WHEN JOHANNES BRONKHORST'S BOOK Greater Magadha hit the scene a lot of us were over-awed by the scope and complexity of the argument. I wrote about my first encounter with it in a blog post called Rethinking Indian History (2009). A the time we thought it must be significant, and the new theory did seem to solve some of our problems. It was exhilarating to realise that history was able to be re-written.
However such a book is difficult to assess, and even after several years there has been little critical response to it from the field of Buddhist studies. A few reviews, but nothing of real substance. This may be because in order to place Bronkhorst's claims in context one must have a good grasp of a body of literature and evidence that is unfamiliar to most Buddhologists. If we haven't read Bronkhorst's oeuvre for example we'll struggle to really grasp where he's coming from. We also need to be familiar with writers on Indology such as Michael Witzel and Asko Parpola (neither of whom are read by many Buddhologists). The archaeological and anthropological studies are also critical - and they are scattered and from an entirely different discipline. And this work also relies on familiarity with Vedic literature and on the philological problems of dealing with it. In other words there is not much criticism because not many of us are qualified to read Bronkhorst critically.
However such a book is difficult to assess, and even after several years there has been little critical response to it from the field of Buddhist studies. A few reviews, but nothing of real substance. This may be because in order to place Bronkhorst's claims in context one must have a good grasp of a body of literature and evidence that is unfamiliar to most Buddhologists. If we haven't read Bronkhorst's oeuvre for example we'll struggle to really grasp where he's coming from. We also need to be familiar with writers on Indology such as Michael Witzel and Asko Parpola (neither of whom are read by many Buddhologists). The archaeological and anthropological studies are also critical - and they are scattered and from an entirely different discipline. And this work also relies on familiarity with Vedic literature and on the philological problems of dealing with it. In other words there is not much criticism because not many of us are qualified to read Bronkhorst critically.
At the same time Bronkhorst's book seems seems to have over shadowed Geoffrey Samuel's book The Origins of Yoga and Tantra which came out a year later. In fact Samuel is by far the better author, his book is far more readable and accessible, and about 1/10th of the price! His treatment of the relevant material (mainly based on an unpublished book by Thomas Hopkins) seems more credible, though it still has it's limitations.
At the time I was very enthusiastic about Greater Magadha because it was one of those moments when I realised that everything I thought I knew might be wrong, and what could be more exciting for a scholar? However I've been reflecting on Bronkhorst's book in the light of Geoffrey Samuel's book, and particularly Michael Witzel's equally awe inspiring writing (again far more accessible since he shares pdfs of many of his publications for free!). My conclusion is that Bronkhorst's thesis will not stand the test of time.
Bronkhorst, as my friend Dhīvan said in his recent M. Phil. thesis, is often arguing tendentiously. I like this word. It means that Bronkhorst has a conclusion that he is pursuing and this is reflected in how he treats the evidence. Everything is predicated on Bronkhorst's revised chronology and presented in such a way as to support his conclusions. In my view the evidence is read in the light of the theory, which is the opposite of the scientific method.
Poor Reasoning
There are some examples of faulty work in the Book. For example in the Appendix VI covering Brahmins in the Canon. Here he notes that the Ambaṭṭha Sutta may well refer to Sanskrit ambaṣṭha: i.e. someone born of a brāhmaṇa father and a kṣatriya or vaiṣya mother. Ambaṭṭha turns out to have a Brahmin father and a mother descended from a slave and is therefore low caste. Bronkhorst argues that here ambaṣṭha/ambaṭṭha must refer to the mixed caste of the interlocutor which is plausible. However a slave is not a kṣatriya or vaiṣya so Bronkhorst is stretching the evidence to suit himself. Richard Gombrich using the same kind of argument when arguing that the Buddha must have known about the Puruṣasūkta (ṚV 10.90) because he refers to Brahmins being born from Brahmā's mouth in the Tevijja Sutta. Bronkhorst points out that in the ṚV the Brahmins are born from Puruṣa's mouth, not Brahmā's and concludes that they Pāli authors "did not know" the sūkta (p.213). Bronkhorst seems to have a rather irrational aversion to Gombrich and it shows here in his inconsistent standards in treating the evidence. It also shows in his treatment of the humorous passages of the Pāli suttas which do not get a laugh from him.
Another example is the conclusion that because the Pāli texts are familiar with an idea found in the Dharmasūtras, that the Pāli texts must be late. The Dharmasūtras are much less securely dated than the Pāli, though the consensus seems to be that the written texts are originally post-Asoka. However it is also widely accepted that they codify conventions that are a great deal older, so there is no a priori reason to assume that a detail in isolation is late because it is found in a Dharmasūtra. And the Pāli parallels are all details in isolation.
Bronkhorst is caught out using fallacious reasoning on two separate occasions and this must put us on our guard. These examples are from areas I understand well enough to be sure of my ground. It might be argued that these are relatively minor infractions, but if someone like me can spot these kinds of minor problems, what are the professionals seeing? (and when will they write about them?)
Magadha
Closer to the heart of the matter is that the very concept of Greater Magadha seems flawed. Yes, there are two cultures on the Ganges plain ca. 1000 BCE and one of them is the Kuru-Pañcāla state. The other one is not Magadha, but the Kosala-Videha complex which is formed from Vedic tribes forced to move east by the rise of the Kurus. Witzel has referred to these tribes as para-Vedic, as they seem to have had customs significantly different than the Kuru Vedic tribes. Videha in particular retains connections with the Kuru Brahmins and the Videhan Kings invite them east. This is what we see in Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad when King Janaka invites a number of orthodox/orthoprax Brahmins to a debate. A debate which local boy Yājñavalkya wins. Yājñavalkya represents, even personifies, a major shift that is going on in the Brahmanical world. A shift away from the orthopraxy of the Kurus towards a new form of Brahmanism that forms the basis of what comes after. Not only is BU composed in Videha but so is the White Yajurveda, and the single extant recension of the Ṛgveda (which once existed in a number of different recensions). At this time Magadha hardly features in texts at all. Geographically Magadha is isolated from the major players by being south of the Ganges.
By the time of the Pāli texts Kosala is clearly more welcoming to Brahmins than Magadha which is further east, and crucially (in my opinion), south of the Ganges. The Pāli texts show more Brahmin towns and more land gifts to Brahmins in Kosala than in Magadha. In fact Bimbisāra gave only two grants and his murderous son Ajatasattu is not recorded as giving any. Later we know that the Mauryas were not converted to Brahmanism, but still followed śrāmaṇa religions.
Witzel considers that the evidence of the texts themselves, especially the language involved, show that the early Upaniṣads must predate the early Pāli texts by some centuries. Although he does point out that for both literatures there is a long gap between initial composition and final redaction, and this blurs the boundaries. The early Upaniṣads represent a time before the Second Urbanisation (ca 600-500 BCE), while the Pāli texts represent a time when it is in full swing. A difference not dealt with by Bronkhorst as far as I can see. Magadha as a power, with its fortified capital city Rājagaha, is only associated with the Second Urbanisation.
"Greater Magadha" as a region, then, only has meaning in Bronkhorst's idiosyncratic revised chronology which places all of the Upaniṣads post-Buddha. If anything the region is Greater Kosala in the late Vedic period (ca. 700-500 BCE)! It is true that the idea of ethicised karma does make a first appearance in BU, and I think Bronkhorst is on the right track when he says the Buddhist idea is not a development of Vedic eschatology, or at least not a direct development. What seems to mislead Bronkhorst is the idea that the source of this idea came along only in the 5th century. I believe this is short sighted, and ignores what we know about the history of ideas in India.
Brahmins
A fact which no scholar has yet come to grips with is that Brahmins, as far as they are recorded in the Pāli texts are quite diverse: we have at least ritualist, renunciate and theistic Brahmins, we also have some that are just plain villagers. Upaniṣadic ideas and practices are not found with any clarity in Pāli, they don't stand out, but they can apparently be inferred. We never see the Buddha in conversation with a Brahmin about ātman for instance, or about brahman, or the identity of the two (leading to mokṣa), or about oṃ, or the vedas. Where Brahmins express religious ideas in the Canon they are cosmological or related to a Creator God. The cosmological ideas are likely to have been common knowledge. The central ideas of the Upaniṣads are missing from Buddhist texts. This might be seen to support Bronkhorst's thesis, but I'm not so sure. My guess is that Brahmins maintained a relatively orthoprax exterior and kept the Upaniṣads secret for a long time--the word upaniṣad can mean 'esoteric'.
The theistic Brahmins have yet to receive adequate attention from scholars. Gombrich treats references to Brahmā as a criticism of brahman, but this only works in the specific context of the Tevijja Sutta, and what we see throughout the Canon is no mention of brahman, and many mentions of Brahmā. The theistic tendency has parallels in parts of the Mahābhārata, and may represent a kind of short-lived orthodoxy that is quickly over-written by the cults of Śiva and Viṣṇu which relegate Brahmā to saṃsāra just as the Buddhists did.
Śākyas
Taking Witzel's (1997) suggestion that the Śākayas arrived in North-East India rather late, I have developed this idea in my forthcoming article (draft on academia.edu). All things considered we can probably say that they arrived in the decade or two following 850 BCE. That year (± ~10 years) marks the beginning of a major dry period in India. Witzel notes that other North-Eastern tribes such as the Malla and the Vṛji were known to live in the West (Rajasthan and the Panjab) by early Vedic texts, but are neighbours of the Śākyas in the Pāli texts. At this time Kosala-Videha culturally dominates the Central Ganges region, and the Magadhan city of Rājagṛha is just about to be founded.
The argument is quite involved and requires the weighing of many separate items of circumstantial evidence, but a case can be made for contact between the Śākyas and the Zoroastrian culture of Iran. What is suggested by this line of argument is that the idea rebirth is found throughout Indian (perhaps it was an indigenous belief) but the introduction of ethicisation follows contact with Zoroastrianism. I try to make the case for this happening in the 9th century BCE, giving it time to infect the early Upaniṣads. However it could have come with Achaemenid influence after Darius claims Gandhāra and Sindh as provinces of Persia ca. 520 BCE.
Revised Chronology
One of the problems with Bronkhorst's argument is that he mixes texts from different eras and is relying on conjectural reconstructions. So he contrasts the Bhagavadgītā which is certainly written in the common era, with other bits of the Mahābhārata (post Asoka, but probably BCE), Pāli texts (ca 4th century BCE) Upaniṣads (7th-5th century BCE), and reconstructions of ideas of early Jain and Ājivika beliefs. This is not comparing apples with apples. A century of ideological development in a milieu which sees a lot of mixing and matching, assimilation and adaptation of each other's ideas and practices, can see major changes. So it seems to me Bronkhorst's method is flawed.
As I said above everything is predicated on Bronkhorst's revised chronology and presented in such a way as to support his conclusions. In other words one has to accept the his new chronology, which places the Upaniṣads after Buddhism rather than before it, and allows Brahmins to absorb ideas, particularly karma and rebirth, from the śrāmaṇa milieu. But the reasoning is circular. The thesis only works if we accept the chronology; while the chronology only fits if we accept the thesis. The same argument applies to the reconstructions of Jain and Ājīvaka religious ideas, especially the latter which are reconstructed mainly from Buddhist texts (a rather unreliable source of information!)
Conclusions
I think Bronkhorst has made a valuable contribution to the historiography of India. He has certainly made many of us rethink our understanding of and approach to the history of India before the Common Era, and this is a valuable service. A major challenge such as this forces us to be more precise in stating our differences of opinion if we have them. There are reasons to be cautious in accepting Bronkhorst's argument. I find I am persuaded by Witzel's account of the evidence as much because he seems to have no particular agenda as anything. Witzel has repeatedly, and at considerable length, played with the pieces of the evidential jigsaw in order to make a coherent picture from them. Samuel has showed that it is possible to read the archaeological evidence as supporting the consensus chronology. Following Witzel I have tried to show that the ideas might have come from a third source, Zoroastrian Iran, and been introduced into śrāmaṇa and Brahmin culture at roughly the same time. (Revising the article for publication is my next job).
Another plus is that Bronkhorst has made it abundantly clear that Buddhism can no longer be studied in isolation, but is a branch of Indology. Ignorance of archaeology and material culture (the gist of Greg Schopen's critique of Buddhist studies as a subject) is no longer acceptable. The Late Vedic literature--the Epics, Early Upaniṣads, Brāhmaṇas, Dharmasūtras, Dharmaśastras and even the Gṛhyasūtras--is starting to look more relevant in understanding early Buddhism. Early Buddhism existed in a context and we have been overlooking, or over-simplifying this context for too long. The downside of this is that an already complex subject appears to become an order of magnitude more complex. And this at a time when we are just beginning to make use of the Chinese parallels to the Pāli Nikāyas and discover the influence of Central Asia in transmitting Buddhist to the East. And this also at a time when Buddhist studies is dying out as an academic subject in the UK.
So far as I am aware no scholar has adopted Bronkhorst's revised chronology. And the whole thesis depends on acceptance of the chronology. It may be that more time is required for scholars to assimilate Bronkhorst's work, and to provide a critique. But in the meantime there are some obvious flaws in it that should make the reader wary of just accepting what he says uncritically.
I want to conclude with a coda on critical discourse. Not so long ago I was speaking to a prominent long time Buddhologist and they remarked that criticising someone else's work in print was coming to be seen as unacceptable. Certainly in the US where tenure depends on a positive reaction to one's work, critical dialogue is dwindling. Journals have apparently refused to publish critical articles. If the refutation aspect of conjecture and refutation is abandoned, then progress in knowledge inevitably goes awry. Just look at economics!
At the time I was very enthusiastic about Greater Magadha because it was one of those moments when I realised that everything I thought I knew might be wrong, and what could be more exciting for a scholar? However I've been reflecting on Bronkhorst's book in the light of Geoffrey Samuel's book, and particularly Michael Witzel's equally awe inspiring writing (again far more accessible since he shares pdfs of many of his publications for free!). My conclusion is that Bronkhorst's thesis will not stand the test of time.
Bronkhorst, as my friend Dhīvan said in his recent M. Phil. thesis, is often arguing tendentiously. I like this word. It means that Bronkhorst has a conclusion that he is pursuing and this is reflected in how he treats the evidence. Everything is predicated on Bronkhorst's revised chronology and presented in such a way as to support his conclusions. In my view the evidence is read in the light of the theory, which is the opposite of the scientific method.
Poor Reasoning
There are some examples of faulty work in the Book. For example in the Appendix VI covering Brahmins in the Canon. Here he notes that the Ambaṭṭha Sutta may well refer to Sanskrit ambaṣṭha: i.e. someone born of a brāhmaṇa father and a kṣatriya or vaiṣya mother. Ambaṭṭha turns out to have a Brahmin father and a mother descended from a slave and is therefore low caste. Bronkhorst argues that here ambaṣṭha/ambaṭṭha must refer to the mixed caste of the interlocutor which is plausible. However a slave is not a kṣatriya or vaiṣya so Bronkhorst is stretching the evidence to suit himself. Richard Gombrich using the same kind of argument when arguing that the Buddha must have known about the Puruṣasūkta (ṚV 10.90) because he refers to Brahmins being born from Brahmā's mouth in the Tevijja Sutta. Bronkhorst points out that in the ṚV the Brahmins are born from Puruṣa's mouth, not Brahmā's and concludes that they Pāli authors "did not know" the sūkta (p.213). Bronkhorst seems to have a rather irrational aversion to Gombrich and it shows here in his inconsistent standards in treating the evidence. It also shows in his treatment of the humorous passages of the Pāli suttas which do not get a laugh from him.
Another example is the conclusion that because the Pāli texts are familiar with an idea found in the Dharmasūtras, that the Pāli texts must be late. The Dharmasūtras are much less securely dated than the Pāli, though the consensus seems to be that the written texts are originally post-Asoka. However it is also widely accepted that they codify conventions that are a great deal older, so there is no a priori reason to assume that a detail in isolation is late because it is found in a Dharmasūtra. And the Pāli parallels are all details in isolation.
Bronkhorst is caught out using fallacious reasoning on two separate occasions and this must put us on our guard. These examples are from areas I understand well enough to be sure of my ground. It might be argued that these are relatively minor infractions, but if someone like me can spot these kinds of minor problems, what are the professionals seeing? (and when will they write about them?)
Magadha
Closer to the heart of the matter is that the very concept of Greater Magadha seems flawed. Yes, there are two cultures on the Ganges plain ca. 1000 BCE and one of them is the Kuru-Pañcāla state. The other one is not Magadha, but the Kosala-Videha complex which is formed from Vedic tribes forced to move east by the rise of the Kurus. Witzel has referred to these tribes as para-Vedic, as they seem to have had customs significantly different than the Kuru Vedic tribes. Videha in particular retains connections with the Kuru Brahmins and the Videhan Kings invite them east. This is what we see in Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad when King Janaka invites a number of orthodox/orthoprax Brahmins to a debate. A debate which local boy Yājñavalkya wins. Yājñavalkya represents, even personifies, a major shift that is going on in the Brahmanical world. A shift away from the orthopraxy of the Kurus towards a new form of Brahmanism that forms the basis of what comes after. Not only is BU composed in Videha but so is the White Yajurveda, and the single extant recension of the Ṛgveda (which once existed in a number of different recensions). At this time Magadha hardly features in texts at all. Geographically Magadha is isolated from the major players by being south of the Ganges.
By the time of the Pāli texts Kosala is clearly more welcoming to Brahmins than Magadha which is further east, and crucially (in my opinion), south of the Ganges. The Pāli texts show more Brahmin towns and more land gifts to Brahmins in Kosala than in Magadha. In fact Bimbisāra gave only two grants and his murderous son Ajatasattu is not recorded as giving any. Later we know that the Mauryas were not converted to Brahmanism, but still followed śrāmaṇa religions.
Witzel considers that the evidence of the texts themselves, especially the language involved, show that the early Upaniṣads must predate the early Pāli texts by some centuries. Although he does point out that for both literatures there is a long gap between initial composition and final redaction, and this blurs the boundaries. The early Upaniṣads represent a time before the Second Urbanisation (ca 600-500 BCE), while the Pāli texts represent a time when it is in full swing. A difference not dealt with by Bronkhorst as far as I can see. Magadha as a power, with its fortified capital city Rājagaha, is only associated with the Second Urbanisation.
"Greater Magadha" as a region, then, only has meaning in Bronkhorst's idiosyncratic revised chronology which places all of the Upaniṣads post-Buddha. If anything the region is Greater Kosala in the late Vedic period (ca. 700-500 BCE)! It is true that the idea of ethicised karma does make a first appearance in BU, and I think Bronkhorst is on the right track when he says the Buddhist idea is not a development of Vedic eschatology, or at least not a direct development. What seems to mislead Bronkhorst is the idea that the source of this idea came along only in the 5th century. I believe this is short sighted, and ignores what we know about the history of ideas in India.
Brahmins
A fact which no scholar has yet come to grips with is that Brahmins, as far as they are recorded in the Pāli texts are quite diverse: we have at least ritualist, renunciate and theistic Brahmins, we also have some that are just plain villagers. Upaniṣadic ideas and practices are not found with any clarity in Pāli, they don't stand out, but they can apparently be inferred. We never see the Buddha in conversation with a Brahmin about ātman for instance, or about brahman, or the identity of the two (leading to mokṣa), or about oṃ, or the vedas. Where Brahmins express religious ideas in the Canon they are cosmological or related to a Creator God. The cosmological ideas are likely to have been common knowledge. The central ideas of the Upaniṣads are missing from Buddhist texts. This might be seen to support Bronkhorst's thesis, but I'm not so sure. My guess is that Brahmins maintained a relatively orthoprax exterior and kept the Upaniṣads secret for a long time--the word upaniṣad can mean 'esoteric'.
The theistic Brahmins have yet to receive adequate attention from scholars. Gombrich treats references to Brahmā as a criticism of brahman, but this only works in the specific context of the Tevijja Sutta, and what we see throughout the Canon is no mention of brahman, and many mentions of Brahmā. The theistic tendency has parallels in parts of the Mahābhārata, and may represent a kind of short-lived orthodoxy that is quickly over-written by the cults of Śiva and Viṣṇu which relegate Brahmā to saṃsāra just as the Buddhists did.
Śākyas
Taking Witzel's (1997) suggestion that the Śākayas arrived in North-East India rather late, I have developed this idea in my forthcoming article (draft on academia.edu). All things considered we can probably say that they arrived in the decade or two following 850 BCE. That year (± ~10 years) marks the beginning of a major dry period in India. Witzel notes that other North-Eastern tribes such as the Malla and the Vṛji were known to live in the West (Rajasthan and the Panjab) by early Vedic texts, but are neighbours of the Śākyas in the Pāli texts. At this time Kosala-Videha culturally dominates the Central Ganges region, and the Magadhan city of Rājagṛha is just about to be founded.
The argument is quite involved and requires the weighing of many separate items of circumstantial evidence, but a case can be made for contact between the Śākyas and the Zoroastrian culture of Iran. What is suggested by this line of argument is that the idea rebirth is found throughout Indian (perhaps it was an indigenous belief) but the introduction of ethicisation follows contact with Zoroastrianism. I try to make the case for this happening in the 9th century BCE, giving it time to infect the early Upaniṣads. However it could have come with Achaemenid influence after Darius claims Gandhāra and Sindh as provinces of Persia ca. 520 BCE.
Revised Chronology
One of the problems with Bronkhorst's argument is that he mixes texts from different eras and is relying on conjectural reconstructions. So he contrasts the Bhagavadgītā which is certainly written in the common era, with other bits of the Mahābhārata (post Asoka, but probably BCE), Pāli texts (ca 4th century BCE) Upaniṣads (7th-5th century BCE), and reconstructions of ideas of early Jain and Ājivika beliefs. This is not comparing apples with apples. A century of ideological development in a milieu which sees a lot of mixing and matching, assimilation and adaptation of each other's ideas and practices, can see major changes. So it seems to me Bronkhorst's method is flawed.
As I said above everything is predicated on Bronkhorst's revised chronology and presented in such a way as to support his conclusions. In other words one has to accept the his new chronology, which places the Upaniṣads after Buddhism rather than before it, and allows Brahmins to absorb ideas, particularly karma and rebirth, from the śrāmaṇa milieu. But the reasoning is circular. The thesis only works if we accept the chronology; while the chronology only fits if we accept the thesis. The same argument applies to the reconstructions of Jain and Ājīvaka religious ideas, especially the latter which are reconstructed mainly from Buddhist texts (a rather unreliable source of information!)
Conclusions
I think Bronkhorst has made a valuable contribution to the historiography of India. He has certainly made many of us rethink our understanding of and approach to the history of India before the Common Era, and this is a valuable service. A major challenge such as this forces us to be more precise in stating our differences of opinion if we have them. There are reasons to be cautious in accepting Bronkhorst's argument. I find I am persuaded by Witzel's account of the evidence as much because he seems to have no particular agenda as anything. Witzel has repeatedly, and at considerable length, played with the pieces of the evidential jigsaw in order to make a coherent picture from them. Samuel has showed that it is possible to read the archaeological evidence as supporting the consensus chronology. Following Witzel I have tried to show that the ideas might have come from a third source, Zoroastrian Iran, and been introduced into śrāmaṇa and Brahmin culture at roughly the same time. (Revising the article for publication is my next job).
Another plus is that Bronkhorst has made it abundantly clear that Buddhism can no longer be studied in isolation, but is a branch of Indology. Ignorance of archaeology and material culture (the gist of Greg Schopen's critique of Buddhist studies as a subject) is no longer acceptable. The Late Vedic literature--the Epics, Early Upaniṣads, Brāhmaṇas, Dharmasūtras, Dharmaśastras and even the Gṛhyasūtras--is starting to look more relevant in understanding early Buddhism. Early Buddhism existed in a context and we have been overlooking, or over-simplifying this context for too long. The downside of this is that an already complex subject appears to become an order of magnitude more complex. And this at a time when we are just beginning to make use of the Chinese parallels to the Pāli Nikāyas and discover the influence of Central Asia in transmitting Buddhist to the East. And this also at a time when Buddhist studies is dying out as an academic subject in the UK.
So far as I am aware no scholar has adopted Bronkhorst's revised chronology. And the whole thesis depends on acceptance of the chronology. It may be that more time is required for scholars to assimilate Bronkhorst's work, and to provide a critique. But in the meantime there are some obvious flaws in it that should make the reader wary of just accepting what he says uncritically.
I want to conclude with a coda on critical discourse. Not so long ago I was speaking to a prominent long time Buddhologist and they remarked that criticising someone else's work in print was coming to be seen as unacceptable. Certainly in the US where tenure depends on a positive reaction to one's work, critical dialogue is dwindling. Journals have apparently refused to publish critical articles. If the refutation aspect of conjecture and refutation is abandoned, then progress in knowledge inevitably goes awry. Just look at economics!
~~oOo~~
Bronkhorst, Johannes. 2007. Greater Magadha : Studies in the Culture of Early India. Leiden: Brill.
Reviews
- Cort, John E. 2007. Religious Studies Review.
- Neelis, Jason. 2008. J. of the Royal Asiatic Society.
- Wynne, Alexander 2011. H-Buddhism
13 comments:
Thanks, very interesting.
Could you say more about the Thomas Hopkins book? Is this circulating in draft form, or about to be published, or somehow stalled?
Sorry to hear about the declining state of Buddhology. I was not aware of that.
Hi David
I emailed Geoff Samuel a while ago and he said that Hopkins is unlikely to ever publish the book. As far as I know it isn't circulating either, though I never got around contacting Hopkins directly. I've certainly never seen a copy.
Buddhist Studies has been in a steady decline in the UK since the 70's. You can't do it as a separate subject at Cambridge any more. The Numata Foundation and Soka Gakkai are funding chairs and private universities, which will stop the subject from becoming extinct.
So, if I understand the way the Witzel/Attwood theory fits with Bronkurst, there were two rival cultural centers in northern India, the Vedic Kuru-Pañcala culture and the Kosala-Videha-Magadha complex; the latter produced śramaṇism and was influenced by Iran. I wonder what this means for the linguistic evidence. The split between Eastern Indo-Aryan and other Indo-Aryan languages does not appear to be enormous. If Iranians had such an impact on Kosala-Videha-Magadha culture, where is the linguistic impact? Arguably, names such as Magadha or Śākya have Iranian etymologies, but are there other vocabulary terms to be found as loanwords in Eastern Indo-Aryan?
The historical comparison I would make is the Norma French, who were actually Norse, but very quickly assimilated and became linguistically indistinguishable from other French speakers. There's no need to assume that a small tribe arriving in an area dominated by Indo-Ayan speakers would necessarily retained their own language. Remember that several centuries had passed before we have solid linguistic records.
I suggest you look at the draft of my article Possible Iranian Origins for Sākyas and Aspects of Buddhism where I discuss the linguistic argument in a little more detail.
But remember Iranian etymologies and Indic etymologies all coincide by about 1700 BCE since they arise from proto-Indo-Iranian. It's possible, even likely, that the Śākyas spoke a dialect not much more different from Prakrit than Italian is from Spanish.
Sorry this reply got posted to the wrong blog post...
I have not read Prof. Bronkhorst's book. But I have some things to say about some of your assertions above.
>>Here he notes that the Ambaṭṭha Sutta may well refer to Sanskrit ambaṣṭha<<
He is right. Ambaṣṭha (amba= mother, stha=place; literally "mother's place") when used as an epithet (this word acquired negative connotations in Indian society) most probably referred to a person who was identified more by his matrilineal lineage (perhaps since his paternal pedigree "gotra pravAra" was unknown or doubtful). The Buddha seems to insult young Ambaṭṭha but here it seems to be a proper name and not an epithet so the Buddha seems to be making a mistake at best.
There are a lot of other assertions attributed to the Buddha (as per this sutta) that seem to be misconceived but that's for another day.
>>However a slave is not a kṣatriya or vaiṣya so Bronkhorst is stretching the evidence to suit himself.<<
The ambaTTha sutta does not make any reference to a slave, so I don't get you. It says "dAsiputto tvamasi" (i.e. "you are the son of a dAsi"). dAsi commonly meant servant (fem), and could be of any caste (although in practise they were usually from the lower castes i.e. vaishya & shudra). dAsa is the masc. form, and is well attested on the Iranian side in Avestan "dAha".
dAsa/dAha were probably a western tribe that were subjugated/defeated by Aryan (Indian & Iranian) kings for they are a common enemy of the Iranians/Indians as per the Vedas and Avesta. In the time of the Buddha, the word must have come to be used as a common noun to refer to any servile class/caste (caste/jAti is not varNa, but these are related concepts).
>>Richard Gombrich using the same kind of argument when arguing that the Buddha must have known about the Puruṣasūkta (ṚV 10.90) because he refers to Brahmins being born from Brahmā's mouth in the Tevijja Sutta.<<
The Purusha sukta was too well known to have escaped the attention of the Buddha (or any other person in India)... it is repeated in all 4 vedas besides being heavily cited in post-vedic commentaries. There is a very slim chance the Buddha was not aware of it.
>>Bronkhorst points out that in the ṚV the Brahmins are born from Puruṣa's mouth, not Brahmā's and concludes that they Pāli authors "did not know" the sūkta (p.213).<<
Purusha (literally "man", but in this context - the first/primordial man) is an epithet of Brahma.
>>Another example is the conclusion that because the Pāli texts are familiar with an idea found in the Dharmasūtras, that the Pāli texts must be late. The Dharmasūtras are much less securely dated than the Pāli, though the consensus seems to be that the written texts are originally post-Asoka. However it is also widely accepted that they codify conventions that are a great deal older, so there is no a priori reason to assume that a detail in isolation is late because it is found in a Dharmasūtra. And the Pāli parallels are all details in isolation.<<
In general most dharmasutra literature predate the extant Pali canon as they are in the sutra style which emphasizes brevity at the cost of everything else to aid in rote memorization in the pre-writing era. The Pali canon was most likely compiled & standardized from disparate sources to be preserved in writing for posterity. I'm not sure if there ever was a single complete canon before it was first written down.
>>Closer to the heart of the matter is that the very concept of Greater Magadha seems flawed. Yes, there are two cultures on the Ganges plain ca. 1000 BCE and one of them is the Kuru-Pañcāla state. The other one is not Magadha, but the Kosala-Videha complex which is formed from Vedic tribes forced to move east by the rise of the Kurus<<
Magadha was originally the land of the Maga (i.e the Mages/Magi) probably in Eastern Iran. The Kurus were probably originally in Uttara Kuru (i.e the northern Kuru state) but moved south. Kosala-Videha was also in North western India, much after the Buddha's time, they may have moved into the Ganges plains. Why else would we find the earliest and biggest statues of the Buddha in and around Gandhara (i.e eastern Afghanistan)? The old name of Lahore was apparently Lavapura ("town of Lava", Lava being the king of Kosala after Rama as per Ramayana story). Kushinagara (another town in Kosala, called Kushavati in the Jatakas, and the place of the parinirvana of the Buddha) was apparently named after Rama's other son Kusha. The point is these cities were supposed to have been in Kosala-Videha. So it becomes necessary to assume the Kosalans and Magadhans later moved east into the Ganges plains.
>>Later we know that the Mauryas were not converted to Brahmanism, but still followed śrāmaṇa religions.<<
Brahmana is a varna among the 4 classical varnas. Sramana is not. In the canon, Brahmana and Sramana are mentioned together not as opposing religions but as similar minded people (i.e religious leaders from living a settled life, versus religious leaders leading a homeless life as wandering mendicants). A brahmana could simultaneously be a sramana (for ex. Sariputra & Maudgalyayana) It is likely someone who chose to become a sramana lost his varna in society (but the Buddha claims he is still a Kshatriya). Thus in the Pali canon, Brahmana merely refers to religious leaders who led their lives as householders, while sramana were almost always homeless. They do not form 2 mutually opposing religions, and there would have been no such thing as a "conversion" to one or the other in any distinctive sense during the Buddha's time.
>>what we see throughout the Canon is no mention of brahman, and many mentions of Brahmā.<<
brahmA is just the nominative form of brahman, while this would have needed no explanation to the Buddha and his contemporaries, people today need to be more aware of sanskrit declensions. Just as Atman/Attan and AtmA/AttA are one and the same (and no one has as far as I know claimed that the Buddha's references to Atta was not the Brahmin's 'Atman')!
>>Witzel notes that other North-Eastern tribes such as the Malla and the Vṛji were known to live in the West (Rajasthan and the Panjab) by early Vedic texts, but are neighbours of the Śākyas in the Pāli texts.<<
All of them I think lived nowhere near the Ganges plains until after the Buddha's times. Isn't it surprising the Buddha makes no reference to the Ganga at all despite supposedly travelling all around it, when he refers to even the tiny Mahi (if this is the same Mahi that runs across the western Indian states of Gujarat & Rajasthan today)?
Do you have a any evidence of Magadha linked to the Magi? There is no possible linguistic link in the name that I can see.
You are completely wrong about the location of Kosala.
Those Buddha statues date from about 600 years after the Buddha is supposed to have lived.
The rest of your speculations are equally off key.
Of course the Buddha refers to the Ganga. Loads of times. What a ridiculous suggestion!
D ii.89 Yena titthena gaṅgaṃ nadiṃ tarissati
M i.127 ahaṃ imāya ādittāya tiṇukkāya gaṅgaṃ nadiṃ santāpessāmi saṃparitāpessāmī’ti
S iv.190 mayaṃ imaṃ gaṅgaṃ nadiṃ pacchāninnaṃ karissāma pacchāpoṇaṃ pacchāpabbhāra’nti
etc.
You need to sort out fact from fiction my friend.
Norman is an interesting comparison. Their original Old East Norse dialect seems to be a bit of an outlier in terms of its limited impact on their later Gallo-Romance language. I'd guess it's possible but prima facie unlikely that that kind of low impact would happen under similar circumstances.
The Śākyas may have been marginal in terms of population, but we're positing that they had a major cultural impact on Kosala-Videha-Magadha, which would tend to magnify their linguistic influence. Of course, we're not necessarily talking about the Śākyas alone; there may have been other Iranic groups in the region. I'm not sure which groups you consider to be likely Iranic vs. Iranic-influenced Aryans.
I took a look at Possible Iranian Origins for Sākyas and Aspects of Buddhism, and I found it intriguing and insightful. However, I didn't the linguistic discussion was very thorough. I know there has been considerable work on non-IE substrate languages in the Vedas. I'm not sure if there has been much work on the substrate in Eastern Indo-Aryan languages.
Of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, especially considering, as you point out, the likely closeness of Iranian and Indo-Aryan at the time. By the way, are you familiar with Christopher Beckwith's unorthodox theory of early IE which argues that there is no "Indo-Iranian" because Iranian and Indo-Aryan are not particularly close? That would complicate the picture considerably, but it's obviously a fringe position at present.
I guess it's also worth noting that the Sakas proper also seem to have left not much of a footprint on the languages of India.
As I understand Witzel's theory of the Iranian origins of the Śākyas, by the time they came to prominence they spoke an Eastern Indic dialect very similar to Kosalan or Magadhan. And yes Witzel suggests that many groups made the journey, though we only have mention of the Malla and the Vṛji. When they arrived in India the would have been very few in number. They may have spent several centuries in Rajasthan before being forced to emigrate by climate change.
No, the linguistic discussion was not thorough. I don't really have the training or skill to do much more than offer a broad outline of the theories of Deshpande and others. The non-IE substrate languages don't have much bearing on the problem. As a separate issue it's very interesting however, as I think they must have been animists and a lot of their beliefs end up being part of Buddhism.
Iranian and Indo-Aryan are quite close as far as I can see. With just a little Sanskrit and a bit more Pāli I can look at Romanised Avestan and pick out the key words. I would say that Avestan is somewhat more different than say Pāli and Sanskrit, but much less different than Sanskrit and Hindi. But they are clearly related. The Iranian word for good speech is hūxta; Sanskrit is sūkta. This only requires a simple substitution of s > h; k > x. Also verb endings in my Avestan grammar look closer to Sanskrit than Latin appears to be. But then as I say I'm no expert in this subject.
As far as I know only Witzel and I currently find his theory plausible. The article will be published but neither the editor of the journal nor either of the reviewers felt my presentation was "convincing". I think they're publishing the article to be controversial; to provoke discussion. In fact I only aim to create a reasonable doubt that makes someone investigate properly.
Regarding Beckwith's theory, he argues that Avestan is really an Aryan/Iranian contact language, essentially Sanskrit with a really bad Iranian accent. That sounds a little far-fetched to me, but he may have strong arguments for it (this hypothesis is developed in an appendix to his Empires of the Silk Road which I haven't read completely). The gist is that if you remove Avestan as the link between IA and Iranian, then the evidence that remains for Indo-Iranian is weak.
Regarding the plausibility of Witzel's Greater Śākyastan theory, I'm not really sure what the null hypothesis is or what evidence supports it. I suppose the default view is simply that Śākyas were a typical Indo-Aryan group with nothing in particular distinguishing them from their neighbors. On the other hand, given that the Buddha's Śākya ethnicity is treated as distinctive, I have sometimes assumed that they were a relict pre-IE group who could very easily have no ties to any attested language.
Well as I say I'm not really in a position to judge Beckwith's theory. The consensus is against him, but then the consensus denies any connection between Buddhism and Zoroastrianism.
If we're going down the road of a null hypothesis then we can only look for a refutation not a confirmation. But historians don't use that kind of language anyway.
In this case the null hypothesis is that Buddhism can be explained with reference to presumed antecedents in Brahmanism and Jainism, and certain unique innovations. But the example of the division of the person into body, speech and mind for the purposes of morality cannot be explained from Indian antecedents. And in fact it is virtually identical to an Zoroastrian division that is chronologically prior.
There are only two likely conclusions that I can see. One that it is a wild coincidence where innovations in Iran and India have converged at very different times (separated by about 1000 years); or two, that some aspects Buddhism might be better explained as imports from Iran. Obviously I'm arguing for the second.
The second conclusion is supported by other circumstantial evidence - some peculiarities of the Buddhist afterlife, and the tradition of an ancestral incest marriage. Though all of the evidence is circumstantial so far.
I hope that at least some serious scholars with the requisite training think this is plausible and look into it. To discover a more definite link would be a famous discovery.
As I point out in my article the Śākyas are distinctive until they are over-run by the Kosalans anyway; and later by the Magadhans. Though they are related to their neighbours the Koliyans.
Our evidence of the languages spoken outside of the Kurukṣetra before Asoka are vague at best. Between the Vedic writings ca. 1500-500 BCE and the Buddhist writings c. 500 BCE-0 there are no other documents. Assumptions are made about precursors only on the basis of surviving fragments - particularly the Asokan epigraphs, or the prakrits that are recorded later. This was K R Norman's speciality, but M. Deshpande has written about it as well - there's a ref in the article.
Just to add one reference: there is a review on Bronkhorst's book in the German language journal "Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft" (vol. 161, 2011, p. 216-220), written by Konrad Klaus.
Re: "…if someone like me can spot these kinds of minor problems, what are the professionals seeing? (and when will they write about them?)
Those are two good questions --and you'll be disappointed by the answers to both.
Nobody will criticize Bronkhorst until after he's dead (except, maybe, for Gombrich), and nobody will criticize Gombrich until after he's dead (except, maybe, for Bronkhorst).
However, even with the many years of froideur and detante between Gombrich and Bronkhorst, they largely critique one-another through oblique and indirect innuendo (and this doesn't help anyone, least of all students in the current generation, trying to make the best of the controversies they've inherited from the last one).
The type of problems you've raised here are (in fact) the problems that professional editors should have addressed before the book went to print, but Leiden, "HdO", etc., no longer spend a dime on editing, and no attempt is made to engage the authors in reconsidering weaknesses in their work before going to press. The strange reciprocal of the digital era is that paper-book publishers have tried to lower their costs --and have, in fact, reduced the distinction between book and website.
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