Alexander’s Impact on Indian Religions (Bronkhorst)

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This is a recent article by Bronkhorst tracing the general picture of the situation of Indian religions at the time of Alexander’s invasion and the subsequent changes that it set off. He argues that an old Vedic society had occupied Northwest India when the Macedonian invasion took place, and it was brutally attacked when the locals rebelled against the invaders. This repression continued under the rule of the Hellenistic states that followed and also by the non-Vedic Maurya Empire. By the time of Asoka, the Northwest was no longer Vedic, the Brahmins having retreated further East. This allowed the greater Gandhara region to become a center of Buddhism under Hellenized rulers, which spawned Sarvastivada and Mahayana philosophy. Etc. The Bibliography is no doubt full of further reading on the subject.

It certainly makes sense to me to think Buddhists originally were not very familiar with Vedic Brahmins but encountered them later in history (though still very early, making it difficult to discern the lines of separation). If Bronkhorst is at all correct, then it would have probably happened when the Vedic Brahmins were forced to move East and South from the Gandharan region after the late 4th c. BCE.

10.1515_9783111427614-010.pdf (154.8 KB)

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Of all of Bronkhorst claims, this appears to me to be one of the least credible. The more he tries to emphasize it, the more desperate and less credible he sounds.

The Vedic religion was an old-Indo-European religion, and it had spread over most northern and central parts of the sub-continent centuries before Buddhism made an appearance. Sanskrit (Vedic and Classical) had been spoken all across northern-India wherever Indo-Aryans had been present before the Buddha was born (and this is made explicit in Panini’s grammar and its early commentaries). There is no evidence of a geographical division of Indo-Aryans into Brahmanical states and non-Brahmanical (or Buddhist) states in the middle of the 1st millenium BCE. There were no “Buddhist” states devoid of Brahmins or Brahminism in India at any point of time. There was no Indo-Aryan speaking state (janapada) in the Buddha’s time or later where the Vedic religion was not the predominant religion.

The EBTs are all in Indo-Aryan languages very similar (if not largely the same) as Vedic and Classical Sanskrit - vocabulary-wise and grammar-wise (phonetically however there are some changes in the direction of Middle-Indo-Aryan). The culture and society depicted in the EBTs is pretty much identical to the culture and society of the late-Vedic texts (Brahmanas & Upanishads etc). Most of the states mentioned in the EBTs are known from non-Buddhist texts as well.

In the Hellenic states of north-West India ruled by the Greeks/Macedonians after the collapse of the Mauryan empire, the Greeks formed the royalty and probably the aristocracy, but the common people were almost entirely Indo-Aryans following their own ancestral religion (Vedic Brahmanism and Classical Hinduism, apart from small communities of Buddhists, Jains, Ajivakas etc). Greek rule vanished in a few centuries after Alexander without leaving behind any genetic footprints as there was no substantial greek population in the subcontinent.

Therefore, there is no evidence that:

  1. Buddhism is originally an eastern-Indian religion that reached the north-west (Gandhara) post-Alexander
  2. Brahmanism is originally a western-Indian religion that reached eastern-India after Alexander
  3. There was a geographical division of Indo-Aryan India between the Vedic peoples and non-Vedic peoples
  4. The Early-Buddhists were originally unfamiliar with their ancestral Vedic religion or with Brahmins (or that the Vedic religion was not the ancestral religion of the early-Buddhists).
  5. Buddhism didnt exist pre-Alexander in Gandhara
  6. Brahmanism didnt exist or pre-dominate in Magadha pre-Buddhism.
  7. There were regions historically-identifiable that we can now call greater Magadha or greater Gandhara.
  8. Early-Buddhism developed independent of Vedic Brahmanism
  9. Ashoka was exclusively a Buddhist or that he tormented Brahmins in the north-West in particular.
  10. The Mauryan Empire (and all its emperors) were anti-Brahmin or pro-Buddhist as a whole.
  11. The Hellenic states after Alexander in India were all pro-Buddhist or anti-Brahmin as a whole.
  12. That society in north-west India collapsed as a whole after Alexander’s invasion.
  13. That the Mauryan empire was culturally or religiously a non-Brahmanical entity.
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I’ve always found Bronkhorst’s takes to be curiously unpersuasive. I haven’t researched the article in detail, but on a quick scan:

Vedism carried on in its habitual timeless manner

Seems like an oddly ahistorical take. Vedism, like any other religion, adapted to time and place.

Vedic literature concentrates on complicated and expensive sacrifices that could only be performed for and by the politically powerful

Seems like it requires massive qualifications. there are plenty of simple rituals for householders, wedding ceremonies, curses and the like.

Brahmins are also mentioned in early Buddhist literature, but here their connection with political power is practically nil

That’s just not true, brahmins are routinely in positions of powerful status in society.

Not sure what you’re saying here, Vedic brahmins are literally all through the suttas. The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa predates the Buddha by some centuries, and in it Brahmanism is already a king-making power in the region (eg. Mithila). Bronkhorst would argue that it is later, but I just don’t find his arguments at all persuasive. The Buddha is responding to Brahmanical texts and ideas all the time, many of which I have documented.

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I think his ideas would be clearer if he took a different approach in his writing. For example, if he clearly stated his ideas, identified the relevant early sources, found common themes or motifs, especially those repeated many times, and then slowly built a narrative of what is likely to have been the case. But as it is, there’s a lot of emphasis on finding a narrative, adding sources here and there.

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Maybe, I don’t know. I find myself always looking for the reason why I should accept what he says, and just not finding it.

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Sure, but how many of those suttas that are clearly dealing with Vedic brahmins look early at all? Most of them that I can think of are clearly literary in character. Especially the suttas in which the brahmin interlocutor is a minister to a king or a local lord who controls a fiefdom.

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What is the actual evidence for this idea that Gandhara was strongly Vedic, since you are making an evidence based argument. I’m not really interested in what happened after the Persians reconquered the region, obviously, so I’m not sure why this is even brought up. We’re talking about early Buddhism and the fact that Gandhara became a Buddhist center - one notably not very influenced by Vedic religion as far as I can tell. Not nearly so much as we see in Pali sources from south India.

Many of the Vedic motifs that we find in Pali texts are missing when we look at Northern Buddhist parallels. Not entirely, of course, but they are less frequent. This to me argues for the Vedic culture existing in the South more so than in the North. Which fits the picture Bronkhorst paints in this article. It of course may not be true, but it does fit the textual pattern in Buddhist sources. This is something someone ought to look at more closely, who isn’t tied up with a giant translation project like I am.

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In terms of “looking early” having anything to do with being “clearly literary in character” I just don’t see what point is being made.

Fully ten out of the 13 suttas of DN appear to have full parallels in both the darmaguptaka and sarvastivada long collections, as you yourself have pointed out.

Sans some almost miraculous leveling, applied at a very fine grain to very long texts between geographically very distant schools, a leveling that was then for whatever reason not attempted in the M or S collections, it seems apparent to me at least that a 10 vagga silakhandhavagga is as presectarian a document any.

This document it overflowing with both “literature” a.d with brahmins.

The atthakavagga is also overflowing with brahmins, or at least, brahmin as an epitath for a wise person, and it is, outside of “monastic scholarship” more or less universally agreed to be as early a document of the buddhists as we have.
(Theres a doctoral thesis that was shared here somewhere examining the epithets in all the versions, including the chinese, ill try amd find it.)

I am pretty unclear on the finer points re geography and history, bronkhurst appears motivated to fund reasons to highlight the dissimilarity between buddhism and brahminism and highlight the similarity between buddhism and jainism.

The similarity between buddhism and jainism certainly deserves more attention.

That said, those like @srkris and @sujato who wish to emphasis the continuity with upanishadic brahminism have a point too.

Alas its a vast ocean of literature many times too large for a single lifetime even if one confines onself to just one of these 3 great religions.

The connection between buddhism and sunatkumara for example is clearly worth further examination.

And detailed indexes of shared poetry amd phrasology between buddhism and jainism would be very useful to.

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A lot? I mean, the presence of brahmanical ideas is so pervasive in the suttas it seems futile to untangle it.

For a start, the word brāhmaṇa is mentioned nine times in the Atthakavagga, and of course the entire Parayanavagga is addressed to brahmins. In the Suttanipāta as a whole, it occurs 247 times. And it occurs thousands of times throughout the four nikayas.

If we look at things outside explicit mentions, the word anattā and its associated formulae such as nesohamasmi are obviously responding to the Upanishads.

Even if you want to artificially restrict it to the “big-name” brahmin conversion stories, many or most of them—Pokkharasādi, etc.—are genuine figures who are attested in Brahmanical literature. Obviously the conversion narratives have a religious purpose, but they are clearly set in a contemporaneous time period.

And that’s just getting started. Vedism is literally everywhere in the suttas.

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I think early Indian Buddhists were very familiar with Vedic religion. E.g. Devata, Devaputta, Mara, Brahma, Sakka, Vana, and Yakkha, are featured in the Sagatha-vagga (i.e. geya-anga portion) of SN/SA. These samyutta texts indicate early Buddhist adaptation of general Vedic religious beliefs about divine or spiritual beings (devas).

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Dear Bhante @sujato,

I have read some statistical research on suttas which says that there’s no sutta in which the Buddha teach anatta to the brahmanas, but there are numerous sutta in which the Buddha taught anatta to the ascetics of other sramana tradittions.

Correct me if I wrong :pray:

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Sorry, I don’t have time to look into this point in any detail.

But let me just take one sutta. DN 9 is with the “wanderer Poṭṭhapāda”. Now, wanders are often if not usually brahman, as for example Suppiya in DN 1 with his māṇava, i.e. Vedic student. In DN 9 this is shown by Poṭṭhapāda’s use of the characteristic form of address, bho. He and his assembly are discussing the cessation of perception, which IMO is a reference to a specific discussion on the nature of the Self in the Brihadarannyaka Upanishad. The discussion concerns the relation between perception and the Self. The Buddha, of course refutes all the theories of Self.

Briefly looking at the word anattā, it is used by the brahmin Koṇḍañña (thag15.1:6.1) and to the brahmin Mahākotthita (sn35.164). That’s just like a quick search.

I dunno, I feel like if someone wants to make a case that the Buddha’s cardinal doctrine was not taught to his major disciples like Sāriputta, Moggallāna, Mahākassapa, etc., brahmins all, then it feels like there’s a lot of work to be done.

Perhaps what that study is noticing is that not-self tends to be used when teaching monastic disciples, not in conversion narratives. It’s an advanced teaching. And once folks have ordained, then they leave their caste behind, and except for a few cases, we don’t know anything about the former caste of the audience the Buddha is addressing.

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