[Buddha-l] Re: Is there any Buddhist influence on the earlyGreeks?

[jkirk]

Header from IER list:  McEvilley's (Mis)_Shape of Ancient Thought_
The commentary below is by Steve Farmer, from the list Indo-Eurasian Research.
It offers skepticism about how McEvilley handled or mis-handled his 
sources, or didn't provide the right ones to begin with.

You can access other messages on this topic by going to Yahoo groups and accessing 
this e-list. The messages ran from 7/23/05 til 7/24/06, I recommend the message from 
the Vedicist George Thompson, with the above subject-header. The general view
when McEvilley came up was that his scholarship was wanting. 
Joanna
=============


Dear George, Michael et al.:

Further on McEvilley, without getting lost in the grim details: in 
respect to supposed modes of transmission, McEvilley has Greeks and 
Indians sitting around in "in Susa or elsewhere" engaged in "learned 
conversation" about religion (see, e.g., p. 13). The chats we find out 
apparently included discussion of the Upanisads, which McEvilley seems 
to view as independent (and apparently written!!) "philosophical works" 
that were openly available to everyone. Cf. right at the start of the 
book (p. 2; cf. p. 12):

"In any case, the Greek and most of the Indian philosophical texts were 
written (sic) in Indo-European languages...."

I looked for even a hint in this massive 732 page work that McEvilley 
recognized that the method of transmitting the Upanisads and other 
Vedic works was oral, or that the Upanisads were esoteric works 
embedded in specific Vedic sakhas, but couldn't find one. (Did I 
overlook such a discussion, George? I guess it's possible.) McEvilley 
even has an index entry under "oral tradition", but none of the pages 
listed there say anything about Indian oral traditions at all.

The idea that the esoteric doctrines of Vedic daevas worshippers and 
rejectors of the ahuras were the subject of "learned discussion" in the 
Persian court, whose chief deity was of course Ahuramazda, is similarly 
curious, to say the least. The old view that the Persians were 
enlightened and religiously tolerant syncretists is at best a 
half-truth, as anyone who has worked through Achaemenid inscriptions 
will recognize.

As McEvilley has it, the pre-Socratics apparently drew nearly all their 
doctrines directly or indirectly from the Upanisads, learned most 
likely in the Persian courts. See, for just one of many similar 
examples, p.  44, on Heraclitus:

"Heraclitus's bright exhalation seems to be a version of the 
Vedic-Upanisadic Path of the Gods, his dark exhalation, of the Path of 
the Fathers....Assuming that he would not have incorporated a doctrine 
that he did not understand, he may be presumed to have had some 
familiarity with the central doctrines of Upanisadic Hinduism....This 
extraordinary parallelism is a strong and clear link between a 
pre-Socratic thinker and an Upanisad. It amounts to a scholarly 'proof' 
-- meaning the most reasonable interpretation of the evidence as it 
currently stands."

Leaving aside the question of McEvilley's evidence re the Upanisads 
(including dating and stratification issues), what is his source in 
this case for the supposed twin doctrines of a "bright exhalation" and 
"dark exhalation"  found in Heraclitus? He implies (p. 41) that he is 
drawing on "certain fragments" from Heraclitus (which are collected in 
Diels, _Fragmente der Vorsokratiker_). But, in fact, those doctrines 
*aren't* found there (I just looked), but only in what McEvilley 
himself (p. 41) characterizes as the "somewhat confused" account of 
supposed Heraclitan ideas in the notoriously unreliable Diogenes 
Laertes, who is generally dated some eight centuries or more after 
Heraclitus (the exact dates of Diogenes Laertes are uncertain). Hence 
even the parallels McEvilley tries to explain in this case are 
nonn-existent, and can't be found in any known fragments of Heraclitus' 
works. (Rodo has already pointed to similar problems with other 
McEvilley sources that turned out to be non-existent, including the 
_Timaeus_):

> But, on a more sceptical vein, how should we view Thomas McEvilley's 
> "The shape of ancient thought, comparative studies in Greek and Indian 
> philosophies" (New York: Allworth Press, 2002, pp. 208ff), in which he 
> proposes various kinds of diffusion models from Plato via Indian 
> Kundalini and straight into Chu sexual body techniques? (p. 214ff. 
> Chapter Eight, Plato and Kundalini, *)
>
> When I checked Plato's Timaios (in transl.), I did not find that 
> McEvilley's comparison to be accurate. And when I checked "my" late 
> 3rd c. BC Chu texts, I do not find the 15 c. AD vajroli mudrâ, ... .

Track down McEvilley's sources on *either* the Western or Indian side 
of things and you'll find false parallels, non-existent sources, and 
predictable conclusions that will surely please extreme Indian 
nationalists and their New Age Western supporters -- right down to the 
predictable final shots aimed at the supposedly Western colonialist 
views that (as McEvilley has it) have long hidden away the deep 
influence of ancient Indian on Greek thought.

This book is capable of doing a lot of damage to comparative studies, 
and someone needs to take it apart in depth, since most people wouldn't 
have the tools to check McEvilley's sources. I don't envy anyone this 
job. George? :^)

Cheers,
Steve

On Saturday, July 23, 2005, at 03:34  PM, Michael Witzel wrote:

> George,  many thanks for your evaluation of McEvilley's book. I have
> avoided it so far (it has been advertised to me by Hindutva-like
> people!)....


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