My most recently published article is an invited contribution to a special issue of the journal Religions.
- Attwood, Jayarava. 2026. "A Phenomenological Reading of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā" Religions 17, no. 5: 596. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17050596
In this essay, I want to explore some related ideas that didn't make it into the article.
In discussing ancient Indian history, we have to be very vague about dates. We can seldom be more precise than ± 100 years, often considerably less. For example, various Buddhist traditions place the death of the Buddha between 544 – 368 BCE, which can be expressed as 456 BCE ± 88 years. However, these dates are entirely based on interpreting religious texts. And they were arrived at using precisely the kind of method that, in Christian circles, places the creation of the Earth in 4004 BCE.
Asoka's dates have a precision of about ± 10 years. And they are more or less the only well established dates in pre-Common Era Indian history. One reason I found working on Chinese history fascinating is that dates are often far more precise. For example, I can say with confidence that the Heart Sutra was composed between 26 December 656 and 13 March 661 (my article on this is out being reviewed at present).
I need to remind readers that, for historians, a primary source is an eyewitness account, written down by the witness during their own lifetime. Ancient history is largely based on written sources, backed up by archaeology. A source written down in the 5th century CE is a primary source for the 5th century. And there simply are no primary sources from India for the period 456 BCE ± 88 years.
Anything that is based on hearsay is clearly not a primary source. Similarly, a text written down in one period cannot be a primary source for a period some centuries earlier. For example, Asoka's edicts are evidence of Asoka's beliefs and values in the mid-3rd century BCE. Asoka is unique in Indian history. His views clearly do not (cannot) represent those of the general population of North India in the 3rd century BCE anymore than the views, habits, and lifestyle of King Charles III reflect England in 2026. Charles is, and has always been, a man apart. So was Asoka.
Additionally, as historians we must critically evaluate the reliability of our sources: witnesses can set out to deceive, they can make mistakes, misremember, and so on. The most basic check that historians perform on any primary sources is seeking independent corroboration. A single primary source is insufficient to establish any proposition as a "fact".
Yes, these are severe limitations and wholly self-imposed (by historians on ourselves). The price of not staying within the limits, however, is unreliable history. Although even staying within the limits is no guarantee of reliability. We aim for objectivity because that would the most reliable and practical outcome. But this leaves ample room for failure and requires the kind of iterative approach that Georg Gadamer called the hermeneutic circle.
Note that a primary source is distinct from what philologers call "primary literature" which is any text from more or less any period, so long as it was composed in a canonical language. This distinction appears to be lost on the academics and theologians arguing for the historicity of the Buddha. The Pāli Canon is certainly a primary literature. But if it is a primary historical source, it is only a primary source for the history of Sri Lanka in the 5th century CE (or considerably later).
Keep in mind also that, despite some loud protestation to the contrary, the methods that philologists use to reconstruct ur-texts or that historical linguists use to reconstruct ur-languages cannot be applied to reconstructing prehistory (history prior to our available witnesses). The accumulation of copying errors in texts or the phonetic drift of languages are relatively simple and regular compared to human behaviour (and history is ultimately the study of human behaviour in the past). There are no regular, law-like, changes in history. Every situation is different. Historians are famously poor at predicting the future.
Note that "sutra" (without diacritics or italics) is a recognised loan word in English and found in all major English dictionaries. I have begun to use it to translate both Sanskrit sūtra and Pāli sutta.
Prajñāpāramitā is Old
Theravādins and their allies in academia make some big claims for antiquity and authenticity of the Pāli Canon. Incidentally, Steve Collins (2010: 8-9) points out that calling Southeast Asian Buddhism "Theravāda" is a "Western coinage." And the term only became popular after a resolution by the World Fellowship of Buddhists in 1959.
One of the main claims that Theravādins and their academic allies make is that the Pāli Canon was written down in the 1st century. As I note in Attwood (2026):
The Mahāvaṃsa (33.100), for example, states that the canon and its commentaries were committed to writing in the reign of King Vaṭṭagāmiṇi (29-17 BCE) at the Alu-vihāra in Sri Lanka.
The immediate problem is that the Vaṃsa literature itself seems to date from no earlier than the fifth century CE. If it is a primary source, then it is a primary source for the beliefs of Sri Lankans in the fifth century, it is not a primary source for the first century BCE (some 500 years earlier).
However, there is no corroboration of this specific claim from either historical or archaeological sources. The fact is that, like other figures from the Pāli imaginaire, King Vaṭṭagāmiṇi left no artefacts or traces that would securely tie him to history. He has no more claim to being a historical figure than the Buddha does.
When the only source one has for a historical event is a self-serving religious literature, any factual claims one makes are dubious at best. A king called Vaṭṭagāmiṇi may well have ruled Sri Lanka in the first century BCE. I certainly cannot disprove this claim. But equally, without some corroboration we do not know this and as historians we certainly cannot place any weight or value on such claims from such sources. As, historian, Kristin Schieble (2016: 118) has said:
We simply cannot be sure of the veracity or objectivity of any of the claims in the Mahāvaṃsa when it is read as a source for social history.
Treating such sources as "authentic" and "reliable" is all very well for religious or theological apologists but, as a historian, I am constrained by convention and inclination not to make use of inherently unreliable sources. If there were any independent and secular (or at least non-Buddhist) corroboration of this "fact", particularly in archaeology, it might be more plausible, but there is none.
In terms of primary sources, the oldest evidence we have for the use of Pāli is a fragment of text on gold foil from Burma, dated to "the mid-or late fifth century" (Stargardt 1995, 2000). What's more, the next oldest artefact is a fragment of manuscript from Nepal dated to the 9th century CE (Hinüber 1991). Meanwhile, the oldest extant copies of the Tipiṭaka are no earlier than the 15th century CE.
I recognise that a case can be made that the oral composition of some of the Pāli sutras took place somewhat earlier, likely before Asoka (since he is not mentioned). I find this a plausible speculation. However, it is no more than speculation. And such speculations cannot be corroborated. It is not a fact that Pāli existed as an oral tradition. Rather, it is an inference we draw from certain features of written Pāli that are similar to features of extant oral literatures. Such inferences cannot be tested because they refer to a period many centuries in the past.
The same argument applies to the Prajñāpāramitā literature which was also likely based on an existing oral tradition. This is important because a Gāndhārī manuscript of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā has been carbon-dated to 74 CE, with a two-sigma range of 47-147 CE (Falk 2011). The "two-sigma range" reflects a 95% confidence that the true value lies within this range; but it also admits a 5% chance that it lies outside this range. Palaeography is considerably less precise, but suggests dates consistent with this range. This is one of the most precisely attested dates in Ancient Indian history.
Notice that the extant evidence for the literature of Prajñāpāramitā is some centuries older than the oldest evidence for the Pāli literature. Based on this, I conjecture that Prajñāpāramitā is much older than is currently recognised. Indeed, while I cannot prove it, I believe that Prajñāpāramitā reflects a tradition that is every bit as old as the Pāli sutras.
Theravādins, with their axiomatic privileging of Pāli and the Sri Lankan mythology surrounding it, tend to see Pāli as precedent and Prajñāpāramitā as subsequent. I'm not convinced about this. I have argued, in Some Issues of Pāli Chronology (30 September 2022) for example, that the Pāli literature could also be a loosely curated collection of texts from a variety of geographical milieus. There is clearly some development over time, but chronology doesn't explain all the variants.
Pursuing Cessation
There, Elder Sāriputta addressed the bhikkhus, "Comrades, this extinction (nibbāna) is bliss (sukha)."
When this was said, Elder Udāyī replied to Elder Sāriputta: "But how, Comrade, is it bliss when nothing is experienced? (natthi vedayitaṃ)"
"Comrade, it is precisely because nothing is experienced that is it bliss." -- Nibbānasukha Sutta (AN 9.34)
My translation of: Tatra kho āyasmā sāriputto bhikkhū āmantesi: “sukhamidaṁ, āvuso, nibbānaṁ. Sukhamidaṁ, āvuso, nibbānan”ti. Evaṁ vutte, āyasmā udāyī āyasmantaṁ sāriputtaṁ etadavoca: “kiṁ panettha, āvuso sāriputta, sukhaṁ yadettha natthi vedayitan”ti? “Etadeva khvettha, āvuso, sukhaṁ yadettha natthi vedayitaṁ (AN IV 415).
Sensory experience, aka dukkha, is "everything" (Sabba Sutta SN 35.23) and everything is to be abandoned (Pahāna Sutta SN 35.24). Elsewhere, the meditator seeks "the end of the world" (loko anto), on which, see The World (18 May 2012).
The indefatigable Anālayo (2021) has speculated that practises aimed at bringing sensory experience to an end predate Buddhism. He draws attention to the Ariyapariyesanā Sutta (MN 26), which I have also written about. The Ariyapariyesanā Sutta contains what seems to be a primitive biography of the Buddha. As I pointed out in The Buddha's Biography (01 July 2011), this Ariyapariyesanā narrative conflicts with the received biographical tradition in various ways. Anālayo notes that the Buddha's pre-awakening teachers, Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Ramaputta, teach the Buddha how to attain both the "stage of nothingness" (ākiñcaññāyatana)* and the "stage of neither recognition nor nonrecognition" (nevasaññānāsaññāyatana).
* Note ākiñcañña "the state of having nothing, absence of possessions; nothingness" is an abstract noun derived from the akiñcañña, which in turn derives from the adverbial pronoun: kiñcana (kiṃ + cana; = kiñci) "something, anything".
The Cūḷasuññata Sutta describes how one can attain these stages, and how to go beyond them to the "signless trance" (animitta-samādhi), and finally to "dwelling in absence" (suññatāvihāra)
NB, Pāli has two words: (1) suññato (noun) "Absent, empty"; the ablative case, used nominally; the expected counterpart *śūnyataḥ is not found in Sanskrit; and (2) suññatā (abstract noun) "Absence; emptiness". The title of the sutra uses the former, the meditative state uses the latter.
I see the Cūḷasuññata Sutta as a kind of missing link, in that it describes what seems to be a standalone meditation practice not (yet?) connected to the jhāna practice that dominates the Theravāda canon. Given the outcome, i.e. "dwelling in absence" (suññatāvihāra), this suggests a connection with Prajñāpāramitā, which is almost entirely focused on explicating the absence of sensory experience.
The practice in the Cūḷasuññata Sutta is not named. I have referred to it as suññatāvihāra and as āyatana meditation. It is clear, however, that the practice is not connected to the practice of jhāna. And the distinction is simple: the suññatāvihāra meditation aims directly at nirvāṇa, i.e. the absence of sensory experience; while jhāna aims at a particular kind of experience. From the suññatāvihāra point of view of, if you are still having an experience, that is not Prajñāpāramitā.
Still, in both approaches, the key is to gradually withdraw attention from sensory experience. In an unpublished essay called Sensory Deprivation and the Threefold Way (2022; SDTW), I extended earlier research I did on the so-called "Spiral Path". This doctrine is epitomised by the first five sutras of the chapters of tens in the Aṅguttaranikāya (and the almost identical sutras that begin the chapter of elevens).
In SDTW, I argue that sīla is less to do with morality, and more to do with avoiding the gross effects of sensory deprivation by accustoming practitioners to low levels of sensory stimulation. I also compare descriptions of strange experiences early in meditation (as described in a Buddhist meditation manual) and the hallucinations caused by sensory deprivation (as described by Oliver Sacks). We find almost exactly the same language in both descriptions. In this view, experiences such as "visions" or "energy in the body" in meditation are simply hallucinations, brought on by sensory deprivation. They have no soteriological or doctrinal significance. Of course, Buddhists are not going to admit this because hallucinations sound pathological.
According to the Prajñāpāramitā literature, if you are having any kind of experience, no matter how blissful or fascinating, that is not Prajñāpāramitā and you have to keep going beyond it. In this view, it is only when all sensory experience ceases, that one can attain liberation from rebirth.
Of course, Buddhist texts present several other, quite unrelated, methods for obtaining liberation from rebirth. That said, it seems that, for Prajñāpāramitā, the only state that counts is the state in which there is no experience. And as far as I can see, this is only achieved by systematically withdrawing attention from sensory experience until it stops registering. Note that his is an epistemic absence (śūnya), not a metaphysical non-existence (nāstitā).
Most people reading this will live in a milieu characterised by hedonistic chasing of pleasure, in which obtaining plentiful and frequent intense sensory experience is seen the acme of a well-lived life. As such it can be difficult to relate to people who advocate "abandoning sensory experience" and who spend hours every day in states of acute sensory deprivation. It is precisely the state in which all experience ceases that justifies this approach. Ancient Buddhists believes that good actions (puṇyakamma) led to good rebirth destinations (sugati) and evil actions (pāpakamma) led to evil destinations (duggati). However a good rebirth was was only a consolation prize for those who missed out on the necessary temperament and/or opportunity to pursue nirvāṇa. The lucky few are described as "beings that are only minimally defiled" (sattā apparajakkhajātikā).* Note that the phrase is often poetically translated as "having but little dust in their eyes", but the Pāli does not mention "dust" or "eyes". However we translate it, the ability to practice deep meditation was and is rare.
* apparajakkhajātika can be parsed as appa (little) + rakakkha (defilement) + jātika (having). Rajakkha is originally rajas-ka.
In this view, the goal of Buddhism was to undergo cessation and to dwell in the absence of sensory experience. Various comparisons make clear than this is what nirvāṇa "extinction" refers to. And it was upon arising from this state of absence that prajñā would dawn on the practitioner. I take prajñā to refer to precisely the knowledge that arises following a period of absence. Similarly, in the "Spiral Path" sutras, liberation (vimutti) is followed by the knowledge that one is liberated (vimuttiñāna).
Far too much "Buddhist history" is just self-serving narratives based on Buddhist mythology. The infiltration of academia by religieux, with their own religious agendas, has not helped the situation. Too many of the people making assertions about Buddhist history are wilfully ignorant sectarian apologists.
Original Buddhism?
Many Europeans have sought the origins of Buddhism in so-called "early Buddhist scripture". But here "early" is a misnomer. As we have seen, the use of Pāli cannot be dated before the 5th century CE. A couple of Old Sinhala inscriptions (ca 2nd or 3rd century CE) appear to use Pāli words, but these are ambiguous at best.
I have never understood the claim that Theravādins and their academic allies are fond of stating, i.e. that they perceive an "underlying unity" in the suttas, which they associate with authorship by one man. Such claims appear to emerge from the a priori belief that Buddhism was founded by "the Buddha". It's circular reasoning. To me, there is clearly more than one mind at work there.
When one actually reads Pāli sutras in bulk, one is struck by the wildly varying terminology. We see a plethora of different terms for the same idea. Many terms are only used in one text. There are contradictions. There is even evidence of different Prakrit languages or the later influence of Sanskrit.
The means to obtaining liberation from rebirth are a case in point. For example, some Buddhists appear to have exclusively pursued the cessation of sense experience, an approach preserved in the early Prajñāpāramitā traditions. Other Buddhists insisted that to become liberated one had examine the content of experience and try to see it as impermanent and insubstantial and lacking a soul (ātman). Texts that describe saṃjñāvedayitanirodha, do not mention anātman, and vice versa. The only time the two ideas appear together are in obviously late, encyclopedic lists of lists, epitomised by the Saṅgīti Sutta (DN 33).
Given the a priori belief in the historicity of the Buddha, such discrepancies are usually attributed to diachronic changes (over time) rather than, say, evidence of synchronic plurality (at one time). Asserting that one variant is old and another is new, is certainly an explanation for these differences. I have tried to show that it is not the only possible explanation for many of them (see Some Issues of Pāli Chronology. 30 September 2022). Mere chronology cannot explain why (at least) two different approaches are represented as "the (only) approach" in Buddhist sutras. Nor why more approaches, with different apparent ends, kept emerging throughout the history of Indian Buddhism.
It is a simple fact that all Buddhist sects, where we have evidence, continued to invent new doctrines, gradually moving away from the "original teachings" entirely. Those Buddhist modernists who insist that one form or another of modern Buddhism is more "historically authentic" somehow manage to ignore almost the entire history of Buddhism as well as the methods and theories of historians. One does not find "Theravāda" in Pāli sutras. Rather, one finds a variety of forms of Buddhism that no one practises anymore. And indeed, by the time historical sources begin to emerge, around the mid-3rd century BCE, its safe to say that no one could claim to be practising "original Buddhism".
The Pāli canon quite obviously reflects a synthesis, or indeed many syntheses, which retain obvious signs of the unsynthesised elements of doctrine and terminology. The language itself shows evidence of being synthetic in the same way, from a variety of related Prakrits, with later influence from Sanskrit.
Alternative History
Buddhism emerged from a social milieu that we only know from religious texts written down some centuries after the events they purport to record. And misinterpretations of these texts are legion. I still see it stated that Buddhism emerged from Brahmanism or (worse) Hinduism. We know this interpretation, which was once more or less universal, is false. And so on.
It's tempting for religieux and theologians to take the realistic setting of the Buddha parables as historical fact. However, this kind of quasi-realistic storytelling is also associated with, for example, all historical fiction and with a good deal of speculative fiction: King Arthur, Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, and many others. The problem for historians is that not a single single figure in the texts has ever been associated with any extant historical artefact. And this includes all the kings (and includes the kings in the Vaṃsa literature). There are no coins, no texts, no inscriptions, no images, no monuments, no law codes. There is nothing that would allow us to have a rational belief in the historicity of any of the characters in the Pāli texts. There is no chronology because there are no artefacts to date.
Of course, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absent. My argument is not that we know something about the Buddha or the other characters in the texts; I strenuously avoid the conclusion that we know that the Buddha didn't exist. So does David Drewes, though this has not stopped his detractors from attributing exactly this view to him.
My argument is that we know nothing about the Buddha, other figures of Buddhist mythology, or about "original" or even "early Buddhism". All the "facts" that we have in relation to the Buddha come from religious stories: parables, allegories, cosmogonies, eschatologies, hagiographies, and so on that were written down some centuries late (how many we simply do not know). Buddhism has no, or almost no, historical consciousness.
Buddhism and the Buddha enter the historical record when they are mentioned by Asoka in the mid-third century BCE. Asoka himself tells us that he was a Buddhist convert who was a bit perfunctory at first, but later started attending talks by the bhikkhus after which "there was real progress" (bādhi cha pakate Hultzsch 1925: 166-7, although I don't accept his reading).
All we get from Asoka is evidence of the bare existence of a religion which claims the Buddha as a significant figure. The term buddha is used by Asoka just four times: three times in Minor Rock Edict 3 (erected at Virāṭanagara, Rajasthan; then known as Bairat), and once in Minor Pillar Edict 1 (Lumbini). Buddha is not mentioned in any of the major edict texts, or in any of the Māgadhī edicts. The pillar edict at Sarnath mentions the saṃgha but not the Buddha, although only a fraction of it can still be read. The Sarnath edict forbids the saṃgha to undergo schisms, suggesting that schism amongst Buddhist monastics was a major problem in Asoka's time. Although one wonders how such a law could be enforced in the Iron Age or whether Buddhists acknowledged the emperors right to tell them what to do. Both seem doubtful.
By the time the Pāli sutras were written down, whenever that was, its apparent that Buddhism was already pluralistic, eclectic, syncretistic, and schismatic. This suggests that if the Buddha was a historical person, he lived a very long time before Asoka. However it is equally consistent with his being just another character in what Steven Collins (2010) called "the Pāli imaginaire", i.e. the "world" conjured into being by the Pāli stories. In speculative fiction writing, we refer to this as "world building". Realistic settings are part and parcel of some approaches to world building.
We should keep in mind Justin L. Barrett's comments on the contribution of what he called "minimally counterintuitive beliefs".
These minimally counter-intuitive beliefs may be characterized as meeting most of the assumptions that describers and categorizers generate—thus being easy to understand, remember, and believe—but as violating just enough of these assumptions to be attention demanding and to have an unusually captivating ability to assist in the explanation of certain experiences (Barrett 2004: 22).
A story like Little Red Riding Hood, offers a talking wolf in an otherwise entirely realistic setting. Talking animals are common form of minimally counterintuitive belief, across cultures and times. As are animal headed gods. Etc. So a man who performs miracles is, in many ways, the ideal storytelling protagonist. Albeit that naïve modern religieux tend to get caught up in the magic and forget about the actual point of such stories.
We know that Buddhists themselves were constantly reinventing Buddhism, inventing new doctrines, or assimilating them from other religions, constantly undergoing (intra-Buddhist) doctrinal arguments, schisms, and reconciliations. So-called "Buddhist cosmology" is all too obviously a bastardised version of Brahmanical cosmology. Various scholars have pointed out that depictions of Brahmanical cosmology in Buddhist texts are frequently accompanied by satirical commentary: for example the creator god Brahmā is portrayed in unflattering terms as a naïf or as a deceiver. Buddhists routinely portray the Vedic gods Brahmā and Indra as worshipping the Buddha. Later Buddhist texts also depict Śiva converting to Buddhism.
We also suspect that "Buddhist" practices actually predate Buddhism and were present across a range of milieus. We might suspect, for example, that Sāṃkhya philosophers interpreted the effects of sensory deprivation methods in terms of puruṣa and pradhāna/prakṛti. It is widely believed that Jains were similarly involved in seeking out altered states of mind, using similar techniques.
As I wrote in On the Historicity of the Buddha in the Absence of Historical Evidence (09 September 2022)
By contrast the stories about the Buddha all have a strongly religious character. They almost always include some supernatural element, a feature that intensifies in texts from later periods. A figure whose main features include supernatural powers is difficult to locate in an objective historical narrative, since objectively there are no supernatural powers. Objectivity is not neutral. No objective history includes accounts of supernatural powers because such powers are a product of the religious imagination.
Replying to criticism of his 2017 article, Drewes (2023: 404) points out:
Everything that makes the Buddha a Buddha is supernatural: his discovery of the Dharma by his own power; his understanding of karma, the geography of the world, the structure of the cosmos, the path to liberation, and the makeup of living beings and the material world; his freedom from desire; his omniscience; his thirty-two marks; his special characteristics and powers.
Buddhists in Asia routinely pray to Buddha for good fortune etc. Praying to Buddhist deities is a routine element of Asian Buddhism. We see it throughout the history of Xuanzang (ca. 600 - 664), for example. And it is a prominent trope in the history of the Heart Sutra.
Conclusion
In this essay, I have argued that when we stick to methods prescribed by historians, we arrive at a more deflationary account of Buddhist history. The resulting picture is likely to disappoint religieux since it lacks the razzamatazz that they have come to expect from "scholars" (who are, by and large, not historians or at least do not accept the strictures of modern historiography). The actual history does not flatter religieux or speak to their articles of faith. And predictably, many religieux and theologians have reacted to David Drewes with horrified anxiety not to say open hostility.
I don't doubt that Buddhism substantially predates its first appearance in the historical record, in some of the minor edicts of Asoka.
Even if Buddhism was founded by one person, it only spread and became established because it was a group activity. This much is acknowledge by Buddhist mythology, which portrays the Buddha as enthusiastically seeking out people who might understand his breakthrough and building up a following of lay people and ascetics. Had many other people not replicated his attainment of nirvāṇa, Buddhism would never have become popular.
In this sense the Buddha qua man is less historically significant than the fact that, at least in theory, nirvāṇa is a state that any human being could attain; and which, in practice, people continue to attain.
~~Φ~~
Bibliography
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Barrett, Justin L. 2004 Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Altamira Press.
Collins, Steven. 2010. Nirvana: Concept, Imagery, Narrative. Cambridge University Press.
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———. 2023. “A Historical Buddha After All?” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 46: 401-416.
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