How about an Early Buddhism timeline?

Can anyone please name the sources for dating the Buddha’s birth and death dates? The asian historiographies are just so shaky… Archaeology isn’t helpful either as Fogelin argues in his “An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism”. I read an article that shows the influence of buddhist thought on Democritus, the only pre-Socratic philosopher who travelled to India and started philosophy after his travels, showing buddhist influences. Apparently he travelled young, using his inheritance. He was born around 460 BCE and if we assume he travelled when 30, he might have gotten in contact with buddhist thought in 430 BCE. It makes sense to assume that the Buddha at the time has already passed away (it’s more probable that Democritus stumbled upon an established religion rather than accidentally talking to Buddhists of the first hour). This is just guesswork of course but if he was in India, say 50 years after the parinibbana - probably enough time for buddhism to spread - that would be around 480 BCE for the passing and 560 BCE for the birth. Quite close to the more traditional date…

Another question I don’t know about: When do Indian sources start to speak about four vedas?

Late 2nd century CE: An Shigao comes to China from Parthia and translates works related to the āgamas, including foundational teachings such as the Four Noble Truths, Five Skandhas, Noble Eightfold Path, Four Bases of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of Breathing, Four Dhyānas, Four Formless Samādhis, etc. He also lectured on Buddhism and translated Yogācārabhūmi materials. His long text on Mindfulness of Breathing became the most important Buddhist meditation manual in China until the 5th century. Paul Harrison believes he also may have done T. 101, an incomplete Saṃyukta Āgama.

Late 2nd century CE: An Xuan, a Parthian layman, comes to China and translates a Mahāyāna sūtra into Chinese (Ugraparipṛcchā Sūtra).

Late 2nd century CE: Lokakṣema comes to China from Da Yuezhi (Kushan Empire?), and translates around a dozen Mahāyāna sūtras including the 8000-line Prajñāpāramitā, Mahāyāna samādhi sūtras, texts about Amitābha and Akṣobhya, etc.

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http://indology.info/papers/cousins/node6/

Well, that’s actually a paper by Hagens:

Although it now well known that an exchange of novel concepts played a significant role in the emergence of Western and South Asian philosophies, the mechanism by which that process occurred remains poorly understood. This problem is here addressed by a re-examination of the chronology of early Greek philosophy and a number of South Asian religious movements. It is argued that various similarities between pre-Socratic philosophy and the teachings of Siddartha Gautama and his near contemporaries, suggest that these developments all took place during the time of the Achaemenid Persian empire. This preferred fifth-century dating of the lifetime of the Buddha is about a century lower than is commonly assumed.

Of course, the Achaemenid Persian empire covers the span 550–330 BCE, ending right around the time of Alexander’s arrival (maybe even with Pyrrho in tow). And of course, there were already centuries-long traditions of samana-bahmana practices throughout that period, some of them quite close to later Buddhist doctrine, e.g. annihilationists, even skeptics.

Democritus was born about the time the Bodhisatta was born, when comparing Greek histories with the first link in this post, and I don’t think he got any farther East than Egypt. And of course, none of the writings of Democritus survive.

So, I didn’t think this paper significantly adjusted the dates.

I’m not sure about this, but I’m going to guess ca. 1000 BCE, as they were all swimming around each other by then.

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Thanks for these.

I’ll probably split this up & put a few timelines together over time: one for persons and politics, one for texts, and one for folk practices & archaeology & such.

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And what does that say about the tipitaka mentioning three vedas?
Btw of course I took the idea from Hagens, only the calculation was my guesswork I wanted to say.

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Thanks for the link, but it doesn’t detail the sources, it basically says ‘research shows’ and the article is 20 years old.

Reviewing a symposion edition on dating the historical Buddha, de Jong writes that “Heinz Bechert… rejects Richard Gombrich’s recent attempt to date the Nirvana of the Buddha in the year 404.” and concludes “It is obvious that no consensus on the dates of the Buddha has been reached and probably will never be reached”. The review is about: The Dating of the Historical Buddha/Die Datierung des historischenBuddha. Part3. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gottingen, 1997

And let’s leave room for the possibility that the shrine found in Lumbini from 550 BCE actually is a buddhist shrine. It’s a shrine from that time for sure. Is there proof for it to be buddhist, or proof to be non-buddhist? not yet…:
https://www.dur.ac.uk/archaeology/research/projects/all/?mode=project&id=662

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Heinz Bechert rejects the precision of Gombrich’s date, but he agrees with the general idea that the traditional dates of the Buddha are too early. In fact, if my memory serves me right, Bechert thinks the dates of the Buddha may be even later.

It is probably true that there is no consensus on the exact dates of the Buddha, but I believe there is a consensus that the traditional accepted (at least among scholars) date of 480 BCE for the parinibbāna is too early, at least by several decades. If you read “The Dating of the Historical Buddha”, it is clear that 400 BCE is closer to the current ideas of most scholars than the traditional 480 BCE.

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And as per the Cousins article linked above, it seems clear to me that Bechert is wrong. While the Gombrich/Rhys Davids median chronology is far from proven, it is clearly the best candidate at the moment.

That was discussed over here, so I don’t think the possibility is very likely at all. The constellation of likelihoods supports a ca. 400 BCE date, plus or minus a couple decades or so.

Perhaps in these respects I can make fuzzy lines (for a chart, if one should end up being possible) & italicized phrases on the timeline to cover these outlier ideas, and then make a solid line & normal text to cover the more likely cases. Of course this chart will be altogether ‘fuzzy’ to some extent in any case, but at least we can try to tighten things up.

And, I’m not sure about the relevance of this “three vedas reference” (trayī vidyā?) you’re looking for. That would’ve been around 1900-1100 BCE, long before this timeline begins.

[quote=“Gabriel, post:12, topic:2832”]
Thanks for the link, but it doesn’t detail the sources…[/quote]

Sure it does, the whole paper reflects on previous attempts & their sources, and throughout builds up a discussion that ends with the linked conclusion.

Have a look at another paper, this one also providing a literature review & further resources:

A New Publication on the Date and Historiography of the Buddha’s Decease (“nirvāṇa”): A Review Article by D. Seyfort Ruegg in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 62, No. 1 (1999), pp. 82-87.

The conclusion there is a date range of 420-350 BCE.

The Encyclopedia of Buddhism reviews the discussion as well, reporting similar conclusions overall.

just about to start a new topic for that…

I’m very much into edition history when it comes to old texts. Is there a good overview on that? Questions that would interest me:

  • What are the oldest pali canon manuscripts we have?
  • Have they worked on the differences between the thai vs. singhalese based canon texts?
  • what are generally the oldest manuscripts covering EBT material and how is doctrinal coherence there in comparison with ‘our standard edition’? (incl Gandhari)
  • what is the edition history of ‘our standard edition’?

Thanks for hints including references!

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There isn’t very much on this that I’m aware of. I believe there are some things by Von Hinuber that cover this area, but I don’t have them to hand.

But to answer your questions at least a little bit:

  1. Not sure, but the oldest complete manuscripts are quite recent, maybe a couple of hundred years.
  2. Not systematically, so far as I know.
  3. There’s little variation between manuscript tradition in Pali as far as “doctrinal coherence” goes. All our Pali texts are well edited and highly consistent, considering that they are from a much-copied hand-written manuscript tradition. But there are considerable variations in things like spelling, handling of abbreviations, and the like.
  4. The “standard” edition these days is probably the 6th Council edition, as found on SuttaCentral. Despite claims to be a “world” edition, it is in fact a Burmese text. It’s by far the cleanest and best edited version available, though not necessarily the earliest. In academic circles it is customary to cite the PTS editions. But these have no overall coherence, and were edited together on an ad hoc basis from whatever manuscripts happened to be available. in most cases the PTS editors tried to consult manuscripts stemming from the three main theravada countries; and they probably lean on the Sinhalese lineage as primary. But other than that they don’t closely represent any particular tradition. Their quality varies greatly.
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I know this is an old thread but I read an article that answers this today.

According to Mark Allon, the oldest EBT manuscript material yet discovered might possibly be the British Library Karosthi Manuscripts Collection, which has EBT birch bark manuscripts in Gandhari dating to the 1st century CE.

See:
Allon, M. (2013). Recent Discoveries of Buddhist Manuscripts from Afghanistan and Pakistan and Their Significance . In Wei Shan and Zhang Xuesong (Eds.), Religious Studies 2013 , (pp. 28-46). Beijing: Religious Culture Press (Zongjiao Wenhua Chubanshe).

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Interesting thread. I recently watched a documentary about Buddhism in central asia. That area is vast, it is amazing to see the map and see how far Buddhism had reached at an early stage. They mentioned the discovery of some the Gandhari scriptures found in Afghanistan. It is amazing these really old documents have survived. Makes you wonder if there are any more still to be found.

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I often wonder if the manuscripts in Sri Lankan archives has been properly studied and dated!?

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I created an preliminary bibliography here: Bibliographies for Buddhist Studies. I think a good starting point.

I read a good part into that topic and the most influential paper in support of the 400 B.C. date seems to be the paper by Haertel on the archaeology of the ancient Buddhist sites, in Bechert (ed.) 1988: Symposien zur Buddhismusforschung IV/1 – The Dating of the Historical Buddha. Most scholars who believed beforehand that the 480 B.C. date is the more likely alternative adapted their appraisal accordingly.

A paper of a lesser known symposium held after Bechert’s was supporting the 480 B.C. date. The paper of Krishna Deva The Antiquity of Sites Related to the Buddha in Narain (ed.) 2003: The Date of the Historical Sakyamuni Buddha, which contains the contributions to the symposium, fundamentally and heavily questions the results of Haertel, for me convincingly showing that almost all the key sites mentioned in the EBTs existed around 480 B.C. and far earlier, this being in contradistinction to Haetels presentation. Krishna Deva was closely involved in excavations himself. To me that moves the barrier quite strongly down to 480 B.C.

Metta

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You don’t have a copy of this, do you? I can’t find it online.

However, a good summary of relevant points is made in
Hans Loeschner’s Kanishka in Context with the Historical Buddha and Kushan Chronology:

Perhaps, but it is the argument by Gombrich based on a revised understanding of the Dipavamsa lineages that is most often referred to as far as I know.

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Please see PM.

Thanks for the reference.

As far as I remember he questioned in his argument mainly the plausibility of five teachers spanning a time of over two hundred year, as many others did too on the same lines. I think he doubted any reference above 80 years or so lifespan as unlikely. I found that he perhaps reasoned from a perspective too heavily influenced by a conventional Western lifestyle. I mean at the historical times concerned the way of life was common among monks which modern science finds as conducing very well to longevity – eating little, proficiency in meditation, good exercise and probably more. I can imagine the given times therefore being close to truth. But who knows …

Mettā

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I agree that we should be cautious about making assumptions as to lifespan, we can all think of examples of bhikkhus living long and productive lives into their 90s.

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Mahayana concepts like transference of merit and emptiness can be found in the Pali suttas, at least in seed form. Buddhist devotionalism can be found in the Pali suttas as well, and is widely practiced in Theravada countries today.

The historical event which really paved the way for Mahayana Buddhism was the Second Buddhist Council and its resulting schism:

The Second Council is commonly said to have resulted in the first schism in the Sangha, probably caused by a group of rigorist reformists called Sthaviras who split from the more liberal, but orthodox, majority Mahāsāṃghikas.[3] After unsuccessfully trying to modify the Vinaya, a small group of “elderly members”, i.e. sthaviras, broke away from the majority Mahāsāṃghika during the Second Buddhist council, giving rise to the Sthavira sect.[4] Regarding this matter, L. S. Cousins writes, “The Mahāsāṃghikas were essentially a conservative party resisting a reformist attempt to tighten discipline. The likelihood is that they were initially a larger body, representing the mass of the community, the mahāsaṃga.”[5]
Buddhist councils - Wikipedia

The Mahāsāṃghika were the precursor to the Mahayana, just as the Sthaviras were the precursor to Theravada.

When one looks at the doctrinal similarities between the Mahāsāṃghika and the Mahayana, the Mahayana doesn’t seem so innovative after all:

Also, some Mahayana sutras were first written down around 100 BCE, the same time that the Pali scriptures were first written down.

The Pratyutpanna Samādhi Sūtra, the first sutra to mention Amida Buddha, was first written down around 100 BCE. The oldest parts of the Lotus Sutra were also first written down around 100 BCE.