[Buddha-l] Re: Natural lucidity for Socrates

[Joy Vriens]

<<This is a complicated and convoluted matter. One of the more interesting attempts to unravel this is Richard Stoneman's "Naked Philosophers: The Brahmans in the Alexander Historians and Alexander Romance", The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 115 (1995) 99>>

Thanks for the reference. 

<<114. These are the prototypes embellished and twisted by most later writers, including the Hippolytus passage. Stoneman argues these were not Brahmans but Oxydorchai in Taxila, that the attempts by Greeks such as Aristobulus to communicate with the "naked ascetics" were fraught with language difficulties (four translators were used simultaneously), and they never quite got the template right, which was nevertheless copied and mutated for many centuries. He also reviews a long tradition that holds that much of it was actually camouflaged Cynic doctrine put into the mouths of gymnosophists by Cynic writers such as Onesicritus.>>

<<< Were retreat and disengagement from the life of the City typical Greek features? >>> 

<<For some Greeks, yes. But to be clear, most descriptions of "Brahmans" in Greek literature do not portray them as hermits, but, on the contrary, as fully engaged in political life. The naked ascetics are even supposed to have wives and sex (but only mate to procreate and only during the new moon), and so on. They are not monists, or pantheists, etc. They "investigate" natural phenomena (weather, etc.), which is, again, a Cynic practice (as is eating only uncooked food). On the other hand, some scholars have argued that even the Cynics' ideas are India-inspired. Aristoxenes of Tarentum tells about a meeting in Athens between Socrates and an Indian sophist (which Stoneham thinks might have some historical validity). >>

Interesting. I expect that even if ideas weren't taken over directly, the "Brahmans" probably were (also) a fertile source of inspiration, romanticised or otherwise. The exotic other, good enough to inspire a "Socrates gone mad". 

<<It can also be found in Plato's Theætetus. 
You wrote elsewhere http://www.hm.tyg.jp/~acmuller/yogacara/thinkers/nagarjuna-bio-asc..htm that it was possible that Sariputta and Moggallana introduced the tetralemmic method to Buddhism. Have you since then reached any other conclusion or idea about that? >>

Goodness! Someone actually has read something I wrote. I still think that is plausible, and even likely. They brought it with them from their previous teacher Sa~njaya -- where he got it from, who knows? 

I hoped so because you would be my reference for that theory. :-)

BTW when doing my homework for our exchange, I accidentally stumbled (it didn't hurt) on a passage I marked and thought it could make a good question for Buddha-l. 

"Democritus of Abdera, when Darius was grieved at the death of his beautiful wife, could say nothing to console him. He promised that he would bring the departed woman back to life, if Darius were willing to undertake the means necessary for the purpose. Darius commanded him to spare no expense, but to take whatever he had to make good his promise. Democritus, waiting a little while, said that everything he needed he had obtained, except for one thing that he himself could not obtain, but which would, perhaps, not be hard for Darius, the king of all Asia, to find. Darius asked him, what is this great thing that would yield itself to be known only to a king? In reply, Democritus said that if he, Darius, would write the names of three people who had never grieved on the tomb of his wife, she then would be constrained, by the law of ritual, to return. Darius then was at a loss, finding no one to whom it had not befallen to suffer some grief, whereupon Democritus, laughing in his customary way, said, ?Why, then do you, oh strangest of men, weep without restraint, as if you were the only one to have suffered, you who cannot find a single person, of all those who ever lived, who are without their share of sorrow?? (Julian Ep. 201 b?c DK 68A20) "

This reminds me very strongly of the story of Kisa Gautami. So who inspired who?

1. Kisa Gautami was married to the son of a merchant of Shravasti. 
    2. Soon after marriage, a son was born to her. 
    3. Unfortunately her child died of a snake-bite before it could walk. 
    4. She could not believe that her child was really dead, as she had not seen death before. 
    5. The little spot red from the bite of a snake, did not look as if it could be the cause of the child's death. 
    6. She therefore took her dead child and wandered about from house to house, in such a wild state of mind that people believed that she had gone out of her senses. 
    7. At last one old man advised her to go and seek out Gautama, who happened at the time to be in Shravasti. 
    8. So she came to the Blessed One, and asked him for some medicine for her dead child. 
    9. The Blessed One listened to her story and to her lamentations. 
    10. Then the Blessed One told her, "Go enter the town, and at any house where yet there has been no death, thence bring a little mustard seed, and with that I will revive your child." 
    11. She thought this was easy, and with the dead body of her child she entered the town. 
    12. But she soon found that she had failed, as every house she visited had suffered loss in the death of some member. 
    13. As one householder told her, "The living are few, and the dead are many." 
    14. So she returned to the Blessed Lord, disappointed and empty-handed. 
    15. The Blessed Lord then asked her if she did not then realize that death was the common lot of all, and whether she should grieve as though it was her special misfortune. 
    16. She then went and cremated the child, saying, "All is impermanent; this is the law."
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.swcp.com/mailman/private/buddha-l/attachments/20060909/e5cd1015/attachment.html