Does the historical Buddha belong in Nirvana?

“The Idea of the Historical Buddha” by David Drewes is an interesting article (see link below) which argues that Siddharta Gautama or the Buddha, the purported founder of Buddhism, never really existed. To be more exact, there is no robust evidence that he did. This is something I suspected for some time now. After all, the standard story of the Buddha´s life contains a bit too many obviously didactic or legendary twists, including a miraculous birth, an implicit polemic with Jainism and weird personal names (why is Buddha´s mother named Maya Devi while his son is called Rahula). 

Drewes argues that there is essentially *zero* evidence that the Buddha was a real historical figure. Scholars who hold to this position either appeal to scholarly consensus (a circular argument) or to a priori assumptions of the Great Man type, according to which all successful religious movements simply must have a distinct and genial founder. Drewes points out that many religious traditions didn´t start that way, Judaism being an obvious example and within Judaism, Hassidism. Note also that Abraham and Moses are believed to be non-historical by modern scholars. The author points out that the great scribes of Hinduism, Vyasa and Valmiki, were fictitious. The same is true of Krishna and Rama. 

Says Drewes: “In ancient India, attributing the origin of family lineages, religious traditions, and texts to mythical figures was not only the norm, but the rule, with very few known exceptions predating the Common Era". It´s also interesting to note that there were seven Buddhas in total according to Nepalese tradition. Of these, all Western scholars today agree that the six preceding Gautama are non-historical. (There are other traditions mentioning even more past Buddhas, but for some reason it was the Nepalese one which came to the attention of Western scholars during the 19th century.)  

More sensationally – at least to me – is the claim that the names Siddharta and Shakya are not attested anywhere in the Pali canon! They are from later sources. Nor are there any early non-Buddhist sources mentioning the Shakya clan. Indeed, there is a tradition that the entire clan was killed prior to the Buddha´s death, suggesting that the Buddhists themselves didn´t know of it and needed an explanation for the clan´s absence from the historical record. The Buddha´s last name “Gautama” isn´t really a name at all, but an epithet denoting that the bearer is part of the Gautama gotra, a Brahmanical lineage supposedly descended from the rishis, the ancient Vedic seers. All Shakyas were said to be Gautamas. Another famous such is Gotama, the founder of the Nyaya darshana (a philosophical school). So that´s where that name comes from…

Drewes argues that the earlier portions of the Pali canon contain virtually no purported historical information on the Buddha, instead portraying him as a mystical, semi-divine being. Sounds familiar? Yes, I´m thinking of Paul´s epistles and the way he depicts Jesus. Both Jesus and the Buddha were given a more elaborate biography only later. Note also that if Drewes is right, Mahayana can claim precedence over Theravada, since the Mahayanists explicitly portray the earthly Buddha as a temporary manifestation of a divine world-soul. The author doesn´t draw this conclusion, however. 

I´m sure this text can be problematized in all kinds of ways, but at least it states the mythicist position on the Buddha in a relatively accessible way.  As I said, I strongly veer towards the opinion that many religious founders are purely mythological in character, or real historical people whose lives have been so embellished that they in effect become mythological anyway. After all, the mythological L Ron Hubbard isn´t “real” despite the fact that Hubbard was a real man with a social security number.

None of which makes Buddhism necessarily “false”. A spiritual tradition can be “true” in some sense even if it was eclectically assembled by 100 strangely-clad guys with big beards over a period of several centuries. Wanna bet?

The Idea of the Historical Buddha