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“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?
