inscriptions cut into Firoz Shah’s Lat. ‘The Nagari inscriptions are easy & modern,’ Jones declared in a letter to a friend, ‘but all the old ones on the staff of Firuz-Shah drive me to despair.’ 14
This unreadable inscription was written in an alphabet made up of some thirty or so clearly defined characters that at first glance could be mistaken for Greek but patently were not. Jones’s Brahmin pandits who examined the script declared it tobe
Brahmi lipi
, or ‘writing of the god Brahma’ – a suitably romantic appellation that failed to catch on among the Europeans until well into the next century.
What Jones was able to establish was that the alphabet used on Firoz Shah’s Lat was the same as that found by Harrington at the Nagarjuni cave and on another set of rubbings sent to the Asiatic Society by a senior civil servant from western India. These had been taken from the walls of a number of man-made cave temples at Ellora, in the mountains inland from Bombay. 15
For no good reason, Jones now concluded that all three sets of inscriptions must in some way be associated with a conqueror or law-giver from Ethiopia: ‘I believe them to be Ethiopian, and to have been imported about a thousand years before Christ by the Bauddhas or priests and soldiers of the conqueror Sisac, whom the Hindus call the Lion of Sacya.’ This same Sisac or Sakya had, he supposed, travelled to India from Ethiopia ‘about a thousand years before Christ’, his title of Buddha, indicating an enlightened person, suggesting that he was ‘rather a benefactor than a destroyer of his species’. 16
What Jones also discovered was that his Brahmin pandits held strong views about this same Sakya or Buddha, declaring him to be not only a heretical leader of a false sect but also the ninth
avatar
or incarnation of the god Vishnu. This mirrored exactly what the Arab historian Abu al-Fazl had written in his
Ain-i-Akbari
, where he had remarked, ‘The Brahmans called Boodh the ninth Avatar, but assert that the religion which is ascribed to him is false.’
This paradox greatly puzzled Jones: ‘He [Buddha] seems to have been a follower of doctrines contained in the
Vedas;
and though his good nature led him to censure these ancient books,because they enjoined sacrifices of cattle, yet he is admitted as the ninth Avatar, even by the Brahmens of Casi [Kashi, the ancient sobriquet for Varanasi].’ 17 His solution was to propose that there had been two Buddhas: the first a revolutionary who ‘attempted to overturn the system of the Brahmans, and was the cause of their persecution of the Baudhas’; the second a Buddha who came later, ‘assuming the name and character of the first’.
Jones’s tentative thoughts on Buddha and Buddhism appeared in the first two issues of the
Asiatick Researches
, many times delayed but finally published in 1789. They provoked a flood of responses from friends and correspondents: among them, John Marsden in Sumatra, Captain Mahony in Ceylon, William Chambers in Madras, Lieutenant Francis Wilford in Varanasi, Henry Colebrooke in Mirzapur, John Harrington in Calcutta, and Francis Buchanan also in Bengal. These diverse correspondents were able to cite ancient Buddhist texts obtained in countries to the north, east and south of India, some written in Sanskrit but others in a language known as Pali, thought to have the same origins as Sanskrit, both apparently derived from a spoken language called Prakrit, ‘consisting of provincial dialects, which are less refined, and have a more imperfect grammar’. 18
All these foreign texts agreed that Buddhism had originated in India; specifically, the country of Magadha, ‘for above two thousand years a seat of learning, civilisation and trade’, and ‘the cradle of the religion of one of the most powerful and extensive sects of the world’. 19 There was further agreement that the founder of Buddhism was a historical figure named Sakyamuni or Gautama Buddha who had
This unreadable inscription was written in an alphabet made up of some thirty or so clearly defined characters that at first glance could be mistaken for Greek but patently were not. Jones’s Brahmin pandits who examined the script declared it tobe
Brahmi lipi
, or ‘writing of the god Brahma’ – a suitably romantic appellation that failed to catch on among the Europeans until well into the next century.
What Jones was able to establish was that the alphabet used on Firoz Shah’s Lat was the same as that found by Harrington at the Nagarjuni cave and on another set of rubbings sent to the Asiatic Society by a senior civil servant from western India. These had been taken from the walls of a number of man-made cave temples at Ellora, in the mountains inland from Bombay. 15
For no good reason, Jones now concluded that all three sets of inscriptions must in some way be associated with a conqueror or law-giver from Ethiopia: ‘I believe them to be Ethiopian, and to have been imported about a thousand years before Christ by the Bauddhas or priests and soldiers of the conqueror Sisac, whom the Hindus call the Lion of Sacya.’ This same Sisac or Sakya had, he supposed, travelled to India from Ethiopia ‘about a thousand years before Christ’, his title of Buddha, indicating an enlightened person, suggesting that he was ‘rather a benefactor than a destroyer of his species’. 16
What Jones also discovered was that his Brahmin pandits held strong views about this same Sakya or Buddha, declaring him to be not only a heretical leader of a false sect but also the ninth
avatar
or incarnation of the god Vishnu. This mirrored exactly what the Arab historian Abu al-Fazl had written in his
Ain-i-Akbari
, where he had remarked, ‘The Brahmans called Boodh the ninth Avatar, but assert that the religion which is ascribed to him is false.’
This paradox greatly puzzled Jones: ‘He [Buddha] seems to have been a follower of doctrines contained in the
Vedas;
and though his good nature led him to censure these ancient books,because they enjoined sacrifices of cattle, yet he is admitted as the ninth Avatar, even by the Brahmens of Casi [Kashi, the ancient sobriquet for Varanasi].’ 17 His solution was to propose that there had been two Buddhas: the first a revolutionary who ‘attempted to overturn the system of the Brahmans, and was the cause of their persecution of the Baudhas’; the second a Buddha who came later, ‘assuming the name and character of the first’.
Jones’s tentative thoughts on Buddha and Buddhism appeared in the first two issues of the
Asiatick Researches
, many times delayed but finally published in 1789. They provoked a flood of responses from friends and correspondents: among them, John Marsden in Sumatra, Captain Mahony in Ceylon, William Chambers in Madras, Lieutenant Francis Wilford in Varanasi, Henry Colebrooke in Mirzapur, John Harrington in Calcutta, and Francis Buchanan also in Bengal. These diverse correspondents were able to cite ancient Buddhist texts obtained in countries to the north, east and south of India, some written in Sanskrit but others in a language known as Pali, thought to have the same origins as Sanskrit, both apparently derived from a spoken language called Prakrit, ‘consisting of provincial dialects, which are less refined, and have a more imperfect grammar’. 18
All these foreign texts agreed that Buddhism had originated in India; specifically, the country of Magadha, ‘for above two thousand years a seat of learning, civilisation and trade’, and ‘the cradle of the religion of one of the most powerful and extensive sects of the world’. 19 There was further agreement that the founder of Buddhism was a historical figure named Sakyamuni or Gautama Buddha who had
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