[Buddha-l] Re: Natural lucidity for Socrates

[Dan Lusthaus]

Re: Re: [Buddha-l] Re: Natural lucidity for SocratesLance,
  What is the evidence for Jain settlements in Central Asia or 'further west' ?


This is a severely understudied issue. The better evidence is later, during the early Islamic spread, where we have detailed reports, with casualty counts, of Jains and Buddhists being chased out of Central Asia. They clearly had a substantial presence in certain areas. One of the climaxes involved the Muslim armies chasing them back to Vallabhi, where Jain and Buddhist monasteries were destroyed and the occupants massacred in the thousands, after which the Muslims retreated. Vallabhi, which had been a second Nalanda for Buddhists up to that point (home to Gunamati, Sthiramati, etc.) never recovered. Earlier Jain history is sketchier, often even in India, unfortunately, but there are indications in the early Manichaean literature of central asian contact with Jains and Buddhists. Earlier than that, the "Western" accounts seem unable to differentiate "Brahmans from Buddhists, Jains, Ajivikas, etc. Since Jainism is often entirely off the radar of archeaologists and philologists -- with Hinduism and Buddhism faring only slightly beter -- the possibility of unrecognized remains looms large.



     Also, when one examines the details of the versions of such practices adopted by the Manichaeans, they have an distinctively Jain flavor.


  I have not seen anything which seemed plausible to me.

Check out Jason BeDuhn's _The Manichaean Body: In Discipline and Ritual_ (2002), especially the dietary rituals, which he covers in some detail, and decide for yourself whether it rings any Jaina bells. There were certainly no Ajivikas around at that time who would have served as a source. BeDuhn doesn't mention Jainism at all, but this is one of the most important recent works on the Manichaeans.

 
  Well, no. I would have thought that such light mysticism has old roots in both Jewish mysticism and in Platonism. 

And let's not forget Zoroaster and probably other pre-Avestan Iranian traditions. The description of the light mysticism in the Hippolytus passage, however, seems colored with the sort of gnostic anti-matter cosmology that permeated the Mediterranean world at that time, rather than an accurate account of anything distinctively Indian. It is how someone, unfamiliar with Jaina karmic theories (which are more "material" than either Buddhist or Hindu karma theories), might "interpret" such ideas through that sort of gnostic prism.

  And was probably shared between Jains, Ajiivakas and 'proto-Saam.khya' Upanishadic strands. What is striking here is the non-Jain emphases on the deity and on 'discourse'. This links to Vedic notions of speech and sound and to proto-Saam.khya notions of multiple levels of the divine. All of this could be Aajiivaka as well. They clearly belong to the same milieu and may well have been more important than the Jains at this time.


Perhaps we might agree that the account in Hippolytus (largely, but not entirely drawn from the Alexander templates) is not an accurate portrayal in all details, nor, given its dependence on the Alexander materials, one drawn exclusively from contemporary or even near contemporary ethnographic evidence. It is a literary template, synthetic in nature (and since most of the scholars working on this material have not reached a consensus on its sources, I won't venture a definitive explanation either). Since it mixes sources and details, there very well might be some details culled from someone's description of Ajivikas, Taxila charlatans, odd Brahmans doing things not exactly elsewhere attested, and who knows what else. That it also is surreptitiously addressing more familiar Mediterranean cults is also more than likely (it wouldn't be included on a work designed to refute heresies unless contemporaries believed that such practitioners posed a clear and present danger, even if at some remove). Given its syncretic nature, it may very well be that no actual group that ever existed corresponds exactly to the description given, and that it is a misleading composite of authentic and distorted information.

So trying to match this particular description (or the many similar ones in this genre) to an actual group in India, Central Asia, and or the Mediterranean region, is a kind of interesting parlor game, fun to play, but lacking in definitive data.

Dan Lusthaus
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