Thanks Khristos for your balanced account.
I think there is a growing realization among scholars that things were much more
complicated than we can piece together back in the fifth century B.C. and the
Buddha's biography has been written at a much later time (by the author of the
Lalitavistara, A"svagho.sa's Buddhacarita and the Mahaavagga in the Vinaya)
where attempts were made to "Aryanize" Buddha to the (at that time) dominant
Aryan/Brahmanical culture.
As a result, the influence of the authochthonous tribes (specifically the
Mundans or Kols, but also the Dravidians, i.e. the indigenous "natives" who
inhabited the area of eastern India up into the Himalayan foothills of what is
now Nepal) on the Buddha's thought and teachings have been played down and all
but eliminated. The Sakya tribe, for example, were originally a Mundan speaking
group which were conquered and assimilated by the eastward migrating vaidikas,
and assigned khattiya and/or sudda/daasa status depending on whether they
cooperated or resisted.
This is an area of my current research and I have found sufficient evidence to
convince me - I have a paper out now for peer review on the subject, if you're
interested. I think it's very important to understand the comples crucible out
of which the Buddha's thoughts, insights and teachings arose. At the time there
was a thriving indigenous culture - unrelated to, but not uninfluenced by
Brahmanism - which gave birth to Buddhism, Jainism and the Aajiivikas,
Metta,
Bryan
________________________________
From: Khristos Nizamis <nizamisk@...>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thu, July 29, 2010 10:00:03 AM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] Re: 'Neta.m mama'
Hi Bryan,
to be sure, there are arguments of cause and influence that can be and have
been made in all directions, and there is probably a little bit of truth in
each. I don't think this question is really so much about 'influence' at
all, but about the mutual action and reaction of ideas and ideologies of
'truth' (which in some respects is as 'timeless' as it is 'historical').
There an be no doubt that when 'opponents' argue, like it or not, they
influence one another. There are tantalising traces of such 'exchanges'
between Sufis and Buddhist monks, but it would be hard to pin down the
evidence; there is much more concrete textual evidence of the mutual
influence of Madhyamikas and Advaita Shaivins, for example, even though no
one on either side changed their affiliations or identities. I'm convinced
that the Bhagavadgītā was very much influenced (even motivated) by reaction
to Buddhadhamma, and that it's period of composition is perhaps very close
to the period in which Nāgārjuna was writing and teaching.
I've seen arguments that I thought are fairly obvious correct that the
younger Upani.sad literature is as early as 200 BCE. However, my impression
is that most scholars agree that the B.rhadāraṇyaka is one of, if not the,
oldest of that genre. In fact, the name 'B.rhadāraṇyaka' indicates its
literary position as bridging the Āraṇyakas (which come at the end of the
Brāhmaṇas) and the Upani.sads (it is, in effect, a bit of both).
Interesting, too, is that 'Āraṇyaka' is supposed to mean 'Forest Book', and
so 'B.rhadāraṇyaka' is supposed to be the 'Big Forest-Book'. According to
some respected scholars, there is more or less a consensus that the
Brāhmaṇas and earliest prose Upani.sads were composed between 800-500 BCE
(cf. Jan Gonda, Vedic Literature (Saṃitās and Brāhmaṇas), Harassowitz 1975,
pp. 20-25). There are other very fascinating 'parallelisms' (for want of a
better word) that have been noted by a very few Buddhist scholars (I mean,
scholars of Buddhism who consider themselves to be Buddhists, and not just
scholars of Buddhism per se), in fact, between some elements of the Suttas
and the B.rhadāraṇyaka. But this needs a bit more investigation.
I don't find it all surprising that the Buddha should have been very well
versed, in theory and in practice, in the spiritual and cultural milieu of
his time, that he should have understood very deeply not only its conceptual
paradigms but their roots in the 'nature' and constitution of human
consciousness, and that he should therefore have been highly adept at
knowing how to penetrate into and dislodge these crucial roots.
I don't in the slightest see this as a competition of 'who influenced
whom'. The picture is far more complex, interesting, and probably
irretrievable, than that. The feeling or intuition I get from this is that
there are a lot of complex forces at work in the shaping of the concrete
traces that have come down to us, most of which are invisible to us, very
difficult even for the most experienced scholars to discern and pin down,
and probably irretrievable - by traditional academic methods. . . . I always
like to come back, in the end, to the mysteries of meditation! (He says
with a smile and palms together.)
Good on you, Bryan! Take care of yourself,
Metta,
Khristos.
On 29 July 2010 21:02, Bryan Levman <bryan.levman@...> wrote:
>
>
> Dear Khristos,
>
> Thanks very much for this. The correspondence is fascinating. You might
> also
> like to look at Johannes Bronkhorst's 2007 work Greater Magadha where he
> discusses the so-called influence of the Upanishads on the Buddha's
> teachings
> and concludes that it was probably the other way around - that the
> teachings of
> religions in what he calls Greater Magadha - Buddhism, Jainism and the
> Aajiavikas (with respect to karmic retribution, reincarnation and the
> universal
> I) were incorporated into Vedic thought. (pages 112-35). He also questions
> the
> traditional date of the Upanisads as pre-Buddhist (page 175f),
>
> Metta, Bryan
>
> ________________________________
> From: Khristos Nizamis <nizamisk@... <nizamisk%40gmail.com>>
> To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com <palistudy%40yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Thu, July 29, 2010 7:27:48 AM
> Subject: Re: [palistudy] Re: 'Neta.m mama'
>
>
> Dear Jim, Bryan, Lennart, and other friends: I’m keen to share this with
> you, I think you’ll find it quite interesting. Here is the first half of
> B.rhadāraṇyaka Upani.sad, I.iv.1. I’ve transliterated both the sandhi and
> the sandhi-free versions and I’ve provided my own – what I hope is a fairly
> literal and reasonably correct – translation.
>
> ātmaivedamagra āsītpuru.savidha.h |1a
>
> ātmā eva idam agre āsīt puru.savidhas |1a
>
> so 'nuvīk.sya nānyadātmano 'pa"syat so 'hamasmītyagre vyāharat |1b
>
> sas anuvīk.sya na anyad ātmanas apa"syat sas aham asmi iti agre vyāharat
> |1b
>
> tasmādapyetarhāmantrito 'hamayamityevagra uktvā 'thānyannāma prabrūte
> yadasya bhavati |1c
>
> tasmād api etarhi āmantritas aham ayam iti eva agre uktvā atha anyad nāma
> prabrūte yad asya bhavati |1c
>
> Translation:
>
> In the beginning [agre] was the self [ātmā], only this [eva idam], in the
> likeness of a man [puru.sa-vidha.h]. |1a
>
> He, looking around, saw nothing other than self [ātmana.h]: in the
> beginning
> [agre] he uttered: ‘I am this I’ /or/ ‘I AM’ [so ’ham asmi iti]. |1b
>
> Because of that, even now [api etarhi], having been addressed
> [āmantrita.h],
> ‘This (is) I’ [aham ayam iti], indeed, is first spoken, and then [atha] he
> announces [prabrūte] any other name [anyat nāma] which happens to be his
> [yad asya bhavati]. |1c
>
> This wonderful and resonant connection has been brought to my attention by
> the excellent work of S. Collins (1990), *Selfless Persons*, §324, p. 101;
> he, in turn, is indebted to J. A. B. van Buitenen (1957), ‘Studies in
> Sāṃkhya
> II’, *Journal of the American Oriental Society*, LXXVII.
>
> The link to B.rhadāraṇyaka, I.iv.1, turns up in a section in which Collins
> discusses three possible interpretations of the expression ‘ahaṃkāra’:
>
> (1) by way of resemblance to expressions such as ‘kumbha-kāra’,
> ‘pot-maker’;
>
> (2) by way of resemblance to expressions such as ‘puru.sa-kāra’, ‘the
> action
> of man’. (These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive.)
>
> (3) J. van Buitenen was perhaps the first to suggest a very interesting
> alternative interpretation of the expression ‘ahaṃkāra’: by way of
> resemblance to expressions such as ‘oṃkāra’, ‘svāhākāra’, which may be
> understood to mean: ‘the utterance (of) ‘oṃ’’, ‘the utterance of
> ‘svāhā’’. (Note
> the religious and ritual significance of this particular meaning.) Thus,
> ‘ahaṃkāra’ could be understood to mean ‘the utterance ‘I’’. (Of course,
> 'kāra' has another closely connected use: as a suffix to name letters and
> particles: e.g., 'a-kāra'.)
>
> Collins does note the very obvious similarity between the expression “so
> ’ham asmi” in the B.rhadāraṇyaka passage and the 2nd part of the Pāḷi
> formula “eso ’ham asmi”. However, it is interesting that he has nothing
> further to say about the overall grammatical structure of this fascinating
> formula.
>
> Even so, I feel as though at least one more very helpful key has now been
> nicely placed into the lock of one more door of interest, and it is now
> just
> a matter of giving it a careful turn.
>
> With my best wishes and metta,
>
> Khristos
>
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>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
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