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TheSelf-immolation of Kalanos and other Luminous Encounters Among Greeks and Indian Buddhists in the Hellenistic World

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by Georgios T. Halkias



This work is a revisionist reading on the impact of the historical meeting of Alexandrian philosophers with Indian ascetics in Gandhara during the far eastern campaigns of Alexandres of Macedonia (356-323 BCE). A com¬parative re-examination of Greek and Indian sources yields new evidence that situates the religious identity of the Indian gymnosophist Kalanos in early ascetic traditions of Buddhism in NW India that upheld the practice of ritual suicide by immolation on specific occasions during the later part of the fourth century BCE. It supports previous research on the Hellenistic period that philosophically links Pyrrhon of Elis (c.360-c.270 BCE) with Indian Buddhism through his encounters with Kalanos and on the basis of shared soteriological conceptions and practices.


I. Introduction: Indian ascetics and Hellenistic traditions of philosophy Ancient authors long debated whether there had been oriental influence on Hel¬lenic philosophy, without ever doubting the readiness and capacity of the Greeks to engage in genuine dialogue with foreigners. In fact, informative interactions and exchanges between Greek and non-Greek sages is a documented constant in the long history of Hellenic civilization. To this history we can assign delib¬erate meetings between Greek philosophers and Indian ascetics in Gandhara reported by the companions of Alexandros of Macedonia (356-323 BCE). Draw¬ing critical evidence from Greek and Indian scriptures, this study argues for the Buddhist identity of a well-known Indian gymnosophist or “naked

master” (Grk. Yu^voooqiOT^q) known as Kalanos (KaXavoc) from Taksasila (Taxila), a prosper¬ous and vibrant centre of learning, education and commerce by the time of the historical Buddha. Kalanos left a lasting impression on the Greeks by spending the remaining few years ofhis life as a teacher to Hellenes in the private entourage of Alexandros, and by ending his life with the utmost nobility on a blazing pyre. His identification as a Buddhist teacher offers new perspectives on the formation of some early ascetic Buddhist traditions in NW India that appear to have prac¬tised self-immolation during the later part ofthe 4th century BCE. Furthermore, it supports previous studies demonstrating striking parallels between Buddhism and the teachings of Pyrrhon of Elis (C.360-C.270 BCE) on the basis of their use of antinomian methods of contemplation in the service of soteriological ends. Pyrrhon had ample opportunities to learn from Kalanos and other gymnosophists in his journey to the far eastern borderlands of the defeated Persian Empire and in Alexandros' own mobile court.


II. Buddhist gymnosophists in Gandhara and the Greeks

Despite claims by classicists to the contrary, as early as the 1900s, scholars have argued that Pyrrhon's encounter with the gymnosophists ofTaxila had a transfor¬mative impact on his philosophical views and attitudes. Their interpretations however diverge as to the religious identity of these influential ascetic commu¬nities flourishing at the borderlands of the Achaemenid Empire and fringes of orthodox Brahmanical India. It is beyond the scope of this study to discuss all the different arguments and their shortcomings, but a few clarifications are in order. To start with, we have no evidence for speculating on the prevalence of ascetic tra¬ditions at that time in Gandhara other than what we can broadly characterize as Buddhism and Brahmanism (Dani 1986). Buddhists were active in the region for some time before winning popular support and securing patronage to construct viharas in the 3rd century BCE. There is no reason to entertain the hypothesis that the gymnosophists were Jains (Craven, 1976:33). Their presence in Gandhara and surrounding areas is not corroborated by any archaeological evidence (Dani, 1986:93). The Jain tra¬dition holds non-violence as its highest precept and forbids ascetics to handle fire so that they may not cause harm to flying insects (Dundas, 1992:50). It follows that at least the gymnosophist Kalanos, who chose to immolate himself because of his illness, could not have been a Jain. Jains may under strict rules perform a slow non-violent “suicide by fasting” (sallekhana), should they be struck by an incur¬able illness or infirmity that prevents them performing the “obligatory actions” or avasyakas (Dundas, 1992:I8O). However, such cases of samadhi-death are attested as late as the 7th century CE, and in any case they do not involve self¬immolation (Settar, 1989:133-134), which is condemned by Jains as an impure form of self-killing (Laidlaw, 2005:190).


There is also the hypothesis, put forth by Barua in 1921 (1988 reprint), that the naked contemplatives encountered by the Greeks were followers of Sanjaya Belatthiputta, a contemporary of Buddha Sakyamuni. From the Indian side, the relevant extract comes from the Samannaphala-sutta in which the Indian King Ajatasatru asks Sanjaya to describe the goal of religious life. In a Buddhist carica¬ture ofthe encounter ofthe king with the “eel-wriggler” (Pali. amaravikkhepika) Sanjaya, the latter resorts to the safety of the tetralemma and fails to provide an answer in any direct terms - and we are left pondering how he ever managed to attract disciples and form a school if all that he taught was conceptual ineffa- bility. The characterization of Sanjaya as someone who defends a position of radical scepticism but has nothing relevant to say about the benefits of this con¬templative training is contrasted with Pyrrhon and the Buddha who promoted a state of embodied mental tranquillity and peace.


Flintoff (1980) overstated the similarities between Sanjaya's use of fourfold negation (catuskoti) and Pyrrhon's tetralemma (TCTpaXnW-a). Jayatilleke (1998: 130) has since noted that the four logical alternatives attributed to the school of Sanjaya were also widely employed by the Buddhists, and possibly by other In¬dian religious schools. It is quite plausible that the catus.kot.i was a commonly- shared Indian method of philosophical argumentation (Kuzminski, 2008), while parts of its formulation were known to pre-Hellenistic philosophers (McEvilley, 1982). After all, for Pyrrhon the tetralemma was just one contemplative stemma in a larger fourfold arrangement deconstructing the certainty of dogmas.


The diverse and often conflicting character of interpretations in contempo¬rary scholarship reflects not only a variety of seeming contradictions in the ex¬tant sources, but also the liability of some key texts to have competing readings. Though there are several factors to take into account in any historical recon- struction, some notable contradictions in the Greek texts may be less com¬pelling if we recognize that the designation gymnosophists initially comprised two main groups: brachmanes (ppaxpavEq) and sarmanes (aapudveq) or sarmanai (aapucxvai). The brachmanes often served in hereditary succession the interests of the ruling class and the sarmanai comprised wandering renunciants who shared in the social and economic resources of Taxila. While this fine distinction be¬tween brachmanes and sarmanes is often missed by some Greek authors, for all practical purposes we can surmise that several meetings took place between In¬dian and Hellenic philosophers in nearly 2 years and were only later conflated in single reports that appear muddled.


Megasthenes, the Hellenistic ambassador to the Indian Emperor Candragupta Maurya, is our oldest non-Indian source for the distinction between brachmanes (Skt. brahmana) and garmanes (yappavec), which is either a scribal error for sarmanes (Skt. sramana), or more likely how sramana sounded to the ears of a Hellene at that time (Halbfass, 1995:256). Among the garmanes (i.e., aappavec), Megasthenes mentions the pramnas (npdpvac), an ascetic group that openly crit¬icised the doctrines ofthe brachmanes. This reactionary movement was further divided into several groups including the gymnetas (yupvprac) held in high es¬teem. As their name suggests, they were naked or nearly so, living mainly out in the open air, and women could practise with them without intimate cohabitation (Strab. 15.1.70). Among the garmanes we also find the “physicians” (iaTpiKovc) who had knowledge ofmedicine and could effect cures by

regulating diet and ap¬plying ointments and plasters. They were hosted in Alexandros' camp for being the “wisest” (ffoywrarot) Indian physicians (Arr. Ind. 15.11). Like others among the pramnas, they practised fortitude in enduring physical pain and could stand in the same posture awhole day without moving (Strab. 15.1.60). Itis very likely that the garmanes of Megasthenes correspond to the non-brahmanas mentioned by Nearchos, who “studied the nature of things” (aKonelv Ta nepi rqv yvaiv) and allowed “women to debate philosophy with them” (aup.q>ihoaoq>Elv S’ avTOKal YuvaiKaq) (Strab. 15.1.60). For unlike the Buddhists, who admitted women in their order from the time of the Buddha, the brachmanes did not communicate knowledge ofphilosophy to their wives (Strab. 15.1.59).


There are references in the Pali scriptures to “an ill-defined category of as¬cetics (yogin-s, yogavacara-s, later yogacara-s)” that included “saints and irreg¬ulars, schismatics or heretics” alongside “monks ofstrict observance.” Theywere “men of the forests (araiiyaka) or of cemeteries (smasanikas)” who declined “novi¬tiate and communal living” and were “stringent in their practice of the rigorous rules of asceticism.” In the Visuddhimagga, Bhadantacariya Buddhaghos. a de¬scribes Buddhist renunciant groups whose eccentric behaviour correlates with descriptions furnished in the Greek sources. There are intriguing similarities be¬tween the gymnetas and early Buddhist groups known as the “refuse-rag wearers” (pamsukulika), who refused robes given by householders and clothed themselves with rags procured in a variety of ways, and also with those ascetics known as “open-air dwellers” (abbhokasika). Though writing centuries after Megas- thenes, the Christian theologian Clement ofAlexandria (c.1 50-21 5 CE) mayvery well be reflecting current views in his identification ofthe sarmanai as Mahayana followers of the Buddha (Bovtra) who out of excessive piety worship him as a god (dedv). And there is no reason to doubt the reliability of Clement's sources, for he also mentioned (Strom. 1.15) Buddhists (sarmanai) in Bactria (Sapavatoi BdKrpwv), a fact well attested at the time of his writing.


III. An incandescent liberation

K&V napa8& TO a&pa pou, iva Kaudpaupai, &y&nnv Se pp llyyc, ovSev AyeXovpai - and even if I surrender my body to the pyre, ifIdon'thaveloveIgainno profit- (Corinthians, 13.3)

Nearchos, a reliable historian and Alexandros' admiral, was the first to in¬troduce a division between brahman. as and non-brahman. as. He explicitly states that the Indian ascetic Kalanos belonged to the second group and was not one of the brahman. as who engaged in politics and served as counsellors to kings (Strab. 15.1.66). Following Megasthenes' division, Kalanos belonged to the sraman. a order that contemplated the nature of reality and allowed women to do the same. It is reported that Alexandros admired the power of endurance of the sraman. as and requested that one ofthem come to live with him. Itseems unreasonable that Kalanos would forsake his ascetic lifestyle at an advanced age and follow Alexan- dros on an arduous journey from Taxila to Persia which he would have known to be his last. He was over 70 years of age when he joined the Greeks and we must seriously question the naive

interpretations of some ancient historians that he followed Alexandros to “rehearse praises for him”, having “no control over him¬self” and being “a slave to his table” (Strab. 15.68). Aristoboulos, who confused Dandamis with Kalanos and wrongly characterized them both as brahmanas, saw in Taxila one master with long hair and one with a shaven head surrounded by their Indian disciples. The shaved renunciant “accompanied the king to the last” and “during his stay he changed his dress, and altered his mode of life.” When reproached for his conduct, he answered that he had completed the forty years of discipline which he had promised to observe, and an appreciative Alexandros made “presents to his children” (Strab. 15.1.61).

Itwould appear that Kalanos became a teacher ofAlexandros to seek benefits in his court for himself and his family, hardly the aspirations we would expect of a professional renunciant who had completed no less than 40 years ofasceticism and who, as we have seen, had no money or gold among his sparse belongings but cups and rags that he shared with his Greek disciples. We are in a better position to understand Kalanos' decision if we turn to a description of sramana customs recorded by Porphyry (de Abst. 4.17).


Having likewise the superfluities of his body cut off, he receives a garment, and departs to the Samanaeans, but does not return either to hiswife orchildren, ifhe happens to have any, nordoeshe payany attention to them, or think that they at all pertain to him. And, with respect to his children indeed, the king provides what is necessary for them, and the relatives provide for the wife. And such is the life ofthe Samanaeans. Given that Kalanos decided to be under the patronage of another king, Alexan- dros ought to make provision for the welfare ofhis children according to prevail¬ing customs, which would explain why he presented them with “gifts” before de¬parting from Taxila. After all, we must bear in mind that the portrayal ofKalanos as an opportunist is hardly compatible with the daring and fearless manner that so impressed Alexandras and the Hellenes - namely of a man who stood motionless with utmost dignity as the fire engulfed him. Our sources relate stories of an In¬dian sage who had allegedly attained the siddhi (power/ability) of foreknowledge as a result ofpractising austerities. Having made his prayers and casting some of his hair on the pyre, he bade farewell to his attending students but not to Alexan- dros, saying that he would be seeing him in a year's time in Babylon, a prophetic vision ofthe Macedonian leader passing awaya year later.


Onesikritos explains that the gymnosophists regard disease of the body “as most disgraceful, and he who apprehends it, after preparing a pyre, destroys him¬self by fire; he (previously) anoints himself, and sitting down upon it orders it to be lighted, remaining motionless while he is burning” (Strab. 15.1.65). This de¬scription placed in the mouthofDandamis describes the wayKalanos decided to end his life on a pyre in 323 BCE in Susa, staging in public his self-immolation after falling seriously ill. According to Strabon (15.1.68) and Diodorus Siculus, Kalanos was 73 years of age when “his health became delicate, though he had never before been subject to illness” (Diod. Lib. 17.107). Aware that his illness could not be remedied by conventional sramana treatments such as diet, incan¬tations and medicine, he told Alexandros that he was not willing to lead the life of a man in infirm health. “In such circumstances he thought it best for him to putanendto his existence, before he came to experience any disease which might compel him to change his former mode of living” (Arr. Anab. 7.3.1). Since his former mode ofliving did not entail a lifestyle ofphysical comforts, we can under-stand that his illness would prevent him from engaging in his usual contemplative practices.


Arrianos (Anab. 7.3) and Ploutarchos (Alex. 69) report that at the moment of his death Kalanos displayed no signs of fear, remorse or pain, but sat firm to be consumed by flames. According to Cicero (Divin. 1.47), as he was about to die he proclaimed this to be a glorious death, like that ofHerakles, for when “this mortal frame is burned the soul will find the light.” The spectacle ofan unmov¬ing human torch provoked different reactions among Greek spectators: for some he was mad; for others he was vain in seeking glory for his ability to withstand pain; and many simply marvelled at his fortitude and contempt for death (Diod. Lib. 17.107). Ploutarchos (Alex. 69) was keen to notice a comparable suicide of another sramana who joined a mission sent by the Indian King Poros (Hwpo^) to Augustus Caesar (63 BCE-14 CE) with a Greek letter written on a parchment (Strab. 15.1.73). The sources are sparse, and for reasons unknown to us the In¬dian ascetic Zarmanos (Dion Cassius, Liv. 4.),alikelyvariantofsraman.a with the alias Zarmanochegas (ZapgavoxnY^), leaped naked and anointed with a smile onto a pyre in Athens wearing a “girdle round his waist” (mekhala).


IV. Ablaze in honour of the Buddha

There are compelling similarities between the reasons behind Kalanos' suicide and canonical descriptions of Buddhist ascetics who didn't wish to fall into dis¬turbing psycho-physical states because of their deteriorating health that would prevent them from engaging in and/or sustaining contemplative ways of living. The Pali suttas contain several references to Buddhist renunciants ending their own lives because they were struck by a grave or incurable disease, or because they didn't wish to relapse from an acquired spiritual state (Delhey, 2006); as in the case of Godhika, who finds it impossible to sustain “mind-release through samadhi ” (Wiltshire, 1983:133). The majority of examples of ritual suicide or self-administered euthanasia in the Pali canon concern spiritual adepts who were seeking alleviation of pain due to physical illness and who sought death as a way of release from their mortal confines. As noted by Wiltshire (1983:137-38), “if this body has lost its essential usefulness - and Buddhism seems to recognize that such circumstances do sometimes exist - then the body can be relinquished.” This should only be done provided that “it is understood that all bodies are intrinsically impermanent and bankrupt of self.”


The practice of cremation follows Vedic/Hindu and ancient Greek mortuary rites, and it was the “normative Buddhist way of disposing of bodies, at least the bodies of monks, in ancient India” (Strong 2004:115). Strong explains that the cremation of the Buddha (and his monks) is precisely that which ritually differ¬entiated him and members of his order “from orthodox brahmanical ascetics and renunciants, who were typically not cremated... [but].. .buried in sand or aban¬doned in a river.” '1 he tradition of self-cremation of Hindu widows (sati) who burn themselves on their husband's funeral pyre is reported byMegasthenes, who further explains that self-destruction is not a dogma of the Indian philosophers (Strab. 15.68). Arora (2005:71) cites a few passing references to self-immolation in Brahmanical texts, like the contested Vasistha sütra and other Upanisads, but these seem to be descriptive of a custom that was by no means a general prac¬tice among the brahman. as. For them, ritual suicide, if condoned at all, was more commonly prescribed by drowning in a sacred river for purification. This is confirmed by Pliny the Elder (Nat.Hist. 6.22), who wrote that the Indian ascetics accustomed to self-immolationwerenotpartofthesystemofthefourvarnas(i.e., brahman. as and the rest), but belonged to a “fifth class” that was devoted to the “pursuit of wisdom”.


Bardaisan or Bardesanes (154-222 CE), a Gnostic Christian from Syria, de¬rived his knowledge from a meeting at Edessa with a delegation of Indian gym- nosophists sent to the Roman Emperor Elagabalus (r. 218-222 CE). He describes a renunciant order of sraman. as who went forth (pabbajja ) in search of wisdom in contrast to the Brahmins who “receive divine wisdom of this kind by succes¬sion, in the same manner as the priesthood.” The sraman. as abandon all wealth and property and in order to join the order they shave their heads, wear robes and take on bowls for alms. They reside in temples and monasteries and unlike the Brahmins they allow open membership to all nations, sects and castes ofIndi- ans. This monastic order described by Bardaisan is clearly organized according to Buddhist concepts and rituals. Most importantly, they practise self-immolation and die in a way that is most admired by all sraman. as.


.. .they unwillingly endure the whole time of the present life, as a cer¬tain servitude to nature, and therefore they hasten to liberate their souls from the bodies [with which they are connected]. Hence, fre¬quently, when they are seen to be well, and are neither oppressed, nor driven to desperation by any evil, they depart from life. And though they previously announce to others that it is their intention to com¬mit suicide, yet no one impedes them; but, proclaiming all those to be happy who thus quit the present life, they enjoin certain things to the domestics and kindred of the dead: so stable and true do they, and also the multitude, believe the assertion to be, that souls [in another life] associate with each other. But as soon as those, to whom they have proclaimed that this is their intention, have heard the mandates given to them, they deliver the body to fire, in order that they may separate the soul from the body in the purest manner, and thus they die celebrated by all the Samanaeans.


While suicide figures in the logic ofseveral Indian religions (Wiltshire, 1983), the evidence suggests that the sraman. a order favouring suicide by fire were in fact Buddhists, who share a long history of self-immolation not only in India, but in China, Vietnam, and more recently in Tibet. There are explicit references to ritual suicide in general, and auto-cremation in particular, in early canonical and later Indian Buddhist scriptures and in Chinese reports by the monks Fax- ian (320?-420?) and Xuanzang (600-664), who travelled to India in search ofthe Buddha's teachings (Benn, 2007b : 105-106) . It seems that Buddhist contempla¬tives across Asia “treated suicide as something distinctly different from killing other sentient beings and that in contrast to Western notions ofhuman life as sa¬cred, life does not have such basic value in Buddhism” (Zimmermann, 2006:7). The Buddhist tradition makes a clear distinction between the suicide of an ordi¬nary person (an act that is met with categorical disapproval) and the giving up of the body by one who has attained the culmination ofBuddhist discipline. Those who have completed their spiritual training may “sever their last link with the world and voluntarily pass into nirvana, thus definitely escaping from the world of rebirths” (Lamotte, 1987:106).


More pertinently, self-immolations are intimately related to Buddha Sakya- muni, who is reported by some influential recountings to have ended his own life by auto-cremation, and in former times threw himselfinto “agreatabyss, ablaze and on fire for the sake of the well-spoken [[[dharma]]]” (Rastrapalapariprccha-sutra, 36.11; Boucher, 2008:144). A Buddhist narrative from the Mahavastu tells that at the moment of Sakyamuni's conception in his mother's womb five hundred pratyekabuddhas assembled at the Deer Park in Sarnath (where Sakyamuni would later deliver his first sermon) and liberated themselves from their bodies in a spec¬tacular manner. Rising high up in the air to a height of seven palm trees they immolated themselves, bursting into flames (Lamotte, 1987:108). This pyrotech¬nic phantasmagoria anticipates the Buddha's enlightening teachings at the Deer Park and suggests some ancient form of sacrifice/offering that marks the birth of a great leader.


When he was still a bodhisattva, the past Buddha Mangala is said to have wrapped his whole bodyin the manner of “making a torch”. As an offering to the caitya of another Buddha, he set his body “ablaze, along with a golden thousand¬wick butter lamp” (Strong, 2004:103). But he was not the only one, for the Sad- dharma Pundarlka-sutra narrates the story of the bodhisattva Sarvasattvapriya- darsana, who “ate resins and drank oil for twelve years and then wrapped his body in garments and bathed in oil before setting himself ablaze in honour ofa buddha; he burned, we are told, for twelve thousand years.” There are many references to the ritual significance of Buddhist cremation andthe symbolic potency offire. According to Strong (2004:103), in at least one tradition the emperorAsokaissaidto have “honoured the relics ofthe Buddha by setting himselfon fire” in the manner ofa “wheel-turning monarch” (cakravartin), having his body first “wrapped in cotton...and having himself soaked with five hundred pots ofscented oil.” He argues that virtually all later auto-cremations by Buddhists were done in honour of their master's relics and are intimately linked to the Buddha's own funeral. These incidents in the Buddhist tradition are not simply sacrifices, but “acts of imitation and appropriation, attempts to repeat the Buddha's own cremation and creation of relics.”


A Buddhist preoccupation with the physical and symbolic properties of fire has given rise to the most common religious metaphor for the state of attain¬ing nibbana: a fire fuelled by “desire” (raga), “aversion” (dosa) and “ignorance” (moha) going out. The truth of human suffering has the “characteristics of af¬flicting [and] its function is to burn” (Visud. 16.23). The “accessories of enlight¬enment” are often compared to the “light of a blazing fire” which burns upobscu- ration and is called “the radiating” (Mahdydnasutrdlamkdra, 10.34). In the Fire Sermon(SN35.28), the Buddha discourses on conventional reality constructed by the five senses that are metaphorically speaking on fire. Elsewhere he resorts to apotropaic visions ofself-incineration to admonish his disciples against the dan¬gers of sexual desire, for it is better for an ascetic “to sit or lie down embracing that mass offire burning, blazing and glowing” than “embracing a warrior-noble maiden or a brahman maiden or a maiden ofhouseholder family, with soft, deli¬cate hands and feet” (AN 7.68).


Consumption by “fire” (Pali. tejo) figures prominently in Buddhist escha¬tology, for it is the medium by which our universe will come to the end of its cycle in a massive conflagration. Arguably, the entire universe will undergo a fiery process of death, rebirth and purification, for in early Buddhism fire also takeson the element ofcleansing and serves as a potent metaphor ofa single force that both consumes/destroys and illuminates/creates. Fire is a tangible force that corresponds to one of the four “primary elements” (mahd-bhuta) of the material world and our physical constitution, the element that gives rise to heat and mat¬uration. In its luminous form it serves as an object (kasin. a) of meditation that can lead to the attainment of supernormal faculties. Buddhaghosa (Visud. 5.30) explains that the fire kasin. a is the basis for such powers as “smoking, flaming, causing showers of sparks, countering fire with fire, ability to burn onlywhatone wants to burn.causing light for the purpose of seeing visible objects with the divine eye, [and] burning up the body by means ofthe fire element at the time of attaining Nibbana.”


Hence, a Buddhist practitioner accomplished in samatha, like the Elder San- jiva, can't be burnt by fire (Visud. 23.37). Fire will not harm one who has gone through the “meditative absorptions” (jhana) and has attained “the base consist¬ing of boundless consciousness.” Such is the case of Maha Naga, who attained cessation in his mother's living-room unaffected when the establishment went up in flames (23.36), and of Sankicca, who was still in his mother's womb when she was pierced by stakes and placed on a pyre. He miraculously survived the pyre through “success by intervention ofknowledge” and later attained Arhatship (12.28). Uttara, a lay woman devotee ofthe Buddha attained loving-kindness and did not burn when hot oil was thrown at her by the jealous harlot Sirima (12.34). An adept who has mastery over the element of fire may willingly combust into flames like the aged bhikkhu Subhadda, who did not want to die after his mas¬ter had passed away, so he “seated himselfbefore the Buddha and incinerated his body completely, passing into final nirvan. a as the Buddha lay dying” (Wilson, 2003:39). Arguably, the most impressive display ofself-immolation reported in the Pali canon is that of Dabba Mallaputta, the bhikkhu who died bursting into flames while seated cross-legged in the air so that “neither ashes nor soot could be discerned” (Udana Sutta, 8.9).


V. Ancient histories of a luminous silence

Several aspects examined in this study suggest a certain depth and intensity in the exchanges that transpired between Hellenes and Buddhists in Hellenistic times. The impact ofthe encounter between Buddhists and the Hellenistic world is not simply the outcome of something entirely new coming from the outside, but the inside acquiring renewed forms of articulation in its contact with the “outside- other”. For while Indian religious concepts were translated into Hellenistic and Roman cultural idiom and philosophical terminology, more subtle ways ofcon- templation were adopted that were not entirely foreign to the spiritual and philo¬sophical heritage of the ancient Greeks. As I have argued elsewhere (Halkias 2014), intricate processes of cultural and philosophical innovation are not simply the results of historical encounters between “East” and “West” as discreet geo¬graphical entities, nor are they the single outcome of symmetrical transfers of knowledge. In the cosmopolitan milieu ofthe Hellenistic period contacts between Hellenes and Buddhists in Alexandria, Gandhara and Bactria led to a revitaliza¬tion and elucidation of existing trends within each tradition, and to an eclectic appropriation ofreligious concepts and imagery bylater Indo-Greek converts to Buddhism and Indian Buddhists.

It has been especially instructive to explain the enigmatic practice ofKalanos' death within the Buddhist tradition - which as we have seen exhibits an ongoing preoccupation with fire and cremation and permits suicide under the circum¬stances recounted by Kalanos. The evidence suggests that ritual suicide by fire was upheld bysome early Indian Buddhist sects. The frequency of such incidents did not pass unnoticed by Greeks and Romans and triggered cultural and intellec¬tual responses in the Hellenistic world. For even ifthe incandescent spectacle of Kalanos' auto-cremation exceeded what some Greek wisdom-seekers envisioned as an end oftheir contemplative life, this radical form ofself-transcendence left its deep impression on Hellenistic and Roman writers who domesticated it as a lit¬erary topos for romanticising the triumph ofIndian asceticism over that which is human, mortal and transitory (Halbfass,

1988:13). And yetthe influence ofIndia on Greco-Roman times is justone aspect ofa more intriguing story that predates Alexandros and the historical Buddha. Narratives of self-immolating sraman. as could and did find voice in pre-Hellenistic esoteric traditions that considered death by fire “a standard way of attaining heroic status” - especially by lightning, which was seen as “the purest form of fire” (Kingsley 1995a:258). Heroic acts of immortalization by

auto-cremation featured in Orphic mysteries and in the earliest traditions surrounding Herakles' fiery death on Mt. Oeta and Empedok- les' plunge into the active volcanic crater of Etna. So when, centuries later, the Greek Cynic Peregrinos (c.100-165 CE) staged his self-apotheosis on a pyre at the Olympic festival, he acted in the same way as the Olympic pancratiast Timan- thes ofKleonai had done six centuries before him in Peloponnesos, emulating the heroic sacrifice of Herakles (Paus. 6.8.4). Loukianos reports (nepl nqxypivou TEXEUT^Q) that Peregrinos burned himself publicly on stage not far from Olympia soon after delivering his own funeral oration. His devoted disciple Theagenes saw his master going up in smoke “riding upon the fire” (OXOVUEVOQ énl TOV nupoq) to join the immortal gods.

I wish to thank the University of Hong Kong for providing a research grant and the resources in support of this study as part of the research project “Entangled Histories between East and West: Sources and Interpretations for the Develop- mentofBuddhism in Hellenistic Central Asia,” hosted bythe Centre ofBuddhist Studies.



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