too late to effect Buddhist--> Christian connections. In it, the thera Yonaka Mahaa Dhammarakkhita comes to Anuraadhapura from Alasandaa with 30,000 monks on the occasion of the foundation of the Mahaa Thuupa by Du.t.tagaama.ni (29.40). I think we can grant that the number 30,000 at any rate is apocryphal. How much of the rest of the statement is too, I just don't know.

Malalasekera's mention that Yona referred to foreigners in India, "especially those of Arabian origin," is interesting. It implies foreigners coming from the sea route rather than from Bactria, which was on the northerly land caravan route. This may simply mean that westerners in India in later times were arriving mostly by sea, that is, via the Red Sea. The sea route opened up in late II BCE. Arabia, of course, was an intermediate point to Egypt. This all suggests that at the time of the Milindapa~nha (about the turn of the era), "Yona" and "the land of the Yonas" was not restricted to Bactria.

Alasandaa is also mentioned twice in the Mahaniddesa. It is possible that this text is quite old. Norman argued for the time of Asoka, but most think it was written in II CE (Hinuber/59). Buddhist tradition, as we've seen, thinks of Alasandaa as very Buddhist. Modern conjecture is that is that it "was the name of an island in the Indus in the territory of Bactria" (above)-- this, because in the Milindapa~nha, King Melinda comes from the village of Kalasi on the island of Alasandaa in the land of the Yonas. Well, OK. Is there an Alexandria on an island in the Indus? http://www.livius.org/a/1/maps/indus_valley_map.gif (use magnifier). In a manner of speaking, perhaps. Uch, at the meeting of the 5 rivers, might be considered almost an island-- all it needs is a canal to the north. Could this be the where Melinda came from? Why would it be called "Kalasi"? (There is no such place, that I know of.) If I remember correctly, this was a very Buddhist area in the first centuries, and the region where Pali developed. Hinuber says that Pali originated "at a time considerably later than the Buddha," and that it is rooted in a language spoken in western India far away from the [original] homeland of Buddhism" (Pali Lit/5). But I defer discussion of the historical development of Buddhism to the experts, for my focus has been more in the area of Buddhist and Christian parallels.

Not too many people know that Alexandria, Egypt, was on a virtual island completely encircled by water. To the north was the Mediterranean Sea, to the south lake Maryout (Mariotis), and to the east and west canals. http://ce.eng.usf.edu/pharos/alexandria/History/guide.html To the northwest, one canal connected to the Mediterranean, and 28 km. to the southeast its extension linked at the ancient town of Schedia with the Canopic branch of the Nile. In this way, Alexandria was intimately connected with the Red Sea and with the Mediterranean, continually encircled by boats and trading.

"Beyond Lake Mareotis, lying in a somewhat level plain a little above the rest," according to Philo, was the location of the Therapeutae. Scholars do not know exactly where their center was- perhaps on the lake, perhaps near it. This group would be existing in Philo's time, that is, in the time of Christ. For a long time, many Western scholars have vaguely compared the sect with Buddhism. One writes: "The Therapeutae... appear to have sprung from an union of the Alexandrian Judaism with the precepts and modes of life of the Buddhist devotees... in their ascetic life, in their mortifications of the body and their devotion to pure contemplation, we may trace at least a sufficient affinity to the Indian mystics to indicate a common origin" (J. Moffatt, writing in 1926).

Malalasekera writes that "The Anguttara Commentary records that from the time of Kassapa Buddha the Yonakas went about clad in white robes, because of the memory of the religion which was once prevalent there." Kassapa Buddha was a legendary ancient Buddha, while the Ang. Commentary dates to about the time of Buddhagosa (V CE).

Hmmm.. "Yonakas" would be Greeks, or at least "foreigners," would they not? The Therapeutae and the Essenes both wore white robes, and had the closest similarities to Buddhism of any ancient groups in the West. The Therapeutae were on the outskirts of Alexandria, the Mediterranean city with the greatest contact with the East.

I'm not drawing any conclusions here, just pointing out facts that may or may not be related...

One final note. Philostratus about 200 CE wrote a biography of the pagan holy man Apollonius of Tyana. He did this at the instigation of the Roman empress Julia Domna, who was combating the rise of Christianity. She thought that by divinizing Apollonius, and making him like Jesus but even more wonderful, it would draw power away from the Christian movement. The sixth book of Philostratus' work http://www.livius.org/ap-ark/apollonius/apollonius_life.html takes place in southern Egypt. There, by the Nile and in the vicinity of Thebes, Apollonius meets a group of gymnosophists (naked ascetics) and disputes with them (Vit. Apol. 6:4-22). This is quite remarkable, for nowhere else, to my knowledge, are there gymnosophists in the western world. As Stephen pointed out, such a tradition evokes the sky-clad Jains rather than the Buddhists. But westerners knew next to nothing about India, and in ignorance such distinctions dissolve.

It's possible, of course, that Philostratus simply made this up. But at least one scholar (B. Pearson) thinks that the doctrines espoused by these gymnosophists are "strikingly" similar to those of the Therapeutae, and that they represented a similar monastic community.

There is so much we don't know!



Happy Vesak to all,

Rene


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