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Drewes - A Historical Buddha After All (JIABS-46-401)

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A Historical Buddha After All?1

David Drewes

Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies Volume 46 ‱ 2023 ‱ 401–416 ‱ doi: 10.2143/JIABS.46.0.3293167

In a previous paper for this journal, I argued that scholars have not yet identified any good reason to think the Buddha was a historical figure and that we should no longer treat him as such. To get from the goldskinned, blue-haired, forty-toothed, teleporting, omniscient, and nearly omnipotent being of the early texts to a figure we can situate in history requires a long leap, and we lack the evidence to cover it. While the early tradition may perhaps have coalesced around a single teacher, its initial formation could just as well have followed any number of other patterns, with the Buddha adopted as its mythical founder and supernatural authority. Oskar von HinĂŒber published a response, also in this journal, defending the Buddha’s historicity. 2 While we must be grateful to him for taking up the issue and providing a sense of the case that can be made, his reasoning is somewhat flawed, and he himself seems more than once to admit that his arguments do not provide much support for his view.

Von HinĂŒber begins rather weakly by stating that “it seems to have escaped” me that later scholars - he specifically mentions J. W. de Jong, Alfred Foucher, and Étienne Lamotte - who had greater access to “old and original sources” than the mostly earlier scholars I focused on, were “more and more convinced” of the Buddha’s historicity. He adds that scholars have given the Buddha dates and that the question of the Buddha’s historicity “was not even raised” at the 1988 symposium, “The Dating of the Historical Buddha.” 3 This is just another ad populum argument of the sort I discussed at length in my paper: The Buddha lived because eminent scholars believed he did. Although such arguments have been a mainstay since the time of Rhys Davids and Oldenberg, they are fallacious in failing to bear on the actual question. If later scholars found something convincing, it should be possible to say what it was.

If we look at the three scholars von HinĂŒber mentions by name, they not only do not claim to have found anything new, but explicitly make it clear that they did not. Foucher says that “tout ce que nous savons, ou croyons savoir d’à peu prĂšs sĂ»r” about the Buddha are the legendary details of his birth, family, renunciation, enlightenment, preaching, and death, which were all known to earlier scholars (1949: 9). As I point out in my paper, Lamotte goes further, concluding that no evidence whatever is to be found, and using strong language to caution against future attempts - such as the present attempt by von HinĂŒber - to isolate a historical core in the texts, arguing that they would be “vaine, inutile et prĂ©judiciable Ă  la recherche. 4 De Jong follows Lamotte, writing that “the texts do not allow us to discover a historical kernel in the legend of the Buddha,” and adding that “it will never be possible to know exactly, or even approximately, the contents of the teachings of the Buddha.” 5 It bears repeating: or even approximately. Rather than making claims about the Buddha’s life or teachings, Lamotte restrained his efforts to stratifying the development of his legend and de Jong to commenting on the teachings of “Buddhism in its early period” (1993: 27). Although von HinĂŒber chides me for not acquiescing to these scholars’ authority, their views on the evidence agree with mine.

Von HinĂŒber builds his main approach on the premise that the earlier a Buddhist text is, the more likely it is likely to be historical:

Any attempt to establish the historicity of the Buddha requires an early date of the sources rather near to the Buddha himself, while the likelihood of an “invented” Buddha grows with an increasing distance in time from the supposed date of his life time. For, only after all possible memory on the Buddha 
 was lost, and after all his contemporaries and their immediate descendants 
 were dead, would fantasy be able to run free (2019b: 233).

Making his point a bit more explicitly in specific reference to the Mahāparinibbānasutta, he writes:

It is not easy to conceive how all the events told in this long text 
 could have been invented at such an early date, most likely only a few decades after the death of the Buddha in about 380 and the accession of Candragupta Maurya in about 320 BC , when the end of the Buddha’s life was still living memory for many persons. As long as the date of the composition falls within the range of possible living memory, it is hard to imagine how the description of such an event stretching over many days if not weeks could be accepted as reality 
 if all this never happened (2019b: 253).

Since the text was composed as little as sixty years after the events it depicts, people who were there, or their descendants, would not have allowed it to pass if it did not have a basis in truth.

Putting aside for the time being the very early date von HinĂŒber gives for the Mahāparinibbānasutta and the very late one he gives for the Buddha’s supposed death, the problem here is that a text’s merely being early is a long way from its being historical. In the history of religions, ahistorical events and figures are often set in contemporary or nearly contemporary times. The stories of the empty tomb and post-resurrection appearances of Jesus were composed much closer to the time of Jesus than even von HinĂŒber would put the Mahāparinibbāna to the time of the Buddha. The early Upanisads are more realistic than early Buddhist sĆ«tras, and seem similarly to be set close to the time they were composed, but have fairly clearly been shown not to be historical. 6 Even much closer to our own time in the West, the origins of such traditions as the Theosophical Society, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Mormonism, and QAnon have been attributed to ahistorical founders or revealers claimed to be living or active in the present day.

Von HinĂŒber presumes that at least some early Buddhist authors were trying to record history, and that their audiences received their texts in some historically critical way, but this is anachronistic. Though it may seem obvious and natural to us, what we think of as history was unknown before Herodotus and Thucydides, and they lived half a world away. Even such rudiments as annals or chronicles are unattested in India until significantly later times. The very notion of keeping an accurate record of events, that there might be some value in doing such a thing, was not there. Although the supernatural elements in the texts are often read as superficial embellishment, they represent the core of the story their authors are trying to tell and their whole justification for telling it. Everything that makes the Buddha a Buddha is supernatural: his discovery of the Dharma by his own power; his understanding of karma, the geography of the world, the structure of the cosmos, the path to liberation, and the makeup of living beings and the material world; his freedom from desire; his omniscience; his thirty-two marks; his special characteristics and powers. Since the dialogue in the early sĆ«tras focuses mainly on the supernatural and afterlife, with the Buddha speaking in the role of omniscient authority, it can only have been composed after he was understood as such. If the texts we have could be dated so close to the time of Buddhism’s origin as von HinĂŒber would like, rather than the Buddha’s historical existence, it would more strongly suggest that he was originally conceived as a supernatural being.

Von HinĂŒber in fact several times acknowledges that earliness does not show historicity, undercutting his own approach in an unusual way. Presenting his methodology near the beginning of his paper, he states that determining how close the sources are to the “time of the Buddha” “can either establish a likely historicity of the Buddha, or at the very least a date at which he was ‘invented’” (2019b: 233). Later, he states that Aƛoka’s LumbinÄ« pillar inscription “demonstrates that the Buddha was considered a historical person less than 150 years after the assumed date of his death, or alternatively had been invented by this time” (2019b: 237). He also states that “genuine memory 
 may be contained in a few casual remarks about his biography ascribed to the Buddha himself,” “if it can be found at all” (2019b: 240), suggesting that it may not be. At least as I read them, these disclaimers apply to almost all the arguments in the paper. While von HinĂŒber is certainly right to offer them, they make it difficult not to wonder whether he is arguing for his thesis or mine. If he is willing to allow that the early sources may show no more than that the Buddha was invented by a certain time, that is precisely my view. It should be added that it is not quite correct to say that “the Buddha was considered a historical person” in Aƛoka’s time. The notion of a historical as opposed to supernatural Buddha is a modern one; for Aƛokan Buddhists the Buddha was a supernatural being who had walked the earth. It is important to keep in mind that ancient Buddhists would have regarded the idea of the Buddha as a simple human teacher as striking at the foundations of their belief.

A clue to making sense of von HinĂŒber’s disclaimers can perhaps be found in his abstract (2019b: 264), which is almost the same as the one he used for a paper entitled “The Buddha and History,” delivered at the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology in 2018 and Stanford University in 2019 (2018, 2019a). Here he does not mention any intention to argue for the Buddha’s historicity, but states his aim as being merely “to trace possibly early texts containing information on the biography of the Buddha” and “to determine their relative chronology.” The strongest claim he makes is that “if texts show traces pointing to an early date fairly near to the assumed life time of the Buddha, this might either indicate the historical existence or at least the date of the creation of the person called the Buddha.” These comments suggest that von HinĂŒber may originally have developed his arguments to support a more modest project, following an approach closer to Lamotte and de Jong’s. What may have led him to present them in defense of the bolder thesis of the Buddha’s historicity, which they do not actually support, is unclear.

We find conceptual problems with von HinĂŒber’s individual arguments as well. Near the opening of his paper, he begins to argue that the existence of Buddhist texts proves the Buddha’s historicity, but loses his way halfway through. Citing a claim in the Milindapañha that the existence of the Dharma proves that the Buddha lived, he writes, “Here, the Milindapañha is certainly right: We do see the teaching of the Buddha, and, consequently, somebody must have created these texts. For the very existence of this vast literature points to a person or a number of persons who composed it” (2019b: 234). What von HinĂŒber starts to say here, and needs to be able to say for his assertion to be relevant, is that the existence of the texts proves the existence of a “somebody” who created them, a single founder. Since of course it does not, he rightly adds “or a number of persons” at the end, apparently not considering that doing so vitiates his point. He ends up with no more than the idea that the texts were composed under human authorship, which can never have been in doubt. Indeed, what he says turns out to look remarkably similar to assertions made by H. H. Wilson and R. Otto Franke, quoted in my original paper, that cast doubt on the Buddha’s historicity. Wilson writes, “Although we may discredit the actuality of the teacher, we cannot dispute the introduction of the doctrine, and there may have been, about the time attributed to SĂĄkya’s death 
 a person, or what is more likely, persons of various castes 
 who introduced [the] new system.” 7 Franke writes, “Naturally somebody (or somebodies) has (or have) created [Buddhist doctrine], otherwise it would not be there. But who this somebody was, and whether there were not rather several somebodies, we have no knowledge.” 8

In another argument, von HinĂŒber cites the Mahāsaccakasutta’s version of the story of the Buddha’s attainment of the first dhyāna, sitting under a jambu tree, which, in his translation, the Buddha describes as taking place, “while [his] father the Sakka was working” (pitu sakkassa kammante). 9 Suggesting that the passage depicts the Buddha’s father as a “simple peasant,” he writes:

That the Bodhisatva’s father 
 works in a field is of course in stark contrast to the belief of later Buddhists that Suddhodana was a king. Consequently the commentary skilfully assumes a ceremonial ploughing with a golden plough to eliminate this glaring contradiction
 The discrepancy between text and interpretation points to an old and genuine memory of a living person
 While the commentary invented a slightly fantastic explanation, the sober canonical text 
 could be very close to reality (2019b: 241-242).

There are a few problems here. First, the Pali passage does not in fact say that the Buddha’s father works in a field; it uses just the word kammanta (Skt. karmānta), which can refer to farm labor or to work or activity very generally. As the fourth limb of the Eightfold Path, sammā-kammanta is generally translated into English as “right action,” or “right conduct.” The standard translation by Bhikkhus Nānamoli and Bodhi renders the clause, “when my father the Sakyan was occupied.” 10 The text thus does not say anything very surprising, and there is nothing to suggest that the commentary is trying to explain anything away. By reading kammanta as farm labor, the commentary’s author is able to create an evocative scene, likely drawing on a version of the well-known story of King Janaka discovering the infant SÄ«tā while plowing with a golden plow, as well as other Buddhist traditions that locate the episode in farming contexts. 11 Second, the passage’s Sanskrit parallels, which von HinĂŒber does not seem to have considered, suggest that it may be corrupt. The Gilgit MĆ«lasarvāstivāda Sañghabhedavastu twice refers to the event using the phrase karmāntān anusaáčƒyān and the DÄ«rghāgama manuscript parallel seems to read “pituh ƛākyasya ƛuddhodanasya karmāntān anusaáčƒyān,” “checking on [my] father the ƚākya ƚuddhodana’s affairs.” This, and the way kammante is used in early Pali texts, suggest that the Pali passage has lost the participle anusaññāyamāno, corresponding to anusaáčƒyān.12 If we supply it, kammante would be an accusative plural, rather than a locative singular, and the passage would have the same meaning as the Sanskrit. Finally, as is well known, the early texts depict the ƚākyas as káčŁatriyas administered by a sort of council, or councils, rather than a monarchy. Even if we take the Pali passage as it stands and read kammanta as field labor, there is no reason to think that this would have been something unusual for an ancient, non-royal káčŁatriya to be involved with.

Further along, von HinĂŒber asserts that “it is very likely that the place of enlightenment was known to or at least remembered by all early monks,” which must give us pause. 13 Although scholars often talk about enlightenment as if it had some recognized empirical referent, it does not. Could “the place of enlightenment” be the place where the Buddha attained omniscience and put an end to desire, mental suffering, and future rebirth, becoming the teacher of gods and humans? Or perhaps the texts are accurate in reporting that the Buddha attained enlightenment, but inaccurate in presenting what this involved? If so, what actually happened, and how has it been possible to intuit it over an expanse of millennia? Although D. T. Suzuki’s depiction of enlightenment as a transformed psychological state has been highly influential in scholarship, early texts show no awareness of anything that could answer such a description, and no such state is known to science. Even if it were possible to show that the Buddha was a historical figure, there is no way that we can treat the enlightenment as a historical event. A possibility that is perhaps more likely, suggested by Ananda Coomaraswamy nearly a century ago, is that the Bodh Gayā site was a tree or yakáčŁa shrine that was converted to Buddhist use, as recent archaeological work has strongly suggested was the case for the traditional site of the Buddha’s birth at LumbinÄ«. 14

Von HinĂŒber devotes six pages to a discussion of the story of Upaka the ĀjÄ«vika, the first human being the Buddha is said to have encountered after his enlightenment, whom the texts depict as being unconvinced by the Buddha’s claim to be an omniscient teacher. 15 He argues that the fact that the story depicts the Buddha unfavorably is “a strong indication of genuine memory” and that “it is not easy to imagine that this failure of the Buddha 
 was ‘invented,’” because “every Buddhist expects of course that 
 the first human being ever to be able to profit from the Buddha’s newly acquired knowledge would praise him enthusiastically and accept his teachings” (2019b: 246-247, 249). Von HinĂŒber thus suggests that the episode satisfies the famous criterion of embarrassment, used convincingly in New Testament studies to establish the historicity of certain events in the life of Jesus, primarily his crucifixion and baptism by John the Baptist. Since these episodes depict Jesus unfavorably, gospel authors would not have included them unless they were known facts. Since the Upaka episode presents the Buddha unfavorably, it must be historical as well.

While quite inventive, this seems unlikely because, whether or not the Buddha was historical, it was surely obvious to everyone in all periods that many did not accept Buddhist teachings, making it difficult to imagine Buddhist authors feeling a need to acknowledge a single case. A private encounter would also be easy to ignore. 16 A simpler explanation, which von HinĂŒber actually suggests himself at the close of his discussion, is that the episode pairs with the one that appears immediately before it, in which the Buddha expresses an unwillingness to teach on the grounds that few will be able to understand his teachings. If this is correct, rather than depicting the Buddha unfavorably, the passage depicts him accurately predicting the future. Von HinĂŒber even comments that “it is certainly not by chance that Upaka is an ĀjÄ«vika, a member of a rival sect,” suggesting that the story has a polemical intent. 17 While this seems quite reasonable, von HinĂŒber again undercuts his own argument. If it is possible to identify a good reason for authors to include an episode without its being based on historical fact, it fails to satisfy the embarrassment criterion. We can add that, as Brian Black points out, “reluctance to teach, at least initially, is one of the most common traits of the Upanishadic teacher” (2007: 42), which suggests that its attribution to the Buddha represents no more than the iteration of a standard trope.

As mentioned above, von HinĂŒber wishes to claim a very early date for the Mahāparinibbānasutta. His argument, presented in greater depth in his paper, “Hoary Past and Hazy Memory,” published in the 2006 volume of this journal, is based on a passage in which the Buddha predicts the future greatness of the city Pātaliputra, referring to it as a putabhedana, or “customs station,” without using the word for capitol, rājadhān̄̄, or mentioning the city’s future political importance. He presents this as evidence that the text was composed prior to Candragupta Maurya’s accession in about 320 BCE. 18 There are two main problems with this. First, although von HinĂŒber acknowledges that a date for this passage does not necessarily apply to the text as a whole, he treats it as if it did. 19 Since the sĆ«tra was clearly composed in several phases, this is not feasible. 20 Second, and more serious, von HinĂŒber neglects that the passage not only predicts that the city will become a putabhedana, but that it will become the “foremost city” (agganagara) of the Āryan world. As von HinĂŒber himself points out, putabhedana seems to be a word play, or we might say a so-called folk etymology, explaining the name Pāáč­ali-putta (2006 [2008]: 202). This would seem sufficient to account for the use of the term without requiring the redundant explanation that it was used because the city had not yet become more than a center for trade. Put differently, the term was used because -puta sounds like -putta, not because it was necessarily a comprehensive descriptor of the city. Though canonical Pali texts apply the term rājadhān̄̄ to several mythical cities, they do not seem to apply it to any historical city except ƚrāvastÄ«, so there is no reason that we should expect them to apply it to the Mauryan capitol. 21 Pātaliputra under the Mauryas was roughly ten times as large, by area, as any other city that had yet existed in South Asia (Allchin 1995: 200-204, 207). The use of agganagara can probably most straightforwardly be taken as a reference to this preeminence, suggesting that the passage was composed during or after Candragupta’s reign, as scholars have thought since the time of Oldenberg.

Von HinĂŒber comments that my statement that the Buddha “has not been linked to any historical facts” “is hardly tenable,” pointing out that “the Mallas are there, many Kings are mentioned, and the foundation of Pātaliputta is referred to” (Drewes 2017: 1, von HinĂŒber 2019b: 253). Here I fear he has missed my point. There is much that is historical in Waverly, but this does not make its protagonist a historical figure. We can add that the historicity of the kings mentioned in early Buddhist texts is hardly any better established than that of the Buddha. We do not find any firm footing in Indian history until we get to Chandragupta Maurya. Von HinĂŒber appreciatively quotes a passage from Erich Frauwallner, which I also quote in my paper, suggesting that requiring evidence of the Buddha’s historicity is “excessively exigent” and that doing so “would paralyse all scientific inquiry.” 22 By definition, however, inquiry not based on evidence is not scientific. No scholar should find it difficult to imagine that we could have the stories that we do, of this all-knowing, infallible being, without there necessarily being an actual person at their root; it is not as if it is unusual for religions to have origin myths. As Wilson suggested long ago, the fact that the Buddha is depicted as being human - or at least semi-human, in being the child of human parents rather than as a god, is unsurprising against the backdrop of Vedic tradition, which subordinated gods to brahmans (1856: 252). Humans are the revealers of the most profound truths in the Upanisads as well.

Before closing, it may be helpful to consider a final argument that can perhaps be taken as emblematic of the standards involved in historical-Buddha scholarship. In a passage in the Mahāparinibbānasutta, the dying Buddha orders a monk not to stand in front of him so that he will not obstruct the view of a vast number of invisible gods who wish to see him; von HinĂŒber cites as “apt” Paul Harrison’s suggestion that “this strikes me as a rather feeble attempt to cover up for a perfectly understandable moment of grouchiness on the part of a sick old man.” 23 In another passage found in some versions of the text, albeit not the Pali, the dying Buddha removes his robe and gives his monks a final chance to look at his body, stating that the sight of a Buddha is extremely rare; von HinĂŒber cites Ernst Waldschmidt as “certainly right” in suggesting that “it seems to me that the historical core is that the Buddha wished to demonstrate the decay of every human being to his monks, even of his own body.” 24 According to von HinĂŒber, these episodes, so interpreted, “underline the existence of the Buddha as a historical person” (2019b: 252). “It strikes me 
,” “it seems to me 
”: I fancy this, I fancy that. Though it may be unusual to see it presented so baldly, nothing any more robust than this lies behind anything that scholars have claimed we know about the historical Buddha. If we would like to do history, we cannot just make it up as we go along. If we presume the Buddha’s historicity, it is natural to imagine facts lying behind every realistic-seeming detail. If we do not, the texts provide nothing to establish it.

It is often supposed that scholars long ago discovered factual bases for identifying the Buddha as a historical figure, as they have done, say, for Jesus. Surely if we were to comb through the dusty old tomes we would find something? The main importance of von HinĂŒber’s contribution may lie in confirming that they did not. Apart from the ad populum argument he opens with, all his arguments are new. Though he makes a commendable attempt, lacking evidence, he is not able to say anything persuasive, which is surely why such scholars as Lamotte and de Jong cautioned against the effort in the first place. If one would maintain that the Buddha is historical, one must either admit, like Lamotte and de Jong, that one does not have any basis for doing so, or pretend, like von HinĂŒber, that one does. Although some may find it reassuring that other scholars share their faith in the Buddha’s historicity, that no basis for this faith has yet been identified is a plain fact. Prior to the Buddhism of the early texts and inscriptions, there lies only the darkness of prehistory. As historians, we find no path there.

Abbreviations

All references to Pali texts are to the PTS editions.

DDīghanikāya
MMajjhimanikāya
Pj IIParamatthajotikā II
PsPapañcasƫdanī
SSaáčƒyuttanikāya
SpkSāratthappakāsinī
VinVinaya

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Footnotes

  1. This paper was originally presented as the first half of the paper, “The Buddha and the Buddhism That Never Was,” at the XIX-th IABS Congress in Seoul in 2022. ↩

  2. Drewes 2017, von HinĂŒber 2019b. Von HinĂŒber states that I argue that the Buddha “never lived” (2019b : 231), but I would never say this; my argument is simply that we lack the means to know how Buddhism originated. In empirical discourse, lacking relevant evidence, we must remain silent. We might imagine a grand commission appointed to audit our field, asking what we have been able to accomplish in the two centuries since Wilson, Colebrooke, and RĂ©musat posed the question of the Buddha’s historicity. Proudly we would inform them that we had discovered that the Buddha was a historical figure. “That is great!” they would reply, “How did you do it?” and there would be nothing but embarrassed looks all around. For those familiar with scholarship on Chinese Buddhism, an analogous case would be having just the Platform SĆ«tra and trying to use it as the basis for a history of early Chan; the result would be completely wrong in a dozen ways we could never guess. Along with von HinĂŒber’s, two somewhat less interesting responses have also appeared, but they do not seem to make any significant points not covered here (Levman 2019, Wynne 2019). ↩

  3. Von HinĂŒber 2019b: 231-232. On “The Dating of the Historical Buddha” symposium, it should perhaps be obvious that the attempt to give the Buddha dates, far from proving his historical existence, was based on its presumption. Lacking anything that could properly be considered evidence, the dates that participants proposed were merely speculative, as leading scholars of the day recognized. K. R. Norman comments, for instance, that “almost all methods which were employed were purely subjective.” Although he himself suggests a date of years for the Buddha’s death, he does so only very tentatively, pointing out that its acceptance requires “faith” in traditional dates given for Jain and Buddhist patriarchs, and commenting that those who have this faith “might concede that there is a possibility that [these] dates are not wholly incorrect” ([1999] 2001: 136, 143-144). De Jong comments, “No consensus was reached by the participants of the symposium, but there was a general tendency to reject the early date of circa 480 B.C. in favour of a later date ranging from 420 to 350 B.C. Bechert rightly remarks that the only way to fix the date of the Nirvāna seems to be the use of indirect evidence. However, it is doubtful that the indirect evidence suffices to conclude that the Buddha’s Nirvāna took place in the fourth century. For the time being it is perhaps advisable not to go beyond the very vague statement that the Buddha lived in the state of Magadha 
 between 600 and 300 B.C.” (1993: 14). For the symposium’s proceedings, see Bechert 1991-1997. ↩

  4. Lamotte 1947: 48, cited in Drewes 2017: 13. ↩

  5. De Jong 1993: 21, 27. For the author’s views, see also de Jong 2000. ↩

  6. Black 2007: 20-21, cited in Drewes 2017: 18-19; see also, e.g., Lindquist 2011. ↩

  7. Wilson 1856: 248, cited in Drewes 2017: 8. ↩

  8. Franke 1915-1917: 1.455, translated in Thomas 1927: 233-234, cited in Drewes 2017: 13 . ↩

  9. Von HinĂŒber 2019b: 241. In Pali texts, the episode and commentary occur at M 1.246 and Ps 2.290-291. The episode also occurs at M 2.93 and 2.212. For references to versions in other texts, see Anālayo 2011b: 1.240-241. ↩

  10. Nānamoli and Bodhi 1995: 340. Nānamoli’s original manuscript translation reads, “while my Sakyan father was busy” (1956: 1.475). ↩

  11. On these traditions, see the reference in note 8. ↩

  12. In the DÄ«rghāgama manuscript, the final word in the passage reads anusamyo-, followed by a lacuna. Zhen Liu reconstructs it as anusamyogya and translates the passage, “als ich die Arbeiten [meines] Vaters, des ƚākya ƚuddhodana begleitete” (2008: 122). The Sañghabhedavastu passages (Gnoli 1977-1978: 1.107 and n. 1, 190), however, suggest that it should be anusaáčƒyān, or a close equivalent. This, and that the Pali passage is corrupt, is also suggested by the fact that, uncompounded, kammante seems to occur in canonical Pali texts only as an accusative plural, as the direct object of forms of only four verbs, payojeti, abhisambhoti, ārabbhati (single occurrence, at M 1.144), and anusaññāyati. Kammante anusaññāyamāno occurs twice, at M 3.8 and Vin 3.43. Another passage in the Gilgit Sañghabhedavastu describes the bodhisattva going to sit in the shade of the jambu tree, “pituh ƛākyasya ƛuddhodanasya karmāntān avalokya,” “having seen the karmāntas of [his] father, the ƚākya ƚuddhodana,” with the karmāntas identified as the harsh labors of ƚuddhodana’s slaves in a farming village (Gnoli 1977-1978: 1.75-76). ↩

  13. Von HinĂŒber 2019b: 243. I agree, though, with von HinĂŒber’s translation of bodhi as “enlightenment,” rather than “awakening,” which other scholars have preferred on etymological grounds. Although bodhi is derived from ƛbudh, “to wake,” in early Buddhist thought, rather than anything analogous to waking from sleep, it involves the acquisition of new knowledge and the abandonment of the āsravas. In several passages, the Buddha repeats after the attainment of each of the three stages of his enlightenment, “tamo vihato āloko uppanno,” “darkness was destroyed, light arose” (e.g., M 1.22-23). There is no English word that can convey the whole of even early Buddhist understandings of bodhi, just as there was no Middle Indic one; “enlightenment” is a good choice. ↩

  14. Coomaraswamy 1928-1931: 1.17, Drewes 2017: 16, n. 28, referencing Coningham et al. 2013. AndrĂ© Bareau also argues against Bodh Gayā as the site of the enlightenment. See mainly Bareau 1980. Passages in Pali commentaries that I cannot recall having been discussed say that before the Buddha there were many caityas of yakáčŁas, nāgas, and other beings and that these were destroyed and replaced with Buddhist vihāras (Pj II 1.344, Spk 1.268). ↩

  15. Von HinĂŒber 2019b: 244-250. In canonical Pali texts, the Upaka episode occurs in the Ariyapariyesanasutta (M 1.170-171) and at Vin 1.8. For occurrences in other texts, see Anālayo 2011b: 1.183-184. ↩

  16. Von HinĂŒber comments that “it might have been the Buddha himself who admitted that he did not convince everybody at the very beginning” (2019b: 249). Of course, if the event took place, it could only have been the Buddha who reported it, presuming that it was not Upaka! ↩

  17. Von HinĂŒber 2019b: 249. In some Chinese translations, Upaka is identified as a brahman (Anālayo 2011b: 1.183, n. 206). For the episode of the Buddha’s unwillingness to teach in Pali texts, see M 1.167-168 and Vin 1.4-5. For other occurrences, Anālayo 2011b: 1.178-182. Anālayo draws attention to the fact that the episode is not found in the Madhyamāgama and suggests that it may have been added later (2011a: 29-32). Because the Buddha’s reluctance is inconsistent with the standard idea that the Buddha was destined to teach the Dharma, however, an omission seems more likely than an interpolation. If it were added later, the story would also lose the cohesiveness of the Upaka story’s connection to the Buddha’s prediction. ↩

  18. Von HinĂŒber 2006 (2008): 202-204, 2019b: 252-253. For the passage, see D 2.8788. For versions in other texts, Waldschmidt 1950-1951: 2.148-149, Bareau 1963-1995: 2.66. ↩

  19. Von HinĂŒber 2006 (2008): 204, 2019b: 253, quoted above. ↩

  20. On this, see primarily Bareau 1979, although the author’s specific chronology is speculative. ↩

  21. Canonical texts also apply the term to VārānasÄ« in the time of the Buddha Kāƛyapa and to Kapilavastu, but neither of these can properly be regarded as historical. ↩

  22. Von HinĂŒber 2019b: 257, Frauwallner 1957: 310, Drewes 2017: 16. I use the spelling of Frauwallner’s original publication, from which von HinĂŒber slightly strays. ↩

  23. Von HinĂŒber 2019b: 251, referencing Harrison 1995: 13. For the passage, see D . ↩

  24. Von HinĂŒber 2019b: 251-252. For the passage, see Waldschmidt 1950-1951: 3.392-395. For versions in other texts, Anālayo 2014: 1-8, Allon 2021: 59-62. ↩

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