Many thanks, Jayarava, for this more "scholarly" essay. I really appreciate especially its first part (on the circularity in using evidence from the texts). May I ask you whether the Brahmanical sources you mention altogether forbid cross-cousing marriage? I have a vague memory of approving the marriage of a boy with the daughter of his mother's brother, while seeing the daughter of his father's sister (or brother) as his own sister and their relation as incestuous. But I guess Silk has much more on this…
Yes. As I understand it Brahmins could not forbid cross-cousin marriage entirely because it is standard practice in South India (and Sri Lanka). It's mentioned in some of the sources - but yes Silk is the main place. His other paper is also interesting:
Silk, Jonathan A. 2008 ‘Putative Persian perversities: Indian Buddhist condemnations of Zoroastrian close-kin marriage in context.’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 71: pp 433-464.
In this he notes that later Buddhist text criticise Persians for incest marriages!
Thursday, January 12, 2012
T.R.Ramaswami said...
Interesting - but the practce of cross-cousin marriages amongst South Indians also exists amongst the Brahmins - who belong to one of the Vedas. Does this make them Aryan or Dravidian? The fact is that Indus Valley first had a civilisation that was forced south by an invasion. The invaders having no culture of their own adopted the culture prevailing there with some minor changes to make it look as if it was original. The original inhabitants of the Indus Valley became the Dravidians and the invaders were the Aryans. This Aryan invasion theory is always disputed because it has political, social and cultural implications.
We need to be very cautious here. Dravidian is a linguistic term and refers to people who speak Dravidian languages. Arya similarly I treat only as a linguistic term - people who speak languages from the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family. People who share a language often, but not always share a culture. For example in Sri Lanka they speak an Indic (or Indo-Aryan) language, but share many South India cultural customs - such as cross cousin marriage.
In fact both Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages came from outside India. Dravidian long before, from the far west of Iran - it is relates to the Elam language. Indo-Aryan came from Iran (Īrān is cognate with ārya) perhaps via the Pamir/Hindukush areas.
Recent research by Michael Witzel - analysising loan words in the Ṛgveda at various layers - suggests that Dravidian was not the substrate language of the Panjab since load words from Dravidian do not occur in the very first layers of the ṚV. The only clear loan word at this early stage are from the Austro-Asiatic language family which includes Muṇḍa. Muṇḍa speaking peoples migrated into India millennia before from South-East Asia. Dravidian speaking peoples migrated North within India late in the 2nd millennium BCE and some small populations remain in North India.
Genetic studies have been piling up evidence in the last few years that most Indians (north and south) are more closely related to each other than any outside population. Note that despite language and culture differences Indians share most of their genes. However there is also a clear relationship with European genomes, that is closer in North Indian populations. The explanation is that a small number of mostly male Indo-Aryan speakers (which we can tell from comparing mitochondrial and Y chromosome genes) entered India from about the time that the Indus people abandoned their cities and migrated into the Panjab and Upper Ganges region, and into the North of Maharasthra and the Deccan. Those men must have assimilated quickly by taking local wives, but their language became the dominant one in North India. The process is not fully understood, though a modern comparison is the Magyars in Hungary. They also bought horses, chariots with spoked wheels, and a kind of ritual magic. Perhaps all three of these contributed to the domination of their language over others.
A second wave of immigrants, including the Kuru tribe, forced the early Indo-Aryan speakers east where they established a group non-Vedic tribal societies that gave birth to the first cities since the Indus civilisation. It was into this milieu that the Śākyas arrived, also from Iran.
I hope to have an article published on this which cites the evidence more fully.
I think the idea of an Aryan invasion is dead, at least amongst scholars, but it is equally clear that Indic languages, certain features of Indian culture, and parts of Indian genomes, are clearly from Iran, and/or the steppes of Central Asia.
Fascinating work, Jayarava. I have taken a personal curiosity in the history of Śākyas and I've been disappointed that more has not been written about them. I had not been aware of the Ambaṭṭha Sutta (which, I'm sorry to say, strikes me as a risible document). I'm glad you are stepping into the breach, and I look forward to your upcoming writing eagerly.
Your conclusion that "the idea of an Aryan invasion is dead" seems overstated, though. What seems to have been disproven is the idea that the Aryans invaded India and then largely repopulated their conquered lands. The comparison to the Magyars is interesting: there was a Magyar invasion, was there not? I think that it was the norm through most of history, rather than the exception, for invaders to come in small numbers, set themselves up as an elite, and intermarry with the more attractive local girls. The experience of the English speaking settlers in North America was quite unusual (most of the killing was done by diseases rather than war or murder).
Thanks for your comments. I think we must always approach Pāli texts with caution when thinking historically. What makes the Ambaṭṭha Sutta interesting is that incest is pretty roundly disapproved of India - including in later Buddhist texts - so we must consider how and why such a story would survive.
When I say the "Aryan Invasion" I mean a large scale military invasion, with subsequent populating of the territory. I think most scholars think in terms of an infiltration or a series of small migrations. And yes they seem to have se themselves up in charge and married local girls. You remind me that my knowledge of history outside of India is pretty limited.
I suppose what I hope is the skeleton of the story will hold together enough to make it worthy of further investigation to fill in some more of the detail. We could wish for more archaeological information...
I should also emphasise that the idea is Michael Witzel's and I have just written up some ideas that he proposed. I did let him know I was doing it, and he said "expect resistance".
I don't rule out cousin marriage, I place the Buddhist narratives of it in historical context. The stories are not canonical but first occur in the commentarial literature composed in Sri Lanka in the 5th century CE. Note that I do think the incest marriage mentioned in the Canon is probably significant precisely because no one in India or Sri Lanka would claim such a thing unless it were true (What Jan Nattier calls the Principle of Embarrassment)
The Buddha being light skinned could well be an interpolation as his story was re-written to fit better into a Brahmanical milieu.
The kinds of claims you are making would be much more interesting to me if they were connected to some authoritative, or even just published, source. As it is I can't follow up on your suggestions because I have no idea where you are getting your info from. Might just be Wikipedia in which case I wouldn't take it too seriously.
If you say something like "the scythians are mentioned... in the Avesta" you must say where and in which version of the Avesta you read this so I can check the source and incorporate it if required.
It seems to me that the Avesta is not the right time period for scythians in any case - so how could they be mentioned? "Scythian" is a Greek term (used by Herodotus many centuries after the Avesta was written) for the people who lived North of the Black Sea and not equivalent to the Śaka. So at best I'd say there is some confusion here.
Sources might help me sort out whether this is useful info that will enrich my understanding or whether this is just garbled urban legend that I can safely ignore.
At the outset, I concede that my claim is little more than mere speculation .Nevertheless , I'll give it a shot.
Cousin marriage-
The themes of pali canon include not only cousin marriage but also sibling marriage(cf..Dasaratha Jataka).This custom was alien to Srilanka where these texts were compiled.
However , this was one of the most pious practices of Iranian religions -
Thanks for getting back to me, though I have to confess the cousin marriage thing is the least interesting of your comments.
Could you cite the passage of the Jātaka? Because the Jātaka exists on at least two levels. One, in verse, which is considered canonical, and another, in prose, which is part of the commentarial layer of the Pāli literature and therefore Sri Lankan - where South Indian marriage practices such as cousin marriage were/are the norm. I suspect you are citing from the prose portions which only proves my point. As far as I recall there is nothing in the Canon that points to cousin marriage amongst the Śākyas.
Sibling and other incest marriage is a very different story - and order of magnitude more taboo than cousins. It is distinctively Iranian (though probably has Egyptian roots) and I have noted this in my JOBCS article as evidence for the Iranian origin of the Śākyas. Teh Śākya kingdom is founded on sibling marriages according to the Ambaṭṭha Sutta (D i.92) - something forbidden by Dharmaśāstras. I believe the Manusmṛti frowns on marriage between cousins - will check when I'm next at the library. We can be certain the practice was not Vedic.
From my article: "Jonathan Silk confirms that [sibling marriage] was indeed an Iranian custom: “there is good evidence for this practice called xᵛaētuuadaθa, so-called next-of-kin or close-kin marriage” (Silk 2008b: 444). The extent of this practice before the Sassanian period is unclear, and much debated by scholars of Zoroastrianism and Iranian history. By the Common Era Buddhists were condemning Iranians for this practice in their texts, e.g. in the Dharmarucy-avadāna and the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya; and similar condemnations were made by their Greek neighbours and by the Chinese at a later date (Silk 2008b: 445)."
If you have an email address I can send you a copy of my article from the JOCBS that goes into all of this in greater depth. Get in touch.
I wish to continue where I left. You were right , I must confess that the ethonym 'saka' had not existed during the avestan era.
The ethnogenesis of saka is attributed to the complete abandonment of agriculture by Andranovan tribes and their migration towards the south.
The central asian(and East iranian)tribes mentioned in the avesta such as Turanians(Sistanis) , sairimas(Sarmatians?), and dahyus can be treated as the ancestors of sakas
These tribes were referred to in contempt as daeva worshipers
According to a later persian legend , Zarathustra was killed by a turanian(Dk 5.3.2; ZWY 2.3)
We know that sogdians preserved many of pre zoroastrian Iranian traits such as worship of ssandramata (Mother Earth)
Sogdians had also retained the pre zoroastrian calendar
Sogdian marriage contract included mihira and baga. Baga was a pre zoroastrian Iranian god , who find no mention in the Avesta [see W. B. Henning, “A Sogdian God,” BSOAS 28, 1965, pp. 242-54]
"The religious beliefs of the Scythians was a type of Pre-Zoroastrian Iranian religion and differed from the post-Zoroastrian Iranian thoughts" [J Harmatta scythians page 182]
The aforementioned reasons impel me to bethink of sakyas as a 'pre zoroastrian' Iranian people , especially at such early date.
Yes. Well at least we have sources this time. But we are not talking about the pre-Zoroastrian period. We are talking about the post-Zoroastrian period.
The Sogdians are not relevant here. They are a distinct Indo-Iranian group. And again the term Scythian is not a synonym of Śaka - they were the Iranian people living North of the Black sea in Herodotus's time.
Is there any suggestion that the Śakas were hemogeneous? Especially the Śakas and other Iranian tribes who migrated into India in the post-Zoroastrian period leaving the bulk of their people behind? Is there anything in your sources on these breakaway groups and why they broke away?
Really you need to read my article before replying. You are confused about the people and the time period we are talking about.
Sorry- My previous post did sound ambiguous. I will try to clear the air
Certainly , I was talking about the post zoroastrian period.
By pre zoroastrian , I was referring to saka and other east Iranian tribes in the post zoroastrian period who did not accept the zoroastrian religion and retained their ancestral Proto Indo Iranian beliefs.
I dont quite understand why you consider sogdians a distinct. branch
Sogdian language , as well as saka language and avestan , belongs to the east Iranian language group.
In modern khotanese language , 'dahyu'(Meaning man) is a self appellation
Certainly , I was talking about zoroastrian period
By pre zoroastrian , I was referring to the central asian and east Iranian tribes who did not accept zoroastrian cult and retained their ancestral pre zoroastrian proto Indo Iranian beliefs.
I dont know why you consider sogdians a distinct tribe . Sogdian is an east Iranian language , bracketed with avstan and saka languages.
In modern khotanese 'dahyu'(Meaning man) is a self appellation .
When I use scythian , I ever mean saka( tigraxauda and haumavarga) and not paradarya
However , there could be some ambiguity in the proposed date of migration . The Vrjis and mallas were still known to Panini(CIRCA 600 BCE) as residing in the neighbourhood of Madra(Punjab) . So the final eastern migration of Malla , vrji et altera shought be sought only after the aforesaid timeframe
You say that since Pāṇini knows of Vṛjjis living in Panjab, implying that no Vṛjjis can have migrated before then. But we find many Vṛjjis living in the Central Ganges Plane in early Buddhist texts. So, according to your reasoning the Buddhist texts can only have been composed after Pāṇini. In this you might find a kindred spirit in Johannes Bronkhorst who imagines that Buddhism preceded the composition of the early Upaniṣads and thus envisages an entirely different timeline that might accommodate your new theory.
What you seem to do however is assume that all people with the same name are homogeneous and this is really not true. For example we know some of the Mallas still live in Panjab today and thus by your logic the "final" eastward migration must yet to have taken place and the early Buddhist texts have yet to be composed in India. So the logic breaks down.
Also I study Sanskrit with Pāṇinian scholars and no one puts Pāṇini at 600 BCE. His dates are usually estimated to be sometime in the 4th century - a century of so after the Buddha but before Asoka. Since Pāṇini lived in Gandhāra, what he knew about the area of Śravasti/Rājagṛha must have been second hand at best.
I think you need to slow down and work through the question more thoroughly. Work out exactly which problem you are trying to address in these random thoughts. Collect up all the relevant information you can lay your hands on and study it. Then ponder it for a while, and do something else for a bit to give your unconscious mind to process it. Think carefully through the implications and try to find the weaknesses in your own argument. Then sit down and write something considered.
I really don't have time for this random swatting at facts.
I wish to quote from witzel pertains to the relevant discussion.
quote
"Again, Pånini (c. 5th cent. B.C.) still knows of the Vrji (= Påli Vajji) as a Panjab group (4.2.131, next to the Madra), probably with a tribal organization (gana). The Mallas, too, were still living in the desert of Rajasthan at the time of (JB265) and some of them remained there even in Alexander's time; they are a rather martial group, according to both JB and Alexander's historians. Both the Malla and Vrji apparently immigrated into the east only after the end of the Vedic period, but well before the time of the Buddha (c. 400 B.C.) This must have been one of the last great infiltrations in Vedic times of western peoples into the lower Gangå area"
unquote
The development of vedic canon--michael witzel--page 311
And this is precisely why I am asking you to stop firing random facts at me and consider the subject as a whole.
The best guess at present is that the Buddha died ca. 400 BCE - though this does not agree with any of the traditional dates. And there is no objective way to determine the dates.
The dates for Pāṇini are all just guesses anyway. You might like to consult Pāṇini: A Survey of Research By George Cardona for an intricate discussion of the various factors which scholars have used to try to date any of the texts or authors from this era and their ultimate failure to agree. All we know is that Katyāyana predates Patañjali and Pāṇini predates Katyāyana. Even the dates of Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya cannot be fixed with any certainty, though the popular guess seems to be ca 150 BCE. Scholars then simply add a made up time interval between the others to arrive at dates. One century or two centuries are typical but they have absolutely no basis in evidence. It's just something Indologists do when they have no idea - it's an appalling practice really. For all we know it might be 10 years or 50. In this case we're all just guessing.
As far as relative dates are concerned there seems to be have been no interaction between Pāṇini and Buddhists, though some scholars see references to Jain ascetics. we think Jainism is older than Buddhism, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But is this because Pāṇini predates the Buddha, or because he was stuck up in Gandhāra where Buddhism did not become established until after Asoka? Had be post-dated the Buddha by a century he might still never have met or heard of a Buddhist stuck away up there. Buddhism took a good long time to become established.
The fact is that the direct evidence for a Persian/Zoroastrian influence on the Buddhist texts is slight though clear - as my article shows I think. Taken together Witzel's observations suggest there is a case to answer, though it has yet to be thoroughly tested. The evidence for a migration as the vector for that transfer of knowledge and cultural memes is even less and less clear. It makes sense, but remains speculative at best. Of course one can exploit ambiguity in speculative stories to nit pick, but you're not really making a particular case you're just nit picking certain peripheral details. So what?
If you want to make a different case regarding the migration theory then go ahead and make it. But you aren't going to get there by swatting away at facts in isolation. Put it all together - and make sure that you've done your homework - and I'll take a look at your argument. Otherwise this discussion is over.
Thursday, December 05, 2013
[Image] Scythian Horseman Lessing Photo ArchiveIN 2009 WHEN I WAS writing about the name of the Buddha I mentioned in passing that some people thought that marriage customs attributed to the Buddha's family in the Pāli Commentarial tradition pointed to the Buddha being Dravidian rather than Aryan. Someone asked for references and at the time I didn't have them to hand. So three years later I'm interested in this again...
The idea seems to go back at least to 1923 when A. M. Hocart tried to use observations from the traditional genealogies Śākyas and Koliyas to explain the relationship between the Buddha and his cousin Devadatta (Cited in Emeneau 1939: 220). The story of the origins of the Śākyas (Pāli Sakya) is found in several places, but particularly the Ambaṭṭha Sutta (DN 3). "The Śākyans regard King Okkāka as their ancestor" (Walsh 1995: 114). This story itself is explored in more detail by Silk (1973). In the version in the Sumaṅgalavilāsinī (the 5th century CE Theravāda commentary on the Dīgha Nikāya) there is some evidence that cross-cousin marriage occurred at the origin of the Śākya and Koliya clans (Emeneau 1939: 222). In addition there are extensive genealogies in the Mahāvaṃsa which show cross-cousin marriages (Trautman 1973: 158-160).
A cross cousin marriage is one in which a boy would marry his mother's brother's daughter, or a girl would marry her father's sister's son. This is one of the preferred matches in South India amongst the Dravidian speaking peoples, and also practised in Sri Lanka. However Good (1996) has been critical of the idea that cross-cousin marriage is the only or most preferred kin relationship, and shows that other marriage matches are made. Be that as it may, cross-cousin marriage is a feature of South Indian kinship, and the Brahmanical law books (the Dharmasūtras) make it clear that cousin marriage is forbidden for Aryas. (Thapar 2010: 306). The perception, then is that if the Buddha's family practised cross-cousin marriage, they cannot have been Aryas and were likely Dravidians.
Already in 1939 Emeneau saw the main flaw in the argument. The earliest sources we have for these propositions are Theravāda commentarial texts. They were written in about the 5th century CE in Sri Lanka. To a great extent they reflect the society of 5th century Sri Lanka. Indeed there is no corroborating evidence from the suttas or Vinaya that cross-cousin marriage took place at all. The obvious conclusion is that when the authors of the Mahāvaṃsa and the commentaries upon which the Sumaṅgalavilāsinī was based sat down to compose a genealogy for the Buddha they used familiar figures from the old texts, but arranged them in a way which seemed natural. In other words they unselfconsciously modelled the Buddha's family on their own. So I concur with Emeneau that the story is not plausible.
In my essay on the Buddha's name I posed the problem of the Buddha having a Brahmin gotra name. The gotra name was a paternal lineage name which in the case of Gautama stretches back to the Ṛgveda. Gotama, the ancestor of the Gautama clan, complied the 4th book of the Ṛgveda and is mentioned in several sūktas. [1] The Gautama clan continued to be prominent before, during and after the time of the Buddha, for example the name appears in lineages in the (pre-Buddhist) Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad and there is a (post-Asoka) Gautama Dharmasūtra.
Some authors have suggested that the name Gautama was adopted by the Śākyas from their purohita (hierophant, or ritual master). (Kosambi 1967: 37; Karve in Patil 1973: 42). This appears to be based on a later tradition whereby a kṣatriya king would adopt the gotra name of his purohita. The implication is that the Buddha's father Suddhodana must have employed a Brahmin purohita. This suggestion has several weaknesses. Firstly there is no mention of any Brahmins in relation to the Buddha's family in the earlier texts - later on we do find a Brahmin in the court, but he is part of a hugely elaborated hagiography in which the Buddha walks and talks immediately after being born. During the time of the Buddha the Brahmins were a presence but not a dominant presence. Secondly although Suddhodana is called a rāja and this is usually interpreted as king in later hagiographies, in the context of the Śākya tribe it was probably more akin to 'chief' or 'head man'. Thirdly the Buddha never has a good word to say about Brahmin ritualists, and often has bad words to say about them - he likens them to dogs in the Aṅguttara Nikāya. The Buddha's attitude, especially with respect to class (varṇa) or caste (jāti) is often taken as evidence that the Śākyas found the is often taken as indicating they these were novel ideas that he found peculiar. Finally the tradition itself is attested in the "post-epic period" (Karve in Patil 1973: 42), and it seems very likely that the compilation of the Epics out of the pre-existing oral traditions was at least partly a response to the success of Buddhism.
Although the Buddha is almost always represented as a kṣatriya I see no sign in the Pāli texts that he felt he lacked prestige such that taking a Brahmin name would improve it. There is also no hint of it happening further back in his line. In fact neither the Buddha's father nor any of his male relatives, is ever called Gautama in the suttas. So on the whole this idea of adopting a Brahmin gotra seems unlikely to me.
Very few other Gautamas are met with in Pāli. However both the Buddha's mother (Māyā, or Māyadevī) and his aunt (Mahāprajāpatī) are called Gotamī. The simplest explanation is that the Buddha was a Gautama on his mother's side, and that like several other male figures in the Pāli Canon—notably Śāriputra, the son (putra) of (his mother) Rūpasārī—the Buddha went by his mother's gotra name. I plan a longer essay pulling all this together with a more in-depth argument, but this is an outline and shows the kinds of sources that the ideas draw on.
One more note on the Śākyas. For many years sensible people have been telling overly enthusiastic amateurs that the Indian name for the Scythians (Śaka) is only similar to the name Śākya by coincidence. Recently I found some rough notes on an Indology forum by Harvard Professor Michael Witzel who's work I hold in very high regard. Witzel says that the similarity is not a coincidence, though we still have the solid historical fact that the Śaka did not enter Indian until 140 CE. However he also suggests that the Śākyas, like the Mallas, Licchavis, Vṛjis and other tribes that are found in Great Magadha were not originally from there but migrated only shortly before the lifetime of the Buddha. "The Malla are a Rajasthan desert tribe in Jaiminiya Brahmana, and are still known on the Middle Indus as Malloi in Alexander's time."Witzel suggests Iranian links for the Śākyas including their building of funeral mounds (aka stūpas), the names of some of their kings, marriage patterns (based on the origin story in the Ambaṭṭha Sutta [DN 3] and elsewhere, which is better attested than cross-cousin marriage), and also "Then there also is the new idea of weighing one’s guilt after death. This was first an Egyptian, then a Zoroastrian and Iranian concept. It is connected with the idea of personal responsibility for one’s action (karma). " The latter is very intriguing indeed. Some of this material, has made it into Witzel's published oeuvre, but it has yet to receive a detailed treatment. Long time readers may recall that I have noted some Persian Influences in Buddhism (20.6.08), and this seems to make the case quite a lot stronger. I would just add that a lot of crazy stuff can be found on the internet regarding the Scythians, and most of it cannot be taken seriously. We even find the suggestions that the Buddha was a Scythian or an Iranian, which are facile. Whatever their origins the Śākyas had lived in India for probably 500 years before the Buddha, and were thoroughly naturalised Indians with very little memory of their background.
~~oOo~~
Notes There is a potential confusion here. In Sanskrit the ancestor's name is Gotama (he who has the most cows). When the word becomes an adjective describing those associated with Gotama the root vowel o is stretched (vṛddhi) to become au. So Gautama means 'of or associated with Gotama. However in Pāli the vowel au is condensed back down to o, so Gautama becomes Gotama. We need to distinguish between Gotama the Ṛṣi of the Vedas (in Sanskrit), and Gotama the Buddha (in Pāli).
Bibliography Emeneau, M. B. 1939. 'Was There Cross-Cousin Marriage among the Śākyas?' Journal of the American Oriental Society. 59( 2): 220-226. Good, Anthony. 1990. 'On the Non-Existence of "Dravidian Kinship".' Edinburgh Papers In South Asian Studies. 6. Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh.Kosambi, D. D. 1967. 'The Vedic "Five Tribes".' Journal of the American Oriental Society. 87 (1): 33-39.Patil, Sharad. 1973. 'Some Aspects of Matriarchy in Ancient India: Clan Mother to Tribal Mother.' Social Scientist. 2 (4): 42-58.Silk, Jonathan A. 2008. 'Incestuous Ancestries: The Family Origins of Gautama Siddhārtha, Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 20:12, and The Status of Scripture in Buddhism.' History of Religions. 47 (4): 253-281.Thapar, Romila. 2010. Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations. 2nd Rev. ed. Orient Blackswan. Trautmann, Thomas R. 1973 'Consanguineous Marriage in Pali Literature.' Journal of the American Oriental Society. 93(2): 158-180.Walsh, Maurice. 1995. The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya. Wisdom Publications.
19 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formMany thanks, Jayarava, for this more "scholarly" essay. I really appreciate especially its first part (on the circularity in using evidence from the texts).
May I ask you whether the Brahmanical sources you mention altogether forbid cross-cousing marriage? I have a vague memory of approving the marriage of a boy with the daughter of his mother's brother, while seeing the daughter of his father's sister (or brother) as his own sister and their relation as incestuous. But I guess Silk has much more on this…
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Hi Elisa
Yes. As I understand it Brahmins could not forbid cross-cousin marriage entirely because it is standard practice in South India (and Sri Lanka). It's mentioned in some of the sources - but yes Silk is the main place. His other paper is also interesting:
Silk, Jonathan A. 2008 ‘Putative Persian perversities: Indian Buddhist condemnations of Zoroastrian close-kin marriage in context.’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 71: pp 433-464.
In this he notes that later Buddhist text criticise Persians for incest marriages!
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Interesting - but the practce of cross-cousin marriages amongst South Indians also exists amongst the Brahmins - who belong to one of the Vedas. Does this make them Aryan or Dravidian? The fact is that Indus Valley first had a civilisation that was forced south by an invasion. The invaders having no culture of their own adopted the culture prevailing there with some minor changes to make it look as if it was original. The original inhabitants of the Indus Valley became the Dravidians and the invaders were the Aryans. This Aryan invasion theory is always disputed because it has political, social and cultural implications.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Dear Mr Ramaswami
We need to be very cautious here. Dravidian is a linguistic term and refers to people who speak Dravidian languages. Arya similarly I treat only as a linguistic term - people who speak languages from the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family. People who share a language often, but not always share a culture. For example in Sri Lanka they speak an Indic (or Indo-Aryan) language, but share many South India cultural customs - such as cross cousin marriage.
In fact both Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages came from outside India. Dravidian long before, from the far west of Iran - it is relates to the Elam language. Indo-Aryan came from Iran (Īrān is cognate with ārya) perhaps via the Pamir/Hindukush areas.
Recent research by Michael Witzel - analysising loan words in the Ṛgveda at various layers - suggests that Dravidian was not the substrate language of the Panjab since load words from Dravidian do not occur in the very first layers of the ṚV. The only clear loan word at this early stage are from the Austro-Asiatic language family which includes Muṇḍa. Muṇḍa speaking peoples migrated into India millennia before from South-East Asia. Dravidian speaking peoples migrated North within India late in the 2nd millennium BCE and some small populations remain in North India.
Genetic studies have been piling up evidence in the last few years that most Indians (north and south) are more closely related to each other than any outside population. Note that despite language and culture differences Indians share most of their genes. However there is also a clear relationship with European genomes, that is closer in North Indian populations. The explanation is that a small number of mostly male Indo-Aryan speakers (which we can tell from comparing mitochondrial and Y chromosome genes) entered India from about the time that the Indus people abandoned their cities and migrated into the Panjab and Upper Ganges region, and into the North of Maharasthra and the Deccan. Those men must have assimilated quickly by taking local wives, but their language became the dominant one in North India. The process is not fully understood, though a modern comparison is the Magyars in Hungary. They also bought horses, chariots with spoked wheels, and a kind of ritual magic. Perhaps all three of these contributed to the domination of their language over others.
A second wave of immigrants, including the Kuru tribe, forced the early Indo-Aryan speakers east where they established a group non-Vedic tribal societies that gave birth to the first cities since the Indus civilisation. It was into this milieu that the Śākyas arrived, also from Iran.
I hope to have an article published on this which cites the evidence more fully.
I think the idea of an Aryan invasion is dead, at least amongst scholars, but it is equally clear that Indic languages, certain features of Indian culture, and parts of Indian genomes, are clearly from Iran, and/or the steppes of Central Asia.
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Monday, January 23, 2012
Fascinating work, Jayarava. I have taken a personal curiosity in the history of Śākyas and I've been disappointed that more has not been written about them. I had not been aware of the Ambaṭṭha Sutta (which, I'm sorry to say, strikes me as a risible document). I'm glad you are stepping into the breach, and I look forward to your upcoming writing eagerly.
Your conclusion that "the idea of an Aryan invasion is dead" seems overstated, though. What seems to have been disproven is the idea that the Aryans invaded India and then largely repopulated their conquered lands. The comparison to the Magyars is interesting: there was a Magyar invasion, was there not? I think that it was the norm through most of history, rather than the exception, for invaders to come in small numbers, set themselves up as an elite, and intermarry with the more attractive local girls. The experience of the English speaking settlers in North America was quite unusual (most of the killing was done by diseases rather than war or murder).
Monday, January 30, 2012
Hi Otto
Thanks for your comments. I think we must always approach Pāli texts with caution when thinking historically. What makes the Ambaṭṭha Sutta interesting is that incest is pretty roundly disapproved of India - including in later Buddhist texts - so we must consider how and why such a story would survive.
When I say the "Aryan Invasion" I mean a large scale military invasion, with subsequent populating of the territory. I think most scholars think in terms of an infiltration or a series of small migrations. And yes they seem to have se themselves up in charge and married local girls. You remind me that my knowledge of history outside of India is pretty limited.
I suppose what I hope is the skeleton of the story will hold together enough to make it worthy of further investigation to fill in some more of the detail. We could wish for more archaeological information...
I should also emphasise that the idea is Michael Witzel's and I have just written up some ideas that he proposed. I did let him know I was doing it, and he said "expect resistance".
Thanks again
Jayarava
Monday, January 30, 2012
Nice Article!
I however , do not understand why you ruled out the cousin marriages of sakyas. Even today , cousin marriage is ubiquitous amongst Iranians.
Also , the descriptions of Buddha as light skinned and tall add weight to this theory
However , I believe the sakyas were Iranian rather than Zoroastrian .
The scythians are mentioned in contempt as non Zoroastrian daeva (I..e.. proto Indo Iranian) worshipers in the avesta.
Tuesday, December 03, 2013
Hello xxx
I don't rule out cousin marriage, I place the Buddhist narratives of it in historical context. The stories are not canonical but first occur in the commentarial literature composed in Sri Lanka in the 5th century CE. Note that I do think the incest marriage mentioned in the Canon is probably significant precisely because no one in India or Sri Lanka would claim such a thing unless it were true (What Jan Nattier calls the Principle of Embarrassment)
The Buddha being light skinned could well be an interpolation as his story was re-written to fit better into a Brahmanical milieu.
The kinds of claims you are making would be much more interesting to me if they were connected to some authoritative, or even just published, source. As it is I can't follow up on your suggestions because I have no idea where you are getting your info from. Might just be Wikipedia in which case I wouldn't take it too seriously.
If you say something like "the scythians are mentioned... in the Avesta" you must say where and in which version of the Avesta you read this so I can check the source and incorporate it if required.
It seems to me that the Avesta is not the right time period for scythians in any case - so how could they be mentioned? "Scythian" is a Greek term (used by Herodotus many centuries after the Avesta was written) for the people who lived North of the Black Sea and not equivalent to the Śaka. So at best I'd say there is some confusion here.
Sources might help me sort out whether this is useful info that will enrich my understanding or whether this is just garbled urban legend that I can safely ignore.
Do send me your sources.
Tuesday, December 03, 2013
At the outset, I concede that my claim is little more than mere speculation .Nevertheless , I'll give it a shot.
Cousin marriage-
The themes of pali canon include not only cousin marriage but also sibling marriage(cf..Dasaratha Jataka).This custom was alien to Srilanka where these texts were compiled.
However , this was one of the most pious practices of Iranian religions -
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/marriage-next-of-kin
Cambyses II allegedly married two of his sisters (Herodutos., 3.31.1)
Amongst Iranians, notably the Achaemenids, cousin marriages were a norm
Darius, whom Xerxes I had designated as heir to the throne, was married to Artaynte, the daughter of his uncle Masistes (Herodutos., 9.108.1)
Tuesday, December 03, 2013
Thanks for getting back to me, though I have to confess the cousin marriage thing is the least interesting of your comments.
Could you cite the passage of the Jātaka? Because the Jātaka exists on at least two levels. One, in verse, which is considered canonical, and another, in prose, which is part of the commentarial layer of the Pāli literature and therefore Sri Lankan - where South Indian marriage practices such as cousin marriage were/are the norm. I suspect you are citing from the prose portions which only proves my point. As far as I recall there is nothing in the Canon that points to cousin marriage amongst the Śākyas.
Sibling and other incest marriage is a very different story - and order of magnitude more taboo than cousins. It is distinctively Iranian (though probably has Egyptian roots) and I have noted this in my JOBCS article as evidence for the Iranian origin of the Śākyas. Teh Śākya kingdom is founded on sibling marriages according to the Ambaṭṭha Sutta (D i.92) - something forbidden by Dharmaśāstras. I believe the Manusmṛti frowns on marriage between cousins - will check when I'm next at the library. We can be certain the practice was not Vedic.
From my article: "Jonathan Silk confirms that [sibling marriage] was indeed an Iranian custom: “there is good evidence for this practice called xᵛaētuuadaθa, so-called next-of-kin or close-kin marriage” (Silk 2008b: 444). The extent of this practice before the Sassanian period is unclear, and much debated by scholars of Zoroastrianism and Iranian history. By the Common Era Buddhists were condemning Iranians for this practice in their texts, e.g. in the Dharmarucy-avadāna and the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya; and similar condemnations were made by their Greek neighbours and by the Chinese at a later date (Silk 2008b: 445)."
If you have an email address I can send you a copy of my article from the JOCBS that goes into all of this in greater depth. Get in touch.
Tuesday, December 03, 2013
Hi ,
I wish to continue where I left. You were right , I must confess that the ethonym 'saka' had not existed during the avestan era.
The ethnogenesis of saka is attributed to the complete abandonment of agriculture by Andranovan tribes and their migration towards the south.
The central asian(and East iranian)tribes mentioned in the avesta such as Turanians(Sistanis) , sairimas(Sarmatians?), and dahyus can be treated as the ancestors of sakas
These tribes were referred to in contempt as daeva worshipers
According to a later persian legend , Zarathustra was killed by a turanian(Dk 5.3.2; ZWY 2.3)
We know that sogdians preserved many of pre zoroastrian Iranian traits such as worship of ssandramata (Mother Earth)
Sogdians had also retained the pre zoroastrian calendar
Sogdian marriage contract included mihira and baga. Baga was a pre zoroastrian Iranian god , who find no mention in the Avesta
[see W. B. Henning, “A Sogdian God,” BSOAS 28, 1965, pp. 242-54]
"The religious beliefs of the Scythians was a type of Pre-Zoroastrian Iranian religion and differed from the post-Zoroastrian Iranian thoughts"
[J Harmatta scythians page 182]
The aforementioned reasons impel me to bethink of sakyas as a 'pre zoroastrian' Iranian people , especially at such early date.
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
Yes. Well at least we have sources this time. But we are not talking about the pre-Zoroastrian period. We are talking about the post-Zoroastrian period.
The Sogdians are not relevant here. They are a distinct Indo-Iranian group. And again the term Scythian is not a synonym of Śaka - they were the Iranian people living North of the Black sea in Herodotus's time.
Is there any suggestion that the Śakas were hemogeneous? Especially the Śakas and other Iranian tribes who migrated into India in the post-Zoroastrian period leaving the bulk of their people behind? Is there anything in your sources on these breakaway groups and why they broke away?
Really you need to read my article before replying. You are confused about the people and the time period we are talking about.
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
And xxx? Never, ever quote Wikipedia and pretend that you've read the source on my blog again.
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
Sorry- My previous post did sound ambiguous. I will try to clear the air
Certainly , I was talking about the post zoroastrian period.
By pre zoroastrian , I was referring to saka and other east Iranian tribes in the post zoroastrian period who did not accept the zoroastrian religion and retained their ancestral Proto Indo Iranian beliefs.
I dont quite understand why you consider sogdians a distinct.
branch
Sogdian language , as well as saka language and avestan , belongs to the east Iranian language group.
In modern khotanese language , 'dahyu'(Meaning man) is a self appellation
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
Certainly , I was talking about zoroastrian period
By pre zoroastrian , I was referring to the central asian and east Iranian tribes who did not accept zoroastrian cult and retained their ancestral pre zoroastrian proto Indo Iranian beliefs.
I dont know why you consider sogdians a distinct tribe . Sogdian is an east Iranian language , bracketed with avstan and saka languages.
In modern khotanese 'dahyu'(Meaning man) is a self appellation .
When I use scythian , I ever mean saka( tigraxauda and haumavarga) and not paradarya
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
However , there could be some ambiguity in the proposed date of migration . The Vrjis and mallas were still known to Panini(CIRCA 600 BCE) as residing in the neighbourhood of Madra(Punjab) . So the final eastern migration of Malla , vrji et altera shought be sought only after the aforesaid timeframe
Thursday, December 05, 2013
Well let's just explore the logic here.
You say that since Pāṇini knows of Vṛjjis living in Panjab, implying that no Vṛjjis can have migrated before then. But we find many Vṛjjis living in the Central Ganges Plane in early Buddhist texts. So, according to your reasoning the Buddhist texts can only have been composed after Pāṇini. In this you might find a kindred spirit in Johannes Bronkhorst who imagines that Buddhism preceded the composition of the early Upaniṣads and thus envisages an entirely different timeline that might accommodate your new theory.
What you seem to do however is assume that all people with the same name are homogeneous and this is really not true. For example we know some of the Mallas still live in Panjab today and thus by your logic the "final" eastward migration must yet to have taken place and the early Buddhist texts have yet to be composed in India. So the logic breaks down.
Also I study Sanskrit with Pāṇinian scholars and no one puts Pāṇini at 600 BCE. His dates are usually estimated to be sometime in the 4th century - a century of so after the Buddha but before Asoka. Since Pāṇini lived in Gandhāra, what he knew about the area of Śravasti/Rājagṛha must have been second hand at best.
I think you need to slow down and work through the question more thoroughly. Work out exactly which problem you are trying to address in these random thoughts. Collect up all the relevant information you can lay your hands on and study it. Then ponder it for a while, and do something else for a bit to give your unconscious mind to process it. Think carefully through the implications and try to find the weaknesses in your own argument. Then sit down and write something considered.
I really don't have time for this random swatting at facts.
Thursday, December 05, 2013
I wish to quote from witzel pertains to the relevant discussion.
quote
"Again, Pånini (c. 5th cent. B.C.) still knows of the Vrji (= Påli Vajji)
as a Panjab group (4.2.131, next to the Madra), probably with a tribal
organization (gana). The Mallas, too, were still living in the desert of
Rajasthan at the time of (JB265) and some of them remained there even in
Alexander's time; they are a rather martial group, according to both JB and Alexander's historians.
Both the Malla and Vrji apparently immigrated
into the east only after the end of the Vedic period, but well before the time
of the Buddha (c. 400 B.C.) This must have been one of the last great
infiltrations in Vedic times of western peoples into the lower Gangå area"
unquote
The development of vedic canon--michael witzel--page 311
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/canon.pdf
So witzel's dates are-
500 BCE --Panini
400 BCE --Buddha
Thursday, December 05, 2013
And this is precisely why I am asking you to stop firing random facts at me and consider the subject as a whole.
The best guess at present is that the Buddha died ca. 400 BCE - though this does not agree with any of the traditional dates. And there is no objective way to determine the dates.
The dates for Pāṇini are all just guesses anyway. You might like to consult Pāṇini: A Survey of Research By George Cardona for an intricate discussion of the various factors which scholars have used to try to date any of the texts or authors from this era and their ultimate failure to agree. All we know is that Katyāyana predates Patañjali and Pāṇini predates Katyāyana. Even the dates of Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya cannot be fixed with any certainty, though the popular guess seems to be ca 150 BCE. Scholars then simply add a made up time interval between the others to arrive at dates. One century or two centuries are typical but they have absolutely no basis in evidence. It's just something Indologists do when they have no idea - it's an appalling practice really. For all we know it might be 10 years or 50. In this case we're all just guessing.
As far as relative dates are concerned there seems to be have been no interaction between Pāṇini and Buddhists, though some scholars see references to Jain ascetics. we think Jainism is older than Buddhism, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But is this because Pāṇini predates the Buddha, or because he was stuck up in Gandhāra where Buddhism did not become established until after Asoka? Had be post-dated the Buddha by a century he might still never have met or heard of a Buddhist stuck away up there. Buddhism took a good long time to become established.
The fact is that the direct evidence for a Persian/Zoroastrian influence on the Buddhist texts is slight though clear - as my article shows I think. Taken together Witzel's observations suggest there is a case to answer, though it has yet to be thoroughly tested. The evidence for a migration as the vector for that transfer of knowledge and cultural memes is even less and less clear. It makes sense, but remains speculative at best. Of course one can exploit ambiguity in speculative stories to nit pick, but you're not really making a particular case you're just nit picking certain peripheral details. So what?
If you want to make a different case regarding the migration theory then go ahead and make it. But you aren't going to get there by swatting away at facts in isolation. Put it all together - and make sure that you've done your homework - and I'll take a look at your argument. Otherwise this discussion is over.
Thursday, December 05, 2013