By Christopher I. Beckwith
Pyrrho of Elis went with Alexander the good to imperative Asia and India throughout the Greek invasion and conquest of the Persian Empire in 334-324 BC. There he met with early Buddhist masters. Greek Buddha indicates how their Early Buddhism formed the philosophy of Pyrrho, the recognized founding father of Pyrrhonian scepticism in historical Greece.
Christopher I. Beckwith lines the origins of an incredible culture in Western philosophy to Gandhara, a rustic in principal Asia and northwestern India. He systematically examines the lessons and practices of Pyrrho and of Early Buddhism, together with these preserved in tales by way of and approximately Pyrrho, within the file on Indian philosophy 20 years later by means of the Seleucid ambassador Megasthenes, within the first-person edicts by way of the Indian king Devanampriya Priyadarsi relating a favored number of the Dharma within the early 3rd century BC, and in Taoist echoes of Gautama's Dharma in Warring States China. Beckwith demonstrates how the lessons of Pyrrho agree heavily with these of the Buddha Sakyamuni, "the Scythian Sage." within the approach, he identifies 8 certain philosophical colleges in historical northwestern India and relevant Asia, together with Early Zoroastrianism, Early Brahmanism, and several other types of Early Buddhism. He then indicates the effect that Pyrrho's model of scepticism had at the evolution of Western concept, first in Antiquity, and later, in the course of the Enlightenment, at the nice thinker and self-proclaimed Pyrrhonian, David Hume.
Greek Buddha demonstrates that via Pyrrho, Early Buddhist suggestion had a massive influence on Western philosophy.
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Additional resources for Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia
Example text
29 The traditional view30 is that the Buddha reinterpreted existing Indian ideas found in the Upanishads, but the Upanishads in question cannot be dated to a period earlier than the Buddha, as shown by Bronkhorst31 and discussed below. Just as Early Buddhism cannot be expected to be similar to the Normative Buddhism of a half millennium or more later, so Early Brahmanism cannot be expected to be similar to Late Brahmanism (not to speak of Hinduism), attested even later. “Zoroaster was … the first to teach the doctrines of … Heaven and Hell, the future resurrection of the body …, and life everlasting for the reunited soul and body”,32 and Early Zoroastrianism was the faith of the ruling nation of the Persian Empire.
27 The conquest by Darius introduced the Persians’ new religion, reformed Mazdaism, or Early Zoroastrianism,28 a strongly monotheistic faith with a creator God, Ahura Mazda, and with ideas of absolute Truth (Avestan aša, Old Persian arta) versus ‘the Lie’ (druj), and of an accumulation of Good and Bad deeds—that is, “karma”—which determined whether a person would be rewarded by “rebirth” in Heaven. These ideas are all found in the Gāthās, the oldest part of the Avesta, which are attributed to Zoroaster himself, and all are expressed openly and repeatedly in the Old Persian royal inscriptions as well.
I first spent a great deal of time reexamining and rethinking the Greek testimonies of Pyrrho’s thought, and in 2011 finally published a long article on the topic in Elenchos (reprinted with minor revisions in Appendix A). I then looked into the studies which claim—in accord with statements of ancient authors—that Pyrrho acquired his unusual way of thought in India. I also read studies that claimed the exact opposite—that he did not learn anything at all of major importance for his thought there—and other arguments which essentially claim that Indian philosophy is basically Greek in origin.