Yes, he is. So are Yājñavalkya, Śākalya (author of the Ṛgveda Padapāṭha), many upanishadic teachers like Upamanyu, Uddālaka, Śvetaketu, etc (whose names occur in the upaniṣads), many Vedic Ṛṣis who authored vedic hymns, many pre-Buddhist kings (mentioned in the several vedic brahmana texts), and many other historical personages of the late vedic era - they all appear in the Mahābhārata, and their stories are quasi-real to varying levels.
In the Mahābhārata Dvaipāyana is mentioned about 85 times (in 13 of the 18 books therein) by that name. He is the only one who is attested by that surname as well (it is not a common surname) – the Pali EBTs therefore were not talking about another Ṛṣi Kṛṣṇa-Dvaipāyana of the same name, just as they were not talking about another Ajātaśatru or another Udāyī-Bhadra.
There were no parallel Buddhist societies or people bearing the same names. Just as pre-existing Brahmanical religion, gods, philosophical concepts were redefined and borrowed by early Buddhism, the people found in Brahmanical texts (such as Ikṣvāku etc), were also borrowed and their personalities redefined to suit new narratives in early-Buddhist texts i.e. they were depicted as early Buddhists themselves, or as people favourable to Buddhism. How much of it is genuine belief is open to disagreement.
His other patronymic Pārāśarya (i.e. descendant of the Brahmin Parāśara) is also found separately attested in the Pāli canon, as I mentioned earlier. So he and his lineage are not so mysterious or contentional to mainstream brahmanical circles as you imagine. Neither did he irrupt in contention with his father, his clan, or with other Brahmins or their mainstream culture and religion - nor did they irrupt in contention with him (as far as the literary evidence goes). So the dark native hermit appellation doesnt apply to him, all you are going by evidently is just the meaning of the name Kṛṣṇa, which means dark. Having dark skin (even if that was why he was named as such - which itself is not beyond doubt) is not a proof that he was not a mainstream Indo-Aryan brahmin. Skin colour was not such a big thing as you take it to be.
I am not sure what caste rules you have in mind (and whether they did exist or apply at the time of his birth). Having a Brahmin father and a Śūdra mother was not encouraged, but were still considered anuloma (allowable/tolerable i.e. they weren’t considered as proscribed or being a violation). Gotras were (and are) invariably passed patrilineally, not matrilineally - so the fact that he had a Brahmin Ṛṣi (Parāśara) as his father and a fisherwoman as his mother by itself wouldn’t have caused him to become any such thing as what you call a “native dark hermit”. Such a thing as a native dark hermit was not even recognized to be a thing back then (and such a concept is not referred to in any original literature that I have read). In the Vedic period anuloma marriages where the men married women of any class was not so uncommon even for brahmins - it became less usual later in the common era.
Being a fisherwomn (or belonging to other working-class communities) were ipso-facto not proof of their being non Indo-Aryans - which you call ‘natives’ and ‘locals’ - thereby also apparently implying that the Brahmins (and other Indo-Aryans) were not natives or locals.
In the time of the Buddha - the Indo-Aryans had been in India for at least 1000-1500 years if not more. Therefore I dont think making such nativity distinctions is meaningful or appropriate after such a long period (as much as it would not be appropriate to today brand modern Englishmen living in England non-natives, or to call the Celtic speakers natives in contrast to people of Anglo-Saxon heritage, just because 1500 years ago their Anglo-Saxon ancestors migrated and settled in England from abroad).
In India, such questions of root identity are deeply politically divisive and sensitive (and have their roots in colonial divide-and-rule policy - it pits Indians against Indians to brand some of their mainstream cultures and histories native and others as non-native) - generates much resentment and feeds Nazi-ish genocidal narratives against modern Brahmins in particular. I am sure you dont want to put your foot into all that - so please dont make controversial comments on politically and culturally sensitive topics.
The Indo-Aryans had conclusively been Indians for over a millenium before the Buddha - so there it should be allowed to rest - unless you want to intentionally provoke some Indians politcally and culturally by insinuating that their ancestors weren’t “native” to India in the time of the Buddha (who was himself Indo-Aryan from a Brahmanical or Aristocratic background). It doesnt add to the quality of the discussion either. Please use neutral terms like Indo-Aryan and non-Indo-Aryan if you want to show such nuances.
The translation of kaṇha-dīpāyana as “Dark-Light” is not correct as the word “dīpāyana” does not mean “light” (and the words ‘dark-light’ are a contradiction in terms). Rather it means “one born in an island” (the word Dvaipāyana is semantically deconstructed in Sanskrit as dvīpaṃ ayanaṃ utpattisthānaṃ yasya saḥ). The idea that he would have been the son of a fisherwoman would have been a later mythology to explain why his surname name meant “born in an island” - the story of his birth very likely did not precede his name - and using the mythological story of his fisherwoman mother to claim that he was a “native dark hermit” is problematic from many different angles.
Moreover,
- the story of his imprecation leading to the demise of the entire Vṛṣṇi clan is told in the Mahābhārata – cf. mausale vṛṣṇivīrāṇāṃ vināśo brahmaśāpajaḥ
- His name is also mentioned in the Arthaśāstra in connection with the same incident – harṣād vātāpir agastyam atyāsādayan vṛṣṇisaṃghaśca dvaipāyanam
- the same incident is also told in the Pāli Jātaka verses (Saṅkiccajātaka) -
kaṇhadīpāyanāsajja , isiṁ andhakaveṇḍayo ,
aññoññaṁ musalā hantvā , sampattā yamasādhanaṁ .
(“being imprecated by the Ṛṣi Kṛṣṇa-Dvaipāyana, the andhaka-vṛṣṇi clan killed one another with clubs and reached Yama’s abode i.e. the world of the dead”). - the andhaka-vṛṣṇis were historical late-vedic clans also mentioned by Pāṇini in his Aṣṭādhyāyi sūtra 4.1.114. ṛṣy-andhaka-vṛṣṇi-kurubhyaś-ca (where he talks about certain grammatical rules to be applied for certain clan names)
So it is clear that the Pāli canon is talking about the same person as the Mahābhārata (and very likely has borrowed the character from the Mahābhārata). Therefore it’s not true that the Pali texts are either earlier or more authentic in their portrayal of anyone (except their portrayal of early-Buddhists). In some cases, Pali sources could possibly be earlier or more authentic - but not across the board.
Not quite. The anxieties you mention were rather for the royal women who feared their children wouldn’t be recognized as royals under normative patrilineal primogeniture (and therefore unfit to rule a Kingdom) if they didnt have royal bloodlines - as a result of being fathered by a Brahmin. That has nothing to do with any dark hermit archetype for Dvaipāyana himself.
How do you come to that conclusion - and where do you find evidence for the authorship of the Mahābhārata being attributed to anybody else (or nobody else) before being attributed to him (and when and why did such a change of attribution happen)?
No - that mysterious and distinct origin that you take for granted is not so self-evident. You will need to show independently that there were once ascetic traditions independent of Vedic sources (practiced by non-Indo-Aryan people in India), and that they fused together, and that the historically attested ascetic traditions of the late-vedic period are the result of such fusing. I am a south Indian myself and I have a fair idea of what mainstream non-Indo-Aryan culture looks like (and must have looked like in the Buddha’s time) in India, and I am not convinced of the historicity of any such native (non-Indo-Aryan) dark hermit traditions that you posit. As a matter of fact, practically all such early ascetic traditions (or at any rate all those falling under the rubric of Hinduism) and all their core early texts are attributed to brahmin figures - and are invariably written in Sanskrit. There is no evidence of any merger of disparate cultural sources that is self-evident from the mere fact of their philosophical diversity (or the mere fact of their scholastic opposition to one another or to specific aspects of the early-Vedic ritualism). The Sankhya, the Yoga, the Vedanta, etc are all Brahmanical traditions from the beginning - that doesnt mean that other classes of Indo-Aryan society (apart from Brahmins) didnt learn them in Sanskrit, or practice them, or even contribute to them. Even early-Buddhism and early-Jainism are predominantly or exclusively Indo-Aryan in origins.
Travelling to the sea does not ipso facto mean travelling south - as India has the sea on 3 of its four cardinal directions. Jaigīṣavya’s ṛddhi or supernatural powers (iddhi in Pāli) and his departure to the world of Brahman (as recounted in the Mahābhārata) is because he was more spiritually and religiously accomplished than Devala and is not an evidence of his mysterious origins, southern origins, non-Indo-Aryan origins, dark hermithood etc. Jaigīṣavya is evidently an Indo-Aryan kṣatriya patronymic (meaning son of a jigīṣu - jigīṣu means “one who wishes for victory” and is usually an epithet for someone royal).
Yes, the Bhaiṣajyavastu in the Tibetan Kangyur (based on originally Mūlasarvāstivādan sanskrit sources) recounts the Ambattha sutta (DN3) where - upon being asked of his family name - he says it is ‘Kāṇvāyana’ - which is a historically valid brahmin surname. So the Pāli account appears less authentic in this respect as there is no attested evidence of any brahmin clan called kaṇhāyana - while there were definitely kāṇvāyanas (descendants of the Ṛgvedic Ṛṣi Kaṇva) in that period. There is even a Kāṇva-śākhā version of the Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa and the Bṛhadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad still available (apart from the Mādhyandina-Śākhā version that we usually find translated online).
No it is not. It is a Sanskrit word borrowed into Tamil (and other Dravidian languages).
The word Jaṭila is a taddhita derivative from jaṭā + ilaC pratyaya. The grammatical formation (and semantic scope) of jaṭila, and other similar words such as phenila, lomila, kapila, sikatila, tundila etc. - is described by Pāṇini in the Aṣṭādhyāyī sūtra 5.2.99 phenādilac ca.
The noun jaṭā (on which the taddhita derivative jaṭila is based) is also a Sanskrit word (attested in both BCE & CE texts) – and is considered Indo-Aryan by Prof. Mayrhofer in his etymological dictionary of Sanskrit – “Nebenformen wie *jaṭṭa-, *jāṭā- (Tu, a.a.O.), ep. kl. saṭā- (KEWA
III 420) wurden als Indizien für nicht-Indoeuropäer. ursprung herangezogen (Lit. in KEWA I 413, Tu 5086); die dravid. wortsippe von ta. caṭai ‘Haarlocken’ wird jetzt jedoch als indoar. entlehnung im Dravid.” (Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen, vol 1, page 564).
One of the methods in the Oral-Transmission tradition of the Vedas is called the Jaṭā-pāṭha (literally “braided recitation”).
The Madras University Tamil Lexicon also considers both of them loanwords from the Sanskrit (as there is no way to explain their etymology and grammatical form in Tamil).