Rs: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Buddha-l] Re: Natural lucidity for Socrates

[Joy Vriens]

edited message due to excessive length
<<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. 

<<< 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". 

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?

    4. She could not believe that her child was really dead, as she had not seen death before. 
    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." 
    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."
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