Many of these arguments are based on an essential distinction between early Buddhism and later, “Normative” Buddhism which provided the scriptural basis for all of our knowledge on the Buddha and his history, but should be evaluated totally anew. Major arguments evolving in this publication include a new interpretation of the term śramaṇa-only referring to Buddhists, the biography of the Buddha-contextualizing him in the area of Gandhāra and interpreting his teachings as opposed to developments within Iranian religions, that is Zoroastrianism, and not specifically India and the Gangetic plain the life of the early Buddhists-they were not monks living in vihāra and practicing the vinaya as a saṅgha the idea that Upaniṣadic Brahmanism is younger than Buddhism and was influenced by it-thereby following the suggestions by Johannes Bronkhorst that Jainism originated centuries after Buddhism that Greek histories of early Buddhism-if there are any-are more reliable than Indian sources because of the latter being written centuries later that king Aśoka did not inscribe all of his famous rock and pillar inscriptions-but some of them derive from Devānāṃpriya Priyadarśi, who is no other than Aśoka’s father, Bindusāra and, if that were not enough, introducing the name of the founder of Daoism in China, Laozi, as another designation of the Buddha and the crucial term dao as a translation of (Buddhist) dharma, thereby suggesting-almost in passing-a reevaluation of this “Chinese” religious tradition as well. Greek Buddha is not only, as the title would suggest, a reappraisal of the idea that a specific development within Greek philosophy was “influenced” by or copied “Asian” forerunners, but it includes a totally new reading of the origin of Buddhism and the story of its founder. If all of the presuppositions of this interesting publication were accepted, the story of Buddhism’s evolution and development had to be rewritten.
And it is highly provocative in its intrepid and sometimes–one hardly dares to say–ruthless positioning regarding or against well-known and often (too) commonly accepted facts on the history of Buddhism. Greek Buddha is beyond doubt thought provoking.
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