To say the least. For a group of scholars to apply the methodology, they would already have to know the totality of spiritual truth, and fully understand how to eradicate the defilements and everything laudable about nibbana. In other words, they would probably have to be enlightened themselves.
[quote=“Coemgenu, post:3, topic:6002”]
佛世尊、如來、應、等正覺所知所見，說六法出苦處昇於勝處，說一乘道淨諸眾生，離諸惱苦，憂悲悉滅，得真如法。何等為六？
The Buddha, the World-Honoured One, the Tathāgata, the Arhat, the Samyaksaṁbuddha, the one who is known, the one who is seen, teaches a Dharma that causes [living beings] to go forth from a place of suffering and to ascend to a victorious place. He teaches a one vehicle path that purifies living beings and causes them to be separated from all afflictions and suffering, causes sorrow and grieving to completely disappear, and causes them to attain the Dharma of true reality. And what are the six?
[/quote]This translation is by Jan Nattier. She is using a different recension than what is hosted at SuttaCentral (this is very interesting, I will post more on this once I know more about it).
Where SuttaCentral has this [quote]佛世尊、如來、應、等正覺所知所見，說六法出苦處昇於勝處[/quote], the first 六 in Nattier’s text is a different character.
The SuttaCentral texts reads, instead of Nattier’s [quote]“The Buddha, the World-Honoured One, the Tathāgata, the Arhat, the Samyaksaṁbuddha, the one who is known, the one who is seen, teaches a Dharma that causes [living beings] to go forth from a place of suffering”[/quote], it says:[quote]The Buddha, the World-Honoured One, the Tathāgata, the Arhat, the Samyaksaṁbuddha, the one who is known, the one who is seen, teaches six dharmāḥ that cause [living beings] to go forth from a place of suffering[/quote]This makes the last sentence of the excerpt (“And what are these six [dharmāḥ]?”) less of a non-sequitur. Additionally, the SuttaCentral recension may well invalidate the above claims related to this āgama, as now there are six, not an endless amount (or “one perennial Dharma”), of dharmāḥ mentioned.
[quote=“Coemgenu, post:5, topic:6002, full:true”]
I am loath to comment on my own post (I always feel narcissistic doing so) but I realized that the issue I took with that quotation in the text cited in the OP:
Nevertheless elsewhere too in the Pāli Canon the Dhamma is characterized effectively as whichever doctrines lead to enlightenment
Was that it seemed to imply (and this is me being epistemologically humble, IMO it “implied”) that the Pāli was advocating overt perennialism.
I started a parallel thread for further inquiry into that intersection.
It should be noted that I have no special distain for perennialism as a belief, but to retroject it onto texts where we have no concrete proof of perennialism at work as a philosophy, strikes me as, at best “a less precise methodology”.
Logically, these seem like separate issues. Assuming those later authors meant “Buddhist enlightenment” when they referred to views conducive to enlightenment, there is no reason to interpret their remarks, whatever other merits or demerits those views might have, as endorsing a belief in a perennial and universal philosophy.
[quote=“DKervick, post:12, topic:6002, full:true”]
Logically, these seem like separate issues. Assuming those later authors meant “Buddhist enlightenment” when they referred to views conducive to enlightenment, there is no reason to interpret their remarks, whatever other merits or demerits those views might have, as endorsing a belief in a perennial and universal philosophy.
[/quote]This text is using the Pāli quote to justify Mahāyāna Dharma on the basis that is “leads to enlightenment” and thus fulfills the requirements of the Pāli stipulations.
I myself have perennial leanings, and I can therefore call Mahāyāna, Theravāda, and Early Buddhism alike, at least in theory, “doctrines that (can?) lead to enlightenment”, however many others are not of such a view.
The “spin”, IMO, is that Mahāyāna in its present totality, due to that Pāli quote, is justifiably by the standards of “early Dharma”. Mahāyāna has many brilliant teachings within it, IMO, but “early Dharma” it is not.
I’d like to contribute if I may by giving some more background on the Uttaravipatti Sutta, AN 8.8, cited in the OP. My comment here grew rather long, so I have made it into a separate post here:
But the basic point is simple: AN 8.8 is the only sutta in the EBTs to claim that what is well spoken is spoken by the Buddha. But it is clearly a late sutta, and is not evidence that this idea is original, but that it was a late addition. Moreover, it is spoken by a narrator who may well be unreliable.
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Apparently the Buddha wasn’t even Indian anymore!
The Buddha was a “not-Greek” Scythian who lived in Northwestern China. He also founded Daoism apparently. More to come once I have delved further into these astounding “new findings” 
.
In case no one else enjoys drinking the Kool-Aid as much as me, I’m cutting and pasting a list of the book’s claims from the site that I linked to. Should make someone’s day:
[quote]1. The Buddha was not Indian (though nor was he Greek – the title of the book is misleading). Instead, the Buddha was Scythian (people living to the north of Persia and in contact with the Greeks), and he was called Shakyamuni because he was a Saka, a type of Scythian.
2. The Pali Canon, being composed and written more than 500 years after the death of the Buddha, offers very little reliable information about the Buddha. Most of the information in it has been made up to fit later models of what ‘Buddhism’ is that developed after about the first century CE.
3. The Buddha did not teach karma and rebirth, but only the balanced sceptical argument (Pyrrhonism) of the Middle Way, and the release he taught was not from the rounds of existence, but rather from the polarising constrictions of metaphysical views, both positive and negative.
4. However fundamental the Four Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path may now seem to Buddhism, these are later additions attributed to the Buddha.
5. Lao Tzu may be one and the same person as Gautama the Buddha, so that Taoism is effectively an early form of Buddhism in China.
6. Early Buddhism reacted not against Brahmanism but against Zoroastrianism.
7. Buddhism was the first religious movement to emerge in India, and others, such as Brahmanical Hinduism and Jainism, have copied it and sought to compete with it by claiming similar antiquity.
8. Buddhism did emerge in a setting with developing cities, but in Gandhara (north western India, more subject to Persian and Greek influence), not in the still-rural Ganges valley, even if the Buddha then travelled to the Ganges valley.
9. Pyrrho’s Scepticism was so radically discontinuous from other Greek philosophy that it must be considered (early) Buddhist rather than ‘Greek’. Pyrrho’s visit to India with Alexander’s armies thus becomes one of our key sources of information about early Buddhism.[/quote]A particular highlight:
The big problem with Indian texts from this period is that they lacked all historical sense, and are thus neither datable nor reliable.
So only rock edicts, alleged Greek & Persian EBTs (can someone fact check this claim?) and the some of the āgamāḥ make it as a “reliable” testament to the Buddha.
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Lol, thanks for the chuckles. It is, however, somewhat distressing that this nonsense is apparently published by a “reputable” University. Thus far has American Buddhist studies sunk into the mire.
What, on a funny meter? Less funny than Monty Python, more funny than today’s headlines.
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Unfortunately I’ve had discussions with interested people at both a general and a scholarly level (without significant Buddhist studies background of course), and have virtually nowhere to point them when it comes to rebutting this nonsense. There is one short article out by Bronkhorst (“Was there Buddhism in Gāndhara at the time of Alexander?”) pointing to a number of faulty claims in the book, but apparently its having been published by an academic with an academic press makes it nevertheless catnip for any who wish to throw dust into the eyes of mainstream scholarship.
Are you aware of any decent, scholarly attempts to deal with the book’s claims?
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[quote=“dougsmith, post:17, topic:6002”]
Are you aware of any decent, scholarly attempts to deal with the book’s claims?
[/quote]It’s Princeton University Press. They’ve (and the author has) picked a pretty big bouquet of oopsy-daisies. Then again, other popular authors (such as the author who inspired the thread that inspired this thread) get away with all sorts of contrivances with regards to religious history and are New York Times Bestsellers and have never been disciplined for blatant academic mispractice by their supposedly responsible employers in the academic institution.
Its a pretty sad state of affairs. At least we can chuckle.
I’m definitely going to read this book but I refuse to pay for it. I am sure I will find it in a secondhand store, I know a good one in Toronto.
I can’t for the life of me wait to find out what wizardry the author is going to pull justify disqualifying all Pāli, Sanskrit, and Gāndhārī texts.
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Well, see the problem is that this has already been largely achieved by Schopen et al. Not that their work even remotely achieves this in actuality, but it is received as if it has done so. So works like this already have a pre-built mythos in which to fabricate their fantasies.
I was going to write to Prof Gombrich and ask him to respond, but the problem is that those of us who actually want to work don’t want to waste our time with this silliness. It’s like climate change: the scientists want to get on with doing actual science, not with countering yet another denialist argument.
It’s amazing how, even in the brief skim of that review, this work ticks all the boxes of classic denialist argumentation. Brahmali and I in Authenticity made the case that we should be talking of “Buddist denialism”, and this is a worthy addition to the canon.
If you do get around to reading it, maybe you’d be so kind as to summarize important factual claims here so we can while away a pleasant rainy morning in rebutting them!
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[quote=“sujato, post:19, topic:6002”]
It’s amazing how, even in the brief skim of that review, this work ticks all the boxes of classic denialist argumentation.
[/quote]I had the best meme, but I couldn’t post it, because it involved using a picture of a poor anonymous Zen Bhikkhu, for what was ultimately a joke that is common in our society, but perhaps unethical, given that memes generally use peoples’ likenesses without their consent.
Suffice to say there is a common pattern with “Early Buddhism Conspiracies” (EBCs): the evil sangha. Here to conveniently alter your Buddhavacana before the textual tradition inherits it. Conveniently untraceable.
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Yes, this is kind of what I was suspecting. Nevertheless thank you bhante. At least we have the Bronkhorst piece, short though it is.
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“Merchants of (Buddhist) Doubt”, a reference to a documentary on climate change, the topic of this thread, also, I suppose.
Worry not. There’s no such a thing in Zen. They gave up Vinaya hundreds of years ago! 
[quote=“Gabriel_L, post:24, topic:6002, full:true”]
Worry not. There’s no such a thing in Zen. They gave up Vinaya hundreds of years ago!
[/quote]Only because the emperor made them!
I’m sure some of them kept it anyways, in secret. Maybe I am just optomistic.
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Here is a review of Beckwith’s book by Matthew Neale:
I’m reading the aforementioned Beckwith book and am about 40% through. The heart of it is the remarkable similarity between the Three Characteristics and Pyrrho’s Three Questions. This isn’t the first or only book to have explored the notion, though I didn’t know that before I started reading it.
The author considers some of the Ashoka pillars to be forgeries, notably the Lumbini one. As the evidence presented for that is in the appendices, I haven’t seen it yet. He doesn’t discount the Pali canon entirely and refers to portions of it that he considers early (like the Atthakavagga). He discounts the materials regarding Jains and such as being later additions, and is of the opinion that the other sects mentioned in what are usually considered EBTs did not actually exist at the time of the Tathagata. He proposes that a lot of the Pali texts that seem to be in opposition to Brahmanic practices are actually a reaction to Zoroastrianism. He repeats the assertion that I’ve seen elsewhere that the Buddha’s ancestry was Scythian.
Some of his assertions are based on archeology, and some on historical writings (mostly Greek, but some Chinese-- he says that the name Gotama appears in early Taoist writings?). The author is apparently a specialist in Silk Road era history, language, and cultures, and doesn’t claim to be a scholar of Buddhism specifically.
I’ll make a list of the theses in the book when I’ve finished it, and am interested to see what discussion it may generate.
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Oh boy. So what the author claims is that 老子(Lǎo zǐ) is an attempt, by the Chinese, to transcribe the name Gautama.
If the Dào dé jīng is still believed to be from ~400BC (although who knows! the author could be saying the text dates from about any time, given how radically he “questions” the dominant narratives), this name would be pronounced, possibly, something like this:
Apparently the large C indicates an unknown or unreconstructable consonant. This is from Baxter-Sagart’s Old Chinese reconstructions, which someone has wonderfully uploaded to wiktionary online.
To give an idea of the likelihood of this. In addition to this, 老子 is not anyone’s name, it means “old sage” or “ancient teacher”. It is a title. No one know’s 老子’s “name” in the sense that no one knows the Buddha’s “(personal) name”, Siddhartha being a later hagiographical addition, I think (but am not sure about that last bit about the personal name Siddhartha).
I really think you should read the relevant section of the book. I think you would find it more interesting than your guess at the argument makes out.