Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Clivedurdle · 05-05-2005, 09:12 AM

Quote:

St. Origen even mentions them as having reached Britain

This reminds me of the Welsh being one of the tribes of Israel, but seriously, are there any records about the founding of the Celtic Church, did Julius Caesar mention Buddhism - he knew about the druids - did any Roman or Greek authors discuss these eastern religions, where they had got to, similarities and differences to local beliefs?

It looks like we have a new religion growing out of the Roman Empire, with strong Greek and Judaic links and probably Buddhist links. Has anyone summarised how much "DNA" comes from what sources?

Dharma · 05-05-2005, 09:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

This reminds me of the Welsh being one of the tribes of Israel, but seriously, are there any records about the founding of the Celtic Church, did Julius Caesar mention Buddhism - he knew about the druids - did any Roman or Greek authors discuss these eastern religions, where they had got to, similarities and differences to local beliefs?

It looks like we have a new religion growing out of the Roman Empire, with strong Greek and Judaic links and probably Buddhist links. Has anyone summarised how much "DNA" comes from what sources?

strangely enough we have the historian Tacitus and in his Germania he mentions several things:

1) Germans were aware of the Greek/Roman God Hercules.
2) Germans traced their descent from a "God" Manno, (Manu in sanskrit)
3) Some Germans tied their hair in a top knot (similar to Buddhist statues depicting Buddha with a top knot)

Finally we have the burial techniques mentioned in Beowulf, cremation+ burial of cremated remains, which was done in Buddhism.

Tacitus seemed completely unaware of these practices...however, one wonders if these similarities are due to a shared "indo-European heritage" or Buddhism.

Also books on the eastern religions and translations of eastern texts would be in Alexandria.

We also know of extensive trade between the East and the Roman Empire, enough for many historians to blame the bankruptcy of Rome on their women's love for luxuries coming from the east and that there were many mercenary Roman soldiers used for gaurding various Hindu temples in the south of India.

Answerer · 05-05-2005, 10:10 AM

Dharma, just curious, what is your objective of being so eager with the historical linkage between Christianity and Buddhism? Trying to assimilate them perhaps?

Dharma · 05-05-2005, 10:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Answerer

Dharma, just curious, what is your objective of being so eager with the historical linkage between Christianity and Buddhism? Trying to assimilate them perhaps?

facts are facts and they cannot be denied. Christians in particular deny this influence. I just want religions to acknowledge that they have all borrowed from each other, and not ONE has the whole truth, so leave all this non-sense about "the one true God" or the "one true religion" and converting the whole world well enough alone...

yummyfur · 05-05-2005, 10:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dharma

strangely enough we have the historian Tacitus and in his Germania he mentions several things:

1) Germans were aware of the Greek/Roman God Hercules.
2) Germans traced their descent from a "God" Manno, (Manu in sanskrit)
3) Some Germans tied their hair in a top knot (similar to Buddhist statues depicting Buddha with a top knot)

Here is the Tacitus qoute on Mannus

"In their ancient songs, their only way of remembering or recording the past they celebrate an earth-born god Tuisco, and his son Mannus, as the origin of their race, as their founders. To Mannus they assign three sons, from whose names, they say, the coast tribes are called Ingaevones; those of the interior, Herminones; all the rest, Istaevones"

Notice that Tuisco is actually the origin of the race as he is Mannus father, Tuisco is obviously Tiu, German god of War, from which we get the day Tuesday in English.

Manu on the other hand is the son of of the sun god Vivasvaan.

Since man is the indo-european root word for mankind, is it suprising that both sanskrit and german gave a variation of the word as the first person of mankind? Much like adam is the first man and also the word for man.

I'm not sure how an indo-european language like German having a very old indo-european root word as part of the name for their ancestor, proves buddhisms spread.

All your other points are even sillier, my god no one but buddhists would ever tie their hair in a top knot!!!

Clivedurdle · 05-05-2005, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Even today the elephant has a prominent place in Buddhism unlike other animals

Hannibal and his war elephants - possiby African(?) would have needed people who knew about elephants - and the source of this knowledge is India.

We have a direct link - Alexander - who also went to Carthage, which before it was destroyed was a major power base and source of knowledge.

We have a huge grouping of civilisations from China to India to North Africa, Spain, Italy and Greece BCE that were in regular contact with each other. Our Western thinking makes us eurocentric. Religions have always been a fundamental parts of societies, it feels to me that the influence of Buddhism is being badly underestimated in the evolution of xianity - one of its grand parents is Buddhism.

Elephants

More elephants

Dharma · 05-06-2005, 08:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yummyfur

Here is the Tacitus qoute on Mannus

"In their ancient songs, their only way of remembering or recording the past they celebrate an earth-born god Tuisco, and his son Mannus, as the origin of their race, as their founders. To Mannus they assign three sons, from whose names, they say, the coast tribes are called Ingaevones; those of the interior, Herminones; all the rest, Istaevones"

Notice that Tuisco is actually the origin of the race as he is Mannus father, Tuisco is obviously Tiu, German god of War, from which we get the day Tuesday in English.

Manu on the other hand is the son of of the sun god Vivasvaan.

Since man is the indo-european root word for mankind, is it suprising that both sanskrit and german gave a variation of the word as the first person of mankind? Much like adam is the first man and also the word for man.

I'm not sure how an indo-european language like German having a very old indo-european root word as part of the name for their ancestor, proves buddhisms spread.

All your other points are even sillier, my god no one but buddhists would ever tie their hair in a top knot!!!

I'm afraid you are a linguist without much knowledge of myths and indo-european tradition. You should read the original Latin. I have a passion for myths. The originaly Latin states "Tuisto" NOT tuisco. No this matches the Indo-European god pantheon of Manu who is described as being descended from the
1)earth goddess ->2)twastra --> 3)marries daughter to the sun Vaivasavan--> 4)Manu is born 5)who has several sons.

The Germanic version gives 1)earth goddess->2)Tuisto->3)Manno-> 4) has several sons.

And another correction: Hebrew Adam supposedly comes from "Adamah" which means earth. Manu comes from the Sanskrit root which means "mind".Adam falls, Manu never falls. So the commonality between these myths end pretty much at "first man".

Oh yes, I wish to point out that Ashok's edicts mention that even in lands that missionaries haven't reach, the message of the Dharma has reached:

http://hawthorngrove.faithweb.com/writings/horndgod.htm

And one more correction, the top knot for indo-Europeans has spiritual significance as the "yarmulk" (sp?) or hat has in semitic tradition. It is used primarily by sages. This is why Sikhs to this day also wear a top knot underneath the turban.

Dharma · 05-06-2005, 09:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

Hannibal and his war elephants - possiby African(?) would have needed people who knew about elephants - and the source of this knowledge is India.

We have a direct link - Alexander - who also went to Carthage, which before it was destroyed was a major power base and source of knowledge.

We have a huge grouping of civilisations from China to India to North Africa, Spain, Italy and Greece BCE that were in regular contact with each other. Our Western thinking makes us eurocentric. Religions have always been a fundamental parts of societies, it feels to me that the influence of Buddhism is being badly underestimated in the evolution of xianity - one of its grand parents is Buddhism.

Elephants

More elephants

http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/neareast/ne06.html

andrewcriddle · 05-06-2005, 01:27 PM

There is an interesting discussion of possible Buddhist influence on the Ancient Hellenistic World at http://evans-experientialism.freeweb...m/oleary04.htm in the section DID BUDDHISM SPREAD WEST?

Quote:

In the Bhabra edict an address to the monastic order generally, we read of the "conquest by the Law of Piety... won by his Sacred Majesty inhis own dominions and in all the neighbouring realms as far as 6, ooo leagues where the Greek king named Antiyaka (Antiochus II) dwells, and north of that Antiyaka, where dwell the four kings severally named Turamay (Ptolemy), Antigonus (Gonatus), Maga (Magas of Cyrene), and Alexander (of Epirus?), and in the south the (realms of the) Cholas and Pandyas, with Ceylon also: and here, too, in the king's dominions, amongst the Yonas (Greeks) and Kambojas and Ptinkas, amongst the Andhras and the Pulindas, everywhere men follow his Sacred Majesty's instruction in the Law of Piety". On the face of it this seems to claim missionary enterprise throughout the Greek world, not necessarily that the princes were converted, but that generally they received Asoka's mission graciously (Senart in J. A. (1885), 290 sqq.). Magas of Cyrene and Alexander of Epirus died about 258 B. c., so probably were not alive at the date of this decree.
..............................................How far Buddhism really spread into the Greek world is problematical. A Buddhist gravestone found at Alexandria and a monument definitely Buddhist in its symbols found at Axum are the Main traces, but both these places were trading ports closely connected with the Indian trade, and it would have been likely enough that an Indian merchant or traveller may have died in either place. The Ceylon chronicles describe Asoka as having converted a large number of Yonas or Greeks, and as having sent a Yona named Dhammarakkita as a missionary to Aparanta on the coast of Gujerat. No doubt Yona simply means an Asiatic who lived under Greek rule......................................The Ceylon Buddhist chronicle, known as the Mahavarnsa, probably of the fourth century A. D., contains versions of some early Indian traditions, and speaks of a thero or Buddhist abbot of Yona (Yavana) who gathered round him 30,000 ascetes in the neighbourhood of Alasanda, the capital of the Yona country (Mahavamsa, trs. Turnour,, p.
171). It would be absurd to suppose that Alasanda denotes Alexandria in Egypt and that there were 30,000 Buddhist monks there. The Mahavamsa pictures this assembly of ascetes as taking place at the foundation of the Maha thupo or "great tope" of Rusawelli by King Dutthagamini in 157 B. C., and gives details which are of a fictitious character, of stones which moved into place by themselves, of work done by demons (dewoi), which cannot be regarded as historical. The thero or abbot was the same Dhammarakkito who is described as being the Greek Buddhist sent to preach in Gujerat. There are several Alexandrias, some in Bactria, Sogdiana, and Gandara, all lands under Greek rule until about I30 B. C., and so -naturally classed by Indian writers as Yavana "the land of the Greeks The Alexandria intended in the Mahavamsa may have been Alexandria "under the Caucasus the "Queen of the Mountains "of the Alexander romance. It was in Opiane, and Alexander founded it on his way northward by the road from Seistan to Kabul as he went towards the Hindu Kush "in radicibus montis" (Curtius, vii, 3, 23). Tarn shows good reason for believing that this Alexandria and Kapisa formed a double city, such as was not uncommon in Asia, and the Greek half, Alexandria proper, was on the west bank of the River Panjshir-Ghorband. ....................The chief argument against Buddhist activity in the Greek world is the very defective knowledge displayed of anything that can be recognized as Buddhist in extant remains of Greek and Roman writers save in those few who, like Megasthenes,, had visited India or had met Indian envoys who came to western lands.

There is an interesting reference to Buddhism that was new to me

Quote:

An account of Buddhism was given by the Syrian writer Bar Daisan, who obtained his information from Indian envoys passing through Syria on their way to Elagabalus or some other Antonine emperor. He does not refer to Buddhists by name, but speaks of Samanaioi : this is cited by Porphyry (De abstin., iv, 17) and by Stobaeus (Eccles., iii, 56, 141).

Bar Daisan (Bardesanes) about 200 CE would probably be our first evidence of direct contact between Buddhists and the West in the early post-NT period earlier than Mani who I suggested earlier.

The section concludes

Quote:

This rather scanty and scattered information represents what could be learned from Indian embassies comng to the Roman Empire or from travellers' reports. It gives no indication of anything which would have been gained from Buddhist propaganda in the Graeco-Roman world and this, in conjunction with the silence of the Ceylon chronicles, seems conclusive. The belief that there must have been effective Buddhist missions as far as Egypt rests on the assumption that the Christian ascetic life which arose in Egypt necessarily had a Buddhist origin, but this is not proved: Egyptian monasticism had an independent origin which can be satisfactorily traced. The later philosophical schools of Alexandria were fond of referring to Indian ascetes, but do not show any real familiarity with them. There remains the possibility that the teaching of the Gnostic sects which arose in Mesopotamia give signs of Buddhist influence. That seems likely, but here again there is as yet no definite proof.

Andrew Criddle

Clivedurdle · 05-07-2005, 02:25 AM

Quote:

At an early date there was intercourse between India and the great empires of what is now called the Near East. The first traces of this occurs in inscriptions of the Hittite kings of Cappadocia in the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries B. C. Those kings bore Aryan names and worshipped Aryan deities, and apparently were akin to the Hindus of the Punjab. Blocks of Indian teak were used in the temple of the Moon at Ur and in Nebuchadnezzar's palace, both of the sixth century B. C., and apes, Indian elephants, and Bactrian camels figure on the obelisk of Shalmanesar III (860 B. C.). These may have been brought by land or carried by sea. The Rig Veda makes allusions to voyages by sea, and many such allusions occur in Buddhist literature, both of rather later date but bearing testimony to an old tradition. Sea trade no doubt came from a port near the mouth of the Indus and passed to the Persian Gulf, coasting along Gedrosia. The Persian Gulf was cleared of pirates by Sennacherib in 694 B. C., and it may be assumed that the presence of pirates implies a sea trade which increased after the pirates disappeared. In the later seventh century it is said that the trade of the Persian Gulf was in the hands of the Phoenicians, who had settled in the marsh lands of the Tigris-Euphrates (Shatt el-Arab) after their earlier homes had been destroyed by earthquake (Justin,
18, 3, 2). Strabo refers to Phoenician temples on the Bahrein Islands near the mouth of the Persian Gulf (Strabo, 16, 3, 3-5), and remains of such temples have been found and explored.

The sea route connecting the western world with India had been known to the Greeks long before the Christian era, perhaps before the days of Skylax, the friend and neighbour of Herodotus, certainly before the time of Nearchus and Alexander, as Nearchus was able to get a guide from Gedrosia who knew the coast as far as the Gulf of Ormuz (Arrian, Indica, 27, 1), beyond which the Arabs had a monopoly. The course was to send goods by land to Seleucia on the Euphrates or to Zeugma, and down the river, but the route to the Euphrates from Antioch involved a troublesome and often dangerous crossing of the desert, thence by river to Chai-ax (Mohammarah) at the mouth of the Euphrates, thence by the Persian Gulf and along the southern coast of Gedrosia to Patala (Haiderabad in Sind) on the lower Indus.

The Persian Gulf later was avoided because of the anarchy in Syria when the Seleucids lost control, and the hostility of the Parthians, through whose country Indian goods brought to the Persian Gulf would have to be carried. This gave an opportunity to Arab traders. Indian merchandise could be landed at one of their ports, Aden, etc., on the coast of Yemen, or passed to the Egyptian merchants who traded in the Red Sea. In the days of Agatharchides (circ. 116 B. C.) Egypt obtained Indian goods from Arab merchants at Aden or Muza, but the Egyptians had only vague notions of the way those goods were brought from India to Arabia (cf. Periplus, 26). Agatharchides himself evidently had no direct knowledge of the route between India and Arabia: there was no direct trade with India. It was quite the exception that Eudoxus twice made the whole journey by sea from Egypt to India.

Merchandise landed in Yemen was carried by land through the Hijaz to Petra. The Ptolemies tried to divert this and get Indian merchandise through the Red Sea to an Egyptian port, but they made no effort to intervene in the voyage between India and Arabia. To develop the Red Sea route Ariston was sent to explore its shores, and as a result ports were made along the Red Sea coast. Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-246 B. C.) tried to bring trade to the canal of Sesostris connecting the Gulf of Suez with the Nile and founded the port of Arsinoe (Suez) at its outlet to the sea, but this had to be abandoned owing to the difficult navigation of the Heropoolite Gulf (Strabo, 16, 4, 6), which caused merchants to prefer Leuke Kome or Aelana, both communicating with Petra and not with the Nile valley. Then he founded Berenice, which communicated with Coptos on the Nile by overland route 258 miles long. In 247 he founded Myos Hormos, i8o miles north of Berenice, with safer harbour and a shorter journey to Coptos. But the Red Sea also had its difficulties as it was infested with pirates until Ptolemy Euergetes (246-221 B. C.) stationed a fleet there to put down piracy (Diod.,2, 43, 4).

The wise men brought gold frankincense and myrrh. The land of punt may be in Ethiopia or Somalia - puntland is an area of Somalia today. This is a major clue to how extensive the trade routes were.

We have extensive trade with intermediaries - the Egyptians knew about things down to Aden, but not beyond - Arab sailors knew both sides.

It sounds like a huge game of chinese whispers, ideas and stories as well as elephants and silk were traded, and as with all good stories, get expanded.

I like the concept of gestalt - foreground and background. The idea of the death and resurrection of Christ to save the world is a classic idea of detail, focussing on one point in history. The snag is that it overwhelms the background, the context, the relationships. We haven't worked out the relationships properly because we are still too blinded (like Paul?) by the central idea of the cross and resurrection. We are focussing on Jesus - history or myth, when we should be looking at the many clues about what was really happening in the world around.

Are there major studies of sea trade and the spread of ideas and religions?

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05-05-2005, 10:10 AM	#53
Answerer Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Singapore Posts: 3,956	Dharma, just curious, what is your objective of being so eager with the historical linkage between Christianity and Buddhism? Trying to assimilate them perhaps?

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