THE THESIS

Religion can never reform mankind
because religion is slavery.

Robert G. Ingersoll,
1833-1899.

Seated Buddha (Flickr photo),
Pakistan or Afghanistan, ancient region of Gandhara.

A myth is an idea that, while widely believed, is false. The religious myth is the most powerful device ever created and serves to manipulate and control society.

Certain Buddhologists have always doubted that Gautama Buddha was a historical person; there just isn't enough historical evidence to substantiate the claim. Since it's not possible to prove a negative, such as that Buddha never existed, skeptics are willing to concede that he could have been made up from a composite of several ascetics that perhaps flourished in Northwest India around mid-first millennium BCE. From archaeological and other evidence, it's likely that the religion was based on an Indo-Scythian who lived sometime in the 5th to 4th centuries BCE in the Greater Gandhara region, not in the Nepal Terai as is generally believed. The Indian name for Scythians is Saka (or Sakya); hence Buddha is also known as Sakamuni (or Sakyamuni), the sage of the Sakas. When the center of power of the Mauryan empire shifted east, the story of the Buddha—which had been transmitted orally for centuries—was written down and relocated to the Indo-Gangetic plains. But the Sakyans still retained the memory of the sage as one of their own. That is why we find that more—and earlier—sculpture and architecture made in the service of Buddhism has been found in Greater Gandhara than in any other part of ancient South Asia, and the earliest anthropomorphic images of the Buddha show distinctly Aryan features. And that is why the Sakas were most ardent in spreading Buddhism along the silk road into Central Asia, eventually to invigorate the air of China and Japan.

Map of Gandhara, (compiled and drawn by John C. Huntington, 1989, The Ohio State University), showing high density of Buddhist sites. Click to enlarge.

Only in Gandhara (Afghanistan) is it possible to make startling discoveries even today like Mes Aynak, a sprawling, approximately 1,600-year-old (not 2,600-year-old) Buddhist monastery.

Buddha statues at Mes Aynak, Afghanistan.

It could never happen in Nepal or North India in a thousand years because these lands were never the real homeland of Buddhism.

E. Senart was a late 19th century Buddhologist who leaned towards the idea that Buddha was a mythological creation, but for practical purposes he's willing to give Buddha the benefit of the doubt and concede he may have been historical. Here's a quote from his essay, E. Senart, Essai sur la légende de Buddha, 2e édit. 1882, pp. xi-xii.

"Either the historical data are the primary nucleus and as it were the central source, the legendary elements representing an ulterior action, in part accessory, without necessary cohesion; or, inversely, the mythological traits form a whole connected by a higher and anterior unity with the personage on whom they are here grafted, the historical data, if there are really any, being associated with them only in virtue of a secondary adaptation. It is at the first point of view that the inquiry has stood up to the present time. There has been drawn the practical conclusion that it suffices to suppress all the incredible details, what is left being taken for accredited history. I seek to show that for this first point of view we ought decidedly to substitute the second.

"A sect has a founder, Buddhism like every other. I do not pretend to demonstrate that Sakyamuni never existed. The question is perfectly distinct from the object of this treatise, It follows, certainly, from the foregoing researches that hitherto the sacred personage has been given too much historical consistence, that the tissue of fables grouped around his name has been too facilely transformed, by arbitrary piecings, into a species of more or less unplausible history. Skepticism acquires from our analyses, in some regards, a greater precision: still, it does not follow that we should indefinitely extend its limits. In this epic and dogmatic biography, indeed, there remain very few elements which sustain a close examination; but to say this is not to say that among them there has not entered some authentic reminiscence. The distinction is certainly very difficult. Where we are not in a position to show for a tradition its exact counterpart in other cycles, a decision is an extremely delicate process. All that is suspicious ought not necessarily to be eliminated: it is right that whatever is rigorously admissible ought to be retained. There is no alleged deity—not Vishnu, or Krishna, or Heracles—for whom we might not construct a sufficiently reasonable biography by proceeding as has hitherto been done in regard to the legend of Buddha.

A clip from The God Who Wasn't There. Shows Jesus Christ was a myth and how religions can be founded on a lies.

"Under these reserves, I willingly recognize that there remain a certain number of elements which we have no absolute reason for thinking apocryphal: they may represent real historical reminiscences: to that, for my part, I have no objection. It is possible that the founder of Buddhism may have come from a tribe of Sakyas, though the pretended history of that race is certainly quite fictitious. It is possible that he may have come of a royal line, that he may have been born in a city called Kapilavastu, though this name arouses grave suspicions, opening the door to either mythological or allegorical interpretations, and the existence of such a town is very feebly certified. The name Gotama is certainly historic and well-known, but it is a borrowed name which tells us little. Much trouble has been taken to explain how this strictly Brahmanic patronymic might have passed to a family of Kshatriyas, [the warrior caste] . Apart from Buddha, it is above all closely associated with his supposed aunt, the legendary Prajápati... . I do not speak of his genealogy: it has certainly no value, being borrowed whole from epic heroes, in particular from Rama. On the other hand, it may well be that the teacher of the Buddhists entered on his religious career at the age of thirty-nine ..... ."

Dr. Ranajit Pal has pointed out that many famous cities in modern India had older counterparts in Iran-Baluchistan, which were parts of ancient Greater India, and that Sir William Jones' contention that Patna in eastern India was Megasthenes' Palibothra, (Pataliputra), was a fatal error that has no archaeological basis. Dr. Pal claims that Jones' view that the crucial state of Magadha was Bihar is also baseless. The first epigraphic mention of Magadha is an Asokan edict in faraway Bairat, and there is no evidence for an ancient Magadha in Bihar. Magan, in west-Baluchistan, must have been the early Magadha, he says.

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Fatal errors indeed because they misled Sir Alexander Cunningham into mislocating Buddhist sites. The best circumstantial evidence I have for this is found in the introduction to the Vatsyayana Kamasutra, a third century CE textbook on erotic love written in Sanskrit, translated and introduced by Wendy Doniger:

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"Its detailed knowledge of Northwestern India, and its pejorative attitude to other parts of India, particularly the South and the East, suggest that it was written in the Northwest; on the other hand, its reference to Pataliputra alone among cities suggests that it may have been written in Pataliputra (near the present city of Patna, in Bihar, as Yashodhara (who wrote the definitive commentary on this text, in the thirteenth century) believes to be the case."

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Does that make sense? Doniger says the Kamasutra speaks pejoratively about the South and the East, and was thus probably written in the Northwest. But the only reference to a city is of Pataliputra, which, because of Cunningham, she (and practically everyone else) believes to have been in Bihar, in the East. Doesn't it make more sense that Pataliputra was in the Northwest, as the Kamasutra and Yashodhara in the thirteenth century clearly assumed?

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Dr. Pal has also pointed out that had the Buddhist canon been formulated at Gaya, Varanasi or Nalanda we would have had ancient manuscripts from these places. But the oldest documents come from Gandhara. This cannot be accidental, he says.

Anyway, I'm running ahead of myself; just wanted to give credit to Dr. Pal for being first with the idea that Buddha was not from the Nepal Terai, but from Seistan, or Gandhara. His website: A New Non-Jonesian History of the World.

I have drawn on the contributions made by earlier scholars and researchers in support of my conclusions; where I have done so, I have cited the sources. Of course the opinions expressed or conclusions reached here are tentative. In fact, I shall be satisfied if they are regarded as worthy of serious consideration and lead to discussion.