Luminous encounters

 

“The Self-Immolation of Kalanos and other Luminous Encounters among Greeks and Indian Buddhists in the Hellenistic World” is a rather short article by Georgios T Halkias published in 2015 in the scholarly “Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies”. Or perhaps not so short, since Halkias has appended a large number of voluminous footnotes! The author further states that his study is “revisionist”, but not being an expert on Kalanos and other luminous beings, I can´t really tell what the “revisionism” entails. Perhaps the identity of the famed gymnosophists, and perhaps…something else. Stay tuned!

During the campaigns of Alexander the Great (here referred to as Alexandros of Macedonia), the Greeks encountered “gymnosophists” or naked wise men, obviously a reference to some kind of Indian ascetics. But what kind? There are many different kinds of ascetics in South Asia, and I suppose the usual guesses are Hindus (or rather what we would call Hindus) or Jains. 

Halkias proposes Buddhists instead. Kalanos accompanied the Greek army of Alexander and then committed suicide by self-immolation on a pyre. Apparently, Jains oppose self-immolation, instead preferring suicide by voluntary starvation. They aren´t even allowed to handle fire, since it can kill flying insects. Nor is there any archeological or documentary evidence of a Jain presence in Taxila, where the Greeks encountered the gymnosophists, during the relevant time frame. But what about the nudity? Halkias believes that nudity was prevalent in many different Indian contexts, not just among Jains, citing as an example near-nude Indian diplomatic envoys to the Persian king.

The author further argues that there is evidence that members of some early Buddhist sects only wore rags or were “open air dwellers” rather than building shelters for themselves. That the gymnosophists allowed women to practice or debate with them also points to Buddhism. So does the fact that Kalanos willingly accompanied the Macedonian army when it departed for another part of the conquered Persian Empire. Missionary work directed at non-Indians was standard Buddhist practice. But apparently the “smoking gun” (pun almost intended) is Kalanos´ self-immolation. This may come as a shock to those who think that Buddhism is a strictly non-violent religion which opposes suicide, but there you go. 

I´ve previously reviewed a scholarly article on ritual suicide among Pure Land Buddhists in China and Japan. If Halkias is correct, acceptance of suicide runs deep within Buddhism, including its earliest forms. It was acceptable for ascetics (not laity) to commit suicide if sickness or old age seriously impaired their meditative practice. Indeed, this seems to have been precisely what Kalanos was doing. Buddhist monks, but not Brahmins, were cremated at death. Brahmin holy men who committed suicide usually drowned themselves in sacred rivers. Therefore, suicide by fire would have been a Buddhist practice.

Halkias references a presumably apocryphal tradition according to which the Buddhist emperor Ashoka killed himself by self-immolation. From a much later period, there is a description of Indian ascetics by the Gnostic Bardesanes which must refer to Buddhist monks, and which also states that they practice self-immolation. More disturbingly, perhaps, Bardesanes states that the ascetics take their own lives *not* when they are sickly or elderly, but when their spiritual practice is most successful! Halkias recounts legends about Buddha´s former lives or about bodhisattvas, which include self-immolation. The point of self-immolation is, Halkias believes, to imitate the Buddha´s funeral pyre and produce holy relics. He even believes that the Buddha himself self-immolated, but I don´t see how the quoted material bears this out.

Here is another bizarre quote: “A Buddhist narrative from the Mahavastu tells that at the moment of Shakyamuni´s conception in his mother’s womb five hundred pratyekabuddhas assembled at the Deer Park in Sarnath (where Shakyamuni would later deliver his first sermon) and liberated themselves from their bodies in a spectacular manner. Rising high up in the air to a height of seven palm trees they immolated themselves, bursting into flames. This pyrotechnic phantasmagoria anticipates the Buddha’s enlightening teachings at the Deer Park and suggests some ancient form of sacrifce/offering that marks the birth of a great leader.”

The author ends his study by arguing that the ancient Greeks didn´t disapprove of the antics of the self-immolating gymnosophists. Quite the contrary, the suicide by fire motif also existed in Greek mythology and tradition…

I admit that I don´t quite like the implications of this revisionist piece of scholarship.