The Shape of Ancient
Thought: Comparative
Studies in Greek and Indian
Philosophies
Thomas McEvilley
© 2002 Thomas McEvilley
All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan-American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of
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05 04 03 02 5 4 3 2 1
Copublished with the School of Visual Arts
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
McEvilley,Thomas, 1939—
The shape of ancient thought: comparative studies in Greek and Indian philosophies/Thomas McEvilley.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1—58115—203—5
1. Philosophy, Ancient. 2. Philosophy, Indic. 3. Philosophy, Comparative. I. Title.
B165 .M22 2001
180——dc21
2001005510
Printed in Canada
Table of Contents
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREFACE
A NOTE ON CITATIONS, TRANSLATIONS, AND TRANSLITERATIONS
A NOTE ON SANSKRIT PRONUNCIATION
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE IN-TEXT REFERENCES AND
ENDNOTES
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LIST OF MAPS
Foreword HlSTORY: COMPETITION OR COLLABORATION?
Chapter One DIFFUSION CHANNELS IN THE PRE-ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD
Chapter Two THE PROBLEM OF THE ONE AND THE MANY
Chapter Three THE COSMIC CYCLE
Chapter Four THE DOCTRINE OF REINCARNATION
Chapter Five PLATONIC MONISM AND INDIAN THOUGHT
Chapter Six PLATONIC ETHICS AND INDIAN YOGA
Chapter Seven PLATO, ORPHICS, AND JAINS
Chapter Eight PLATO AND KUN.D.ALINIı-
Chapter Nine CYNICS AND PA-ŚUPATAS
Chapter Ten FIVE QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST
Chapter Eleven THE ELEMENTS
Chapter Twelve EARLY PLURALISMS IN GREECE AND INDIA
Chapter Thirteen SKEPTICISM, EMPIRICISM, AND NATURALISM
Chapter Fourteen DIFFUSION CHANNELS IN THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS
Chapter Fifteen DIALECTIC BEFORE ALEXANDER
Chapter Sixteen EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND MA-DHYAMIKA
Chapter Seventeen PYRRHONISM AND MA-DHYAMIKA
Chapter Eighteen THE PATH OF THE DIALECTIC
Chapter Nineteen THE SYLLOGISM
Chapter Twenty PERIPATETICS AND VAIŚES.IKAS
Chapter Twenty-One THE STOICS AND INDIAN THOUGHT
Chapter Twenty-Two NEOPLATONISM AND THE UPANIS.ADIC-VEDA-NTIC TRADITION
Chapter TwentyPLOTINUS AND VIJN-A-NAVA-DA BUDDHISM
Three
Chapter Twenty-Four NEOPLATONISM AND TANTRA
Chapter Twenty-Five THE ETHICS OF IMPERTURBABILITY
Afterword REMARKS TOWARD A CONCLUSION
Appendix A THE ARYANS
Appendix B THE ARYAN INVASION
Appendix C BLACK ATHENAAND WESTERN XENOPHOBIA
Appendix D THE GOLDEN THIGH
Appendix E PHILOSOPHY AND GRAMMAR
LIST OF WORKS CITED
INDEX
Editor’s Introduction
by Bill Beckley
Lyotard remarked that post-Modern artists often function as philosophers. They may deal with issues
of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as many influential critics today approach art through
philosophy.
No critic has unfolded the philosophical aspect of contemporary art like Thomas McEvilley. His
fluency, as Classicist and as Indologist, both in ancient and in modern thought, has shone a light on
visual objects that we have contemplated for over twenty years. When I first learned that McEvilley’s
art criticism was adjunct to his studies in ancient philosophy, I was surprised and intrigued. Then
when I saw his five-volume manuscript, The Shape of Ancient Thought, stacked in the middle of his
apartment like a sculpture—this work that he began in the early seventies, his magnum opus, tracing
currents of ancient philosophy that are of interest to me as an artist, now—it seemed quite natural,
even an honor, to include it here within this series, Aesthetics Today. For the bottom line of this book
is the beauty of ideas, or what McEvilley has called “the aesthetics of thought.” That was reason
enough.
But more recently, events have leant an unexpected urgency to the project by focusing the world’s
attention on Afghanistan (ancient Bactria), where much of the story unfolds in this volume, and where
the difficult karma of cross-cultural contacts is still alive.
I first conceived this series as a way of opening aesthetics to a variety of discourses, including the
then neglected creatures of beauty and the contemporary sublime. In doing so, I knew it was
impossible to have protected language, an ivory tower of anything—whether it be aesthetics or
philosophy. We have seen what happens to ivory towers when the world gets in the way. It is precisely
this world, with its ancient and ongoing collision of eastern and western ideologies that confronts us
today. I thought The Shape of Ancient Thought would be relevant in this series. I could not have
imagined then, how relevant it soon would become.
Many thanks to David Rhodes, president of the School of Visual Arts, and to Tad Crawford, publisher
of Allworth Press, for their foresight in supporting this project.
-Bill Beckley, Series Editor
November 12, 2001
New York City
Acknowledgments
Several people need to be acknowledged for the generous help they gave to the author.
Through much of the 1970s, when no part of this work had yet been published and virtually no one
knew of it, Edward Conze graciously read the first drafts of several chapters and offered caustic,
insightful, learned comments. Late in the 1970s Frederick Streng kindly read selections, which he
greeted with eager enthusiasm.
For several years in the 1980s, Dominique DeMenil contributed toward my sustenance in order to
free some time from teaching for this work; her belief in the project was unwavering, in part because
she saw it as contributing to the cause of ecumenism that lay behind the Rothko Chapel and others of
her projects.
My warm thanks go also to Katherine Harper and Christopher Chapple, of Loyola Marymount
University, both of whom have read an earlier version of this manuscript in its entirety and made
useful and insightful comments on it. Juan Echeverri’s work with the manuscript at an earlier stage
was valuable and much appreciated. Bill Beckley, the editor of this series, has been unfailingly
sympathetic and supportive. Tad Crawford and his staff at Allworth Press have given generously of
their time and have seemed to care intensely about the text, which made working with them an
altogether positive experience.
Very special thanks must go, posthumously, both to Eric Orr, who said he would read this book if
he lived long enough to see it finished (he didn’t), and to James Lee Byars, who for several years
cherished a copy of the manuscript of this book, which he carried about with him in two large
shopping bags.
Preface
Chapters 1 through 25-the substance of the book-were written between 1970 and 2000; they deal with
the subject matter indicated by the title-Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies. The
foreword and afterword were added more recently, as an afterthought; they treat various issues
surrounding the subject matter in the contemporary postcolonial world. Depending on what he or she
wants from this book, the reader may wish to skip them altogether or to treat them as appendixes and
read them at the end, as the afterthought they are.
My title derives in part from B. N. Seal’s pioneering Comparative Studies in Vaishnavism and
Christianity (Calcutta, 1899), which seems to be the first book about philosophy to bear the word
“comparative” in its title, and the work which declared the basic principle: “Historical comparison
implies that the objects compared are of co-ordinate rank.”
A Note on Citations, Translations, and Transliterations
All references to the pre-Socratics follow the numeration of H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente
der Vorsokratiker. The A fragments are testimonia from other authors; the B fragments are actual
quotations from the pre-Socratics. In this book “fr. Ai” means an A fragment, while “fr. i” is a B
fragment; if the identity of the author is not obvious from the context, the Diels-Kranz chapter number
will be included also—say, DK iAi or DK iBi.
In general I have kept to one source for the reference numbers of a philosopher or group of
philosophers, like Diels-Kranz for the pre-Socratics. Similarly I refer to the Upanisads in the
numeration of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s translation, The Principal Upanisads, and so on, as noted
here and there in the text.
Though all Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and Pali texts have been consulted in their own languages, they
are quoted in existing scholarly translations. This way, it is felt, there can be no sense that the
translations have been made to serve an agenda. Thus, unless otherwise noted, the pre-Socratics are
translated either as by G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield (The Presocratic Philosophers), or as
by Kathleen Freeman (Ancilla to the Presocratics); the Upanisads as by Radhakrishnan (The Principal
Upanisads—with occasional changes to eliminate Elizabethan forms), the R.g Veda as by Ralph T. H.
Griffiths (The Hymns of the R.g-Veda), Plotinus as by Stephen MacKenna (Plotinus, The Enneads),
and so on. In some cases, such as Plato and Aristotle, a variety of translations have been used, as
noted.
Common Greek names will be transliterated into the forms familiar to the general reading public:
not Herakleitos but Heraclitus. Sanskrit and Pali are transliterated into the Latin alphabet with
diacritical marks.
A Note on Sanskrit Pronunciation
Vowels should be pronounced as in Italian; c like ch in “church,” s. or s´ like sh in “ship,” ñ like ny (as
in Spanish sen- or), r. like ri in “river.”
List of Abbreviations Used in the In-Text References
and Endnotes
Ad Marc. Porphyry, Ad Marcellam (To Marcella)
Adv. Col. Plutarch, Adversus Colotem (Against Colotes)
Adv.
Epiphanius, Adversus Haereticos (Against the Heretics)
Haer.
AL
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians
Alex.
Alexander of Aphrodisias
Aph.
AM
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors
AN
Anguttara Nika- ya
Anab.
Xenophon, Anabasis
An. Post. Aristotle, Analytica Posteriora (Posterior Analytics)
An. Pr. Aristotle, Analytica Priora (Prior Analytics)
AP
Anthologia Palatina (Palatine Anthology)
Ap.
Apud (found in or quoted by)
APh
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Physicists
Apol.
Plato, Apologia
Ap. Rh. Apollonius Rhodius
AS
A-ka-ra-n.ga Su-tra
Ath.
Athenaeus
Aitareya Upanis.ad
AU
AV
Atharva Veda
BCA
Bodhicarya-vata-ra (The Way of the Bodhisattva)
Br.hada-ran.yaka Upanis.ad
BU
Cat.
Aristotle, Categoriae (Categories)
Choeph. Aeschylus, Choephorai (Libation Bearers)
Cha-ndogya Upanis.ad
CU
Charm. Plato, Charmides
CQ
Classical Quarterly
Crat.
Plato, Cratylus
Aryadeva, Catuh.-s´ataka
CS
Curt.
D
De Abst.
De An.
De Div.
De Fin.
De Gen.
Animal.
De Gen.
et Corr.
De
Interp.
Deip.
De Is. et
Osir.
De
Morb.
Sacr.
De Motu
Animal.
De Nat.
Anim.
De Nat.
Deor.
De
Partis
Animal.
De Prim.
Frig.
De Resp.
De Stoic
Repugn.
Diod.
Disc.
DK
D.L.
EE
EN
Ench.
Enn.
Quintus Curtius Rufus, Historia Alexandri Magni (History of Alexander)
Digha Nika- ya
Porphyry, De Abstinentia (On Abstinence)
Aristotle, De Anima (On the Soul)
Cicero, De Divinatione (On Divination)
Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (About the Ends of Goods and Evils)
Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium (On the Generation of Animals)
Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione (On Generation and Corruption)
Aristotle, De Interpretatione (On Interpretation)
Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae (Doctors at Dinner)
Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride (On Isis and Osiris)
Hippocrates, De Morbo Sacro (On the Sacred Disease)
Aristotle, De Motu Animalium (On the Motion of Animals)
Aelian, De Natura Animalium (On the Nature of Animals)
Cicero, De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods)
Aristotle, De Partis Animalium (On the Parts of Animals)
Plutarch, De Primo Frigido (On the Principle of Cold)
Aristotle, De Respiratione (On Respiration)
Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis (On the Contradictions of the Stoics)
Diodorus Siculus
Arrian, Discourses of Epictetus
Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Rev. by W. Kranz
Diogenes Laertius, De Clarorum Philosophorum Vitis, Dogmatibus et
Apophthegmatibus Libri Decem (The Lives and Teachings of the Famous
Philosophers in Ten Books)
Aristotle, Ethica Eudemia (Eudemian Ethics)
Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea (Nicomachean Ethics)
Epictetus, Enchiridion (Handbook)
Plotinus, Enneads (Discourses in Groups of Nine)
Ep.
Epistula (Letter)
Ep. Ind. Epigraphia Indica
Ep. Men. Epicurus, Epistula ad Menoeceum (Letter to Menoeceus)
Epist.
Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales (Moral Letters to Lucilius)
Mor.
Erga
Hesiod, Erga (Works and Days)
Flor.
Stobaeus, Florilegium
FrGrHist F. Jacoby, ed., Die Fragmenta der Griechischen Historiker
Geog.
Ptolemy, Geographia
Hdt.
Herodotus
Hec.
Euripides, Hecabe
Hell.
Xenophon, Hellenica
IHQ
Indian Historical Quarterly
In An.
Alexander of Aphrodisias, Commentary on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics
Pr.
Iambl. Iamblichus
In Phys. Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics
JHS
Journal of Hellenic Studies
JIES
Journal of Indo-European Studies
JNES
Journal of Near Eastern Studies
JRAS
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
Kat.ha Upanis.ad
Katha
Kaus. Br. Kaus.ı- taki Bra- hman.a
KD
Epicurus, Kuriai Doxai (Leading Doctrines)
Kena Upanis.ad
Kena
Kaus.ı- taki Upanis.ad
KU
L.P
Edgar Lobel and Denys Page, eds., Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragment
Lanka. Lan.ka- vata- ra Su- tra
Lucr.
Lucretius
M
Majjhima Nika- ya
Maitrı- Maitrı- Upanis.ad
Ma- . U. Ma- n.d.u- ikya Upanis.ad
Med.
Descartes, Philosophical Meditations
Mem.
Xenophon, Memorabilia
Met.
Aristotle, Metaphysica (Metaphysics)
Meteor. Aristotle, Meteorologia (Meteorology)
Ma- havam.sa (The Great Chronicle of Ceylon)
Mhv.
MK
Na- ga- rjuna, Ma- dhyamika Ka- rika- s (Treatise on the Middle Way)
Candrakı- rtı- , Ma- dhyamakavrtti (Commentary on the Ma- dhyamikaka- rika- s of
MKV
Mln.
Na- ga- rjuna)
Milindapan- ha (The Questions of King Milinda)
Mor.
Plutarch, Moralia (Moral Essays)
Manu-smr.ti or Manavadharmas´astra (The Sacred Laws According to Manu)
MS
Mun.d.aka Upanis.ad
MU
NA
Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights)
NH
Pliny, Natural History
NS
Nya- ya Su- tras
OF
O. Kern, ed., Orphicorum Fragmenta (Orphic Fragments)
O.
Pindar, Olympic Odes
OP
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonsim
Or.
Oratio
Ox. Pap. B.P Grenfell, A.S. Hunt, and others, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri
Panar. Panarion
Paus.
Pausanias
Pericl. Plutarch, Life of Pericles
Perist. Prudentius, Peristephanon
Pers.
Ctesias, Persica
PEW
Philosophy East and West
Phaedr. Plato, Phaedrus
Phil.
Plato, Philebus
Phys.
Aristotle, Physica (Physics)
Plu.
Plutarch
PMG
Denys Page, ed., Poetae Melici Graeci.
Pol.
Aristotle, Politica (Politics)
Porph. Porphyry
Pras´na Pras´na Upanisad
.
Up.
Prep. Ev. Eusebius, Preparatio Evangelica (Evangelical Preparation)
Prooem. Prooemium (Introduction)
Prot.
Plato, Protagoras
PS
Pa- s´upata Su- tra
Ps.-Plato Pseudo-Plato
A. Pauly, G. Wissowa, and W. Kroll, eds., Real-Encyclopa- die der klassischen
RE
Altertumswissenschaf
Ref.
Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium (Refutation of All Heresies)
Rep.
Plato, The Republic
Rhet.
Aristotle, Rhetorica (Rhetoric)
R.g Veda
RV
S
Samyutta Nika- ya
S´atapatha Bra- hman.a
SB
Sent.
Epicurus, Sententiae Vaticanae (Epicurean Aphorisms from a Vatican
Vat.
Manuscript)
SVF
H. Von Arnim, ed., Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta.
Skt.
Sanskrit
SN
Sutta Nipa- ta
Sol.
Plutarch, Life of Solon
Soph.
Plato, Sophisticus (Sophist)
Stromat. Pseudo-Plutarch (ap. Eusebius), Stromateis (Miscellany)
S´veta- s´vatara Upanis.ad
SU
Symp.
Plato, Symposium
Taitt. Br. Taittirı- ya Bra- hman.a
Theat. Plato, Theatetus
Them.
Life of Themistocles (by either Plutarch or Cornelius Nepos)
Theog. Hesiod, Theogony
Tim.
Plato, Timaeus
TGF
A. Nauck, ed., Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta
Taittir- ya Upanis.ad
TU
Tusc.
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations
Us.
H. Usener, ed., Epicurea
VA
Philostratus, Vita Apollonii (Life of Apollonius of Tyana)
VH
Aelian, Varia Historica (Historical Miscellany)
Vit. Pyth. Vita Pythagorae (Life of Pythagoras)
Vis.n.u Pura- n.a
VP
Vais´es.ika Su- tras
VS
VV
Na- ga- rjuna, Vigraha Vya- vartanı- (Averting the Arguments)
YS
Patañjali, Yoga Su- tras
List of Illustrations
Figure 1: Line drawing of Sumerian stone vase (the “Gudea Vase”), c. 2050 B. C., showing two
serpents entwined around central axis in caduceus form, their bodies touching at seven points.
Figure 2: Tantric portrayal of central nervous system, mid-twentieth century A. D., showing two
channels that carry the serpent power entwined around central axis within the yogi’s body in caduceus
form, the channels touching at seven points.
Figure 3: “Snake-stones,” fertility icons from South India, early twentieth century A. D., each
showing two serpents entwined in caduceus form.
Figure 4: Babylonian seal impression, c. 2000 B.C., showing upright figure surrounded by caduceus of
entwined serpents, their heads rising above his shoulders.
Figure 5: Neo-Sumerian stele fragment showing male figure with serpents’ heads rising from his
shoulders, their bodies evidently entwined inside him.
Figure 6: Sumerian seal impression, third millennium B.C., showing “Gilgamesh” figure holding two
lions in symmetrically flanking “dompteur” position.
Figure 7: Sumerian seal impression, Uruk period, fourth to third millennium B.C., showing central
mountain-and-tree symmetrically flanked by goats with their forehooves raised and placed upon it.
Figure 8: Indus Valley seal impression, Mohenjo Daro, third to second millennium B.C., showing
central mountain-and-tree symmetrically flanked by goats with their forehooves raised and placed
upon it.
Figure 9: Indus Valley seal impression, Mohenjo Daro, third to second millennium B.C., showing
“Gilgamesh” figure holding two lions in symmetrically flanking “dompteur” position.
Figure 10: Achaemenian seal, c. sixth century B.C., showing “Gilgamesh” figure holding two winged
lions or griffins in symmetrically flanking “dompteur” position.
Figure 11: Indus Valley seal impression, Mohenjo Daro, third to second millennium B.C., showing
“Gilgamesh” figure holding two lions in symmetrically flanking “dompteur” position.
Figure 12: Sumerian seal impression, third millennium B.C., showing goddess in tree with god bull
below, detail.
Figure 13: Indus Valley seal impression, Mohenjo Daro, third to second millennium B.C., showing
goddess in tree with bull-god and seven sprout-headed figures below.
Figure 14: Akkadian seal impression, third millennium B.C., showing seated tree-goddess with sproutheaded youngster on her lap.
Figure 15: Sumerian seal impression, Uruk period, fourth to third millennium B.C., showing bull
associated with vegetation being attacked by lion from behind.
Figure 16: Painted pottery fragment, Mohenjo Daro, third to second millennium B.C., showing bull
associated with vegetation being attacked by lion or other feline from behind.
Figure 17: Indus Valley objects, Kunal, third to second millennium B.C., eight-petalled rosette on
upper left.
Figure 18: Offering stand from Ur, detail.
Figure 19: Sumerian ivory figurine, third millennium B.C., showing bull-man.
Figure 20: Indus Valley plaques, third to second millennium B.C., showing bull-man.
Figure 21: Proto-Elamite seal impression, third millennium B.C., showing three-headed bull and threeheaded bull-man.
Figure 22: Indus Valley seal impressions, Mohenjo Daro, third to second millennium B.C., showing
three-headed bulls or bull-like creatures.
Figure 23: Syrian seal impression, c. 1700 B.C., showing four entwined male human figures suggesting
swastika form.
Figure 24: Indus Valley seal impressions, Mohenjo Daro, third to second millennium B.C., showing
four entwined lions suggesting swastika form.
Figure 25: Babylonian seal impression, c. 2000 B.C., showing deity and ritualists heraldically flanked
by upright caducei.
Figure 26: Indus Valley seal impressions, Mohenjo Daro, third to second millennium B.C., showing
figure in mulabandhasana symmetrically flanked by upright serpents.
Figure 27: Gandha-ran sculpture, Hadda, Pakistan, c. second century A.D., head of “Antinous” figure.
Figure 28: Gandha-ran sculpture, Peshawar, Pakistan, c. second century A.D., head of ascetic.
Figure 29: Head of Gandha-ran Buddha with hairstyle of Apollo Belvedere, Peshawar, Pakistan, c.
second century A.D.
Figure 30: Kushan coin, c. second century A.D., spelling out name Buddha (Boddo) in Greek
characters.
Figure 31: Corinthian capital from Gandha-ra, c. second century A.D., showing Buddha meditating
among the acanthus leaves (cf. dustjacket).
List of Maps
Map 1: The Persian Empire
Map 2: The Bronze Age
Map 3: The Alexandrian and Mauryan Periods
Map 4:The Roman Period
Foreword
History: Competition or Collaboration?
When I was a student at the University of Cincinnati (after the digs at Troy and
Pylos were over but while seminars on Linear B were still heavily attended), the British scholar W. K.
C. Guthrie, who was at the time writing his ambitious History of Greek Philosophy, 1 spoke at the
school. Among other comments, he facetiously mentioned the cliché that everyone is born either a
Platonist or an Aristotelian. He implied something like William James’s distinction between tenderminded and tough-minded, or, in European philosophical terms, idealist and empiricist. He declared
himself to be an Aristotelian.
Later I was introduced to him as a student who had recently read both Guthrie’s own book on
Orphism and also Ivan Linforth’s highly critical treatment of the subject. 2He remarked cordially that I
must have heard the seductive chords of Orpheus’s lyre.
Not long after, I did seem to hear the chords of Orpheus’s lyre—but from an unexpected direction:
namely, from what at that time was called “the Orient.” In reading E. R. Dodds’s Greeks and the
Irrational,3 I encountered what seemed to be a parallel to Guthrie’s dichotomy in Dodds’s distinction
between rational Greeks and irrational Orientals. Conflation of the two distinctions suggests that the
Greeks (like both Guthrie and his fellow British scholar) were Aristotelians; the “Orientals” were
Platonists.
The point in overlaying Guthrie’s dichotomy on Dodds’s is not to question Plato’s Greek
credentials. The aporetic quality of his early dialogues and the attempt at logical rigor in his late ones
render these tough- rather than tender-minded texts. Considering only the beginning and end of his
writings, then, one might say that, in terms of Guthrie’s dichotomy, Plato himself was born an
Aristotelian. But surely that couldn’t be right. Rather, what is implied in the application of Guthrie’s
dichotomy to Dodds’s, and indeed what is assumed in saying that Plato represents tender-mindedness,
is not about either the early or the late dialogues at all. What is at issue is the fact that in Plato’s
middle dialogues elements which might be called tender-minded appear with startling frequency and
prominence. These are the ideas that are loosely gathered in the category of Orphic: reincarnationism
based on ethical accounting, the soul’s recollection of the universals, the ambition of having the soul
escape the body and its round of incarnations, asceticism as a means toward this end, and so on. These
are ideas that, although they are among the most prominent elements in Greek thought, have struck
Dodds and many others as somehow essentially non-Greek—as “a drop of alien blood in Greek veins,”
as Erwin Rohde put it.4 So the identification of (supposedly non-Greek) irrationalism with Plato in
contrast to Aristotle’s (Greek) rationalism is based on the belief that Plato, in his middle years,
succumbed to the temptation of “Oriental” ideas—something which Aristotle never did.
At the time Dodds was writing, one prominent thesis about the origin of Orphism was that it came
into Greece from Asia Minor. 5 Dodds preferred to derive it from Thrace and to trace a larger “line of
spiritual descent,” of which Orphism was a part, “which starts in Scythia, crosses the Hellespont into
Asian Greece … emigrates to the Far West with Pythagoras, and has its last outstanding representative
in the Sicilian Empedocles.”6 Dodds was not dogmatically dualistic about differences between the
Greek and the “barbarian” psyches, but still it was implied in his classic study that one could identify
things Greek by their rationality, things non-Greek by their primitive-esque (shamanic, as Dodds
would have it) appeals to the irrational. It soon became an unquestioned consensus that Orphism was
“so very foreign to the Greek mentality.”7
AND INDIA?
It was easy enough to distance thought-elements which seemed antirational by relegating their origin
to Asia Minor—as Dodds did with Orphism. How much more irrational must be things that lie still
farther east! This is the general attitude that lies in the background of Guthrie’s dismissal of Indian
philosophy in his History:
The motives and methods of the Indian schools, and the theological and mystical background
of their thought, are so utterly different from those of the Greeks that there is little profit in the
comparison.8
After spending thirty years investigating this statement, I have concluded that it is deeply and
glaringly false. (The glaring part of its falseness is that it was proclaimed by a scholar who had
already written sympathetically about Orphism!) In the following twenty-five chapters I will take the
readers through the relevant evidence on this question, and will lead them through the byways of the
argumentation. Now, before embarking on that sea of evidence, I want to investigate some of the
historical and ideological resonances of Guthrie’s dismissal—why it seems so overstated, and why it
is so brusque.
A PHILOLOGICAL EXPLOSION
The Christian millennium, as Enlightenment philosophes called it, gave ground to a resurgence of the
Greco-Roman impulse in the period from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment. Many turned
outside of Western civilization in search of an Other which could be used to unseat and overturn it. It
was in this spirit that Voltaire, in the eighteenth century, declared India, about which he knew little, to
be the birthplace not only of religion but of civilization itself.9 “Religion in general,” he claimed, “is
derived, and has degenerated from, the pure natural revelation of which the Indians were the first
possessors.”10
The time was the so-called Oriental Renaissance, when it seemed briefly that India might replace
Greece as the putative source of civilization. Though Voltaire promoted the idea, others were offended
by it. Diderot, for example (following Pierre Bayle), dismissed India as a place of “incredible
extravagances,” not to be taken seriously.11
Western authors of this period, when colonialism was not yet in full swing, had little information
about distant cultures and were essentially expressing attitudes toward Western civilization through
assertions about unknown Asia. Denigration of India went along with chauvinistic support for Western
civilization; extravagant praise of India, with disgust for some aspect of the West, usually what was
conceived to be its overemphasis on rationalism. Already the situation was in place which Edward
Said two centuries later would call “Orientalism”—the West’s use of Asia as a projected Other against
which to define itself.12
As colonialism grew, so did knowledge of the non-Western world. The situation reached explosive
volatility in 1786, two years after the founding of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (later the Royal
Asiatic Society). The bombshell was Sir William Jones’s historic assertion to a meeting of the Society
“that no philologer could examine them all three [the Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit languages] without
believing them to have sprung from some common source.”13
Partly as a result of this insight, in the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries Europe
experienced an intoxication with the discipline of philology—which, if not actually new (since it had
been practiced in Greco-Roman antiquity), was newly rediscovered. Comparative philology especially
was received as a major new science, impressively confirmed by early discoveries such as language
families and Grimm’s Law.
The realization that Sanskrit was cognate with most European languages both ancient and modern,
arising as it did in the midst of the historic moment of white-on-nonwhite colonialism, aroused
troubling questions. What might seem a purely linguistic matter was interpreted as involving issues of
race, which in turn involved power and domination. In western Europe, the enormous wealth-source of
colonialism was justified by a racial argument that went back to Aristotle’s assertion in the
Nicomachean Ethics that some human communities are naturally meant to dominate others. Aristotle
did not state this in terms of skin color but, for whatever reasons, that became the principle defining
property of civilized humanity in the discourse of the Enlightenment.
As David Hume put it in the mid-eighteenth century, “I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be
naturally inferior to the Whites.”14 The opinion proved durable. About fifty years after Hume’s
observation, the French naturalist Georges Leopold Cuvier wrote, “The Caucasian race has given rise
to the most civilized nations, to those which have generally held the rest in subjection.”15 By
Caucasian he seems to mean both Indo-European-speaking and white-skinned—the two traits are
identified. A century later the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper agreed; speaking in a common
Hegelian vein, he said: “It is European techniques, European examples, European ideas which have
shaken the non-European world out of its past—out of barbarism . . .”16
The racial justification for imperialism had to deal with the question of language—specifically,
the problem of the Indo-European categorization of Sanskrit, and with it of many other Indian
languages including Hindi, the legal language of the post-colonial Indian state. In the nineteenth
century and well into the twentieth, language was regarded as connected with race—as virtually a
racial characteristic. And if the language of classical Indian literature is of the same family as the
literatures of the white-skinned colonizers, then an ambiguity has entered into the equation: Does the
racial justification for colonialism apply to India, or doesn’t it?
Two very different solutions to the problem arose. According to the linkage of language and race,
if Sanskrit was an Indo-European language, its original speakers— the “Aryans” as they had come to
be called—must have been more or less white people. To Romantic Orientalists such as Friedrich
Schlegel and Arthur Schopenhauer this meant that the leading cultures of East and West were
brothers, and the historic meaning of that fact included the idea that Indo-Europeans had dominated
the development of civilization both East and West. But to another group the inference that the IndoAryans were more or less white people had a different and more ominous implication: It meant that
the racial justification for imperialism did not apply to India.
LINGUISTIC HIERARCHIZATION
Nineteenth-century studies of cultures tended to involve hierarchization, and in philology the
hierarchy placed the languages of the western colonizers—all Indo-European—at the top. These were
regarded as the languages of natural conquerors. The languages of the colonized peoples, in contrast,
were the languages of naturally slavish peoples who were born to be conquered. The discovery that
Sanskrit was Indo-European controverted that assumption shockingly. The supposed language of
slaves turned out to be a language of masters after all.
In his modern manual of descriptive linguistics Gleason claims: “The largest and most important
language family, from the point of view of both the social importance of the major languages in the
group and their interest to linguists, is the Indo-European.”17 The revealing statement that the IndoEuropean languages are of special “social importance” means that now, factoring in Jones’s discovery,
Sanskrit culture also has that special “social importance.” In fact, as Gleason explicitly states, “The
Vedas . . . are the oldest documents in any Indo-European languages.” 18 So though India was admitted
belatedly to the ranks of the masters, it actually had a claim to priority there. Since, in the nineteenth
century, Western scholarship saw a close linkage between language, ethnicity, and culture, Jones’s
discovery raised India into a potentially hegemonic position, at least on the level of cultural ideology,
and implicitly questioned the justification for British domination there.
At about the time of Jones’s discovery—roughly the moment when the Late Enlightenment was
giving way to the Romantic era—Western scholars undertook a quest for the absolute source of
civilization, which was to be discovered by means such as philology and, later, archeology. As
Raymond Schwab has argued, the discovery of the linguistic cognateness of India to the West
occurred at the perfect moment to intersect with that other search. For a brief period of about thirtyfive years—about 1785-1820—the leading candidate for the Ur-civilization was India.
In that heady Indocentric phase, on the heels of Jones’s epochal pronouncement, it seemed that the
western world’s search for its origin—that is, its true self—would be fulfilled by plumbing the
mystery of far-off and little-known India. India somehow held the key to the West’s quest for ultimate
self-knowledge. Schlegel declared enthusiastically: “Everything, yes, everything without exception
has its origin in India.”19 This conviction led him to respond to Jones’s discovery by declaring that
Sanskrit was not only cognate with, that is, a sibling of, Greek and Latin; in fact it was the “mother
language of Greek, Latin, Persian, and German.”20 Not dissimilarly Schopenhauer, in line with his
belief in “the underlying unity of all things,”21 thought that both Christianity and the ancient Egyptian
religion had originated in India. In a somewhat similar spirit, the poet Novalis “imagined the Garden
of Eden to be tucked away somewhere in the Himalayas.”22 Not much later, the French scholar Edgar
Quinet, in his Du genie des religions (1841), wrote that “in the first ardor of their discoveries, the
orientalists proclaimed that, in its entirety, an antiquity more profound, more philosophical, more
poetical than that of Greece and Rome was emerging from the depths of Asia.” 23 The idea floated
abroad that Jones’s discovery and its consequences would constitute an “Oriental Renaissance” that
would replace the Greek Renaissance of the fifteenth century, reforming European culture yet again—
or at least overlaying the Hellenized layer with a layer of Indianization. Schopenhauer and others had
high expectations of how far this “Oriental Renaissance” would go. “Sanskrit literature,”
Schopenhauer wrote, “will be no less influential for our time than Greek literature was in the fifteenth
century for the Renaissance.”24 Schlegel agreed, in Uber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, saying
that “. . . the effects of Indic studies, if taken up and introduced into learned circles with the same
attention today [as Greek studies had been earlier], would be no less great and far-reaching.”25
The anticipated long period of Indian influence did not in fact materialize; India did not supersede
Greece as the guiding spirit of Western culture. When Schlegel and others wrote, the end of India’s