Greco-Buddhist Synthesis

Well, we owe a lot of this cultural mingling to this guy, Alexander the Great, the king of Macedon who conquered a massive empire, stretching from Greece across Central Asia all the way to the Indus River, Hellenizing the populations along the way, introducing the Greek language, Greek philosophy, and Greek urban living.

by Andrew Henry

This is an ancient Buddhist inscription etched on a rock in eastern Afghanistan. It reads, Namo o-buddho, Namo o-dharmo, Namo o-sango. For centuries, Buddhists have recited some variation of this formula as an expression of Buddhist devotion, taking refuge or paying homage to the Three Jewels of Buddhism.

I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma, or his teachings. I take refuge in the Sangha, the Buddhist community.

Ancient Greek Buddhism

But for all you linguists in the audience, you’ll notice that this is not written in a Buddhist devotional language, like Sanskrit or Pali. This is a rough transliteration of Sanskrit into Greek. Well, technically Greco-Bactrian, a Hellenistic script directly based on the Greek alphabet.

It’s a little tough to see the Greek letters here because it’s in cursive and it’s carved on a rock. But you might recognize, for example, the letter Omega right here. So how is it that a Greco-Bactrian speaking Buddhist inscribed a Hellenized version of a Sanskrit mantra here in Afghanistan? Well, we owe a lot of this cultural mingling to this guy, Alexander the Great, the king of Macedon who conquered a massive empire, stretching from Greece across Central Asia all the way to the Indus River, Hellenizing the populations along the way, introducing the Greek language, Greek philosophy, and Greek urban living.

But the cultural exchange didn’t just go one way. The Buddha had died around 100 to 150 years before Alexander arrived on the scene. And around this time, the relatively new religion of Buddhism was starting to make inroads in this same region, resulting in a unique cultural synthesis sometimes called Greco-Buddhism.

So what do we know about the ancient Greeks who converted to Buddhism? Cultural exchange between the Greek Mediterranean world and what’s now Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwest India stretches as far back as the 500s BCE. The Greek historian Herodotus mentions a Greek explorer named Skylax, who went on an expedition for the Persian ruler Darius I, sailing down the Indus, across the Arabian Sea to the Suez. And archaeologists have also found a bunch of Greek coins circulating in the region as well.

So trade between these two regions was already ongoing well before Alexander arrived on the scene. But arrive he did, and in his wake came waves of Greek-speaking immigrants from the eastern Mediterranean, populating dozens of new Greek-style cities with familiar-sounding names if you’ve ever studied Greek or Roman history. Cities like Antioch, and of course, Alexandria.

There are so many Alexandrias here. Some scholars think the archaeological site Iqanum in Afghanistan was one of those Alexandrias. Alexandria on the Oxus, a city founded by Alexander’s general Seleucus on the Oxus River, which runs through Central Asia.

Now, this identification is debated, but whatever this city was originally called, historians call Iqanum an outpost of Hellenism in Central Asia. And by any measure, it was a Greek-style city with a Central Asia postal code. It had all the essentials for sophisticated Greek living.

A theater, gymnasium, and Greek columns everywhere. And it wasn’t just the architecture. Archaeologists have also found evidence of Greek religion and Greek philosophy here as well.

The gymnasium was dedicated to the god Hermes and the hero Hercules. Archaeologists have found a papyrus fragment of Greek philosophy here. And a local politician even inscribed a few maxims from the Oracle of Delphi on his tomb.

As one historian, Georgios Halkia, says, we’re clearly not talking about trading posts or military garrisons here. We’re talking about vibrant Greek cities that formed powerful Hellenistic kingdoms. First, you have the Seleucid Empire, which dominated the region until the ruler Diodotus I decided to shake things up and secede, forming his own independent kingdom that historians call the Greco-Bactrians.

Fast forward to the 2nd century BCE, the Greco-Bactrians invaded what’s now southern Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwest India, establishing dynasties that historians call the Indo-Greek kingdoms. These were kingdoms with diverse populations, descendants of Greek-speaking people from the Mediterranean, integrating with Indians, Persians, and other Central Asian people groups. Greeks were taking Indian names and Indians were taking Greek names.

And with all of this cultural exchange, sure enough, we start to see religious exchange as well. We see a fascinating example of possible Buddhist and Greek crossover with the philosopher Pyrrho of Elis. Pyrrho traveled with Alexander to India as part of Alexander’s entourage.

And yes, Alexander traveled with a bunch of philosophers while at war, because who doesn’t need some existential debate while on the battlefield? Greek sources report that Alexander and his mobile philosophy department spent a lot of time interacting with Indian philosophers, and this was deliberate. Alexander’s philosophers sought out audiences with them, some of whom were probably Buddhists. Pyrrho himself spent months and possibly years in northwest India, as well as the city of Taksila in Pakistan.

And according to the Greek biographer Diogenes Laertius, it was here that he met with the gymnosophists of India, the so-called naked wise men. And this led him to adopt a most noble philosophy. Now, we don’t know who these naked sages were, presumably some sort of Indian ascetic group, and it’s possible they were not even Buddhist, but a lot of scholars think they were.

And in any case, Pyrrho returned home to develop a pretty Buddhist-y sounding philosophy. To finish that quote from Diogenes, this led him to adopt a most noble philosophy, taking the form of agnosticism and suspension of judgment. He denied that anything was honorable or dishonorable, just or unjust.

And so universally, he held that there is nothing really existent. In other words, Pyrrho was suggesting a radical disengagement from the judgments and dualities that plague our perceptions. One of Pyrrho’s students, Timon, adds more layers in a surviving fragment.

Pyrrho declared that things are equally undifferentiated, unmeasurable, and undecidable. For this reason, neither our sensations nor our opinions tell us the truth or falsehoods. Therefore, for this reason, we should not put our trust in them one bit, but we should be unopinionated, uncommitted, and unwavering.

Many have noted that this sounds like a radical form of skepticism. Pyrrho was basically saying that we can’t trust our senses and reasoning, and so we shouldn’t trust dogmatic opinions about the nature of reality. But scholars have noted that his ideas don’t just sound like generic philosophical skepticism, but specifically, ideas found in early Buddhist thought, especially ideas found in the Madhyamaka school, traditionally founded by the Buddhist philosopher, Nagarjuna.

The Madhyamaka school developed philosophies about the nature of reality, particularly the concept of shunyata, or emptiness, meaning that all phenomena are devoid or empty of intrinsic existence, which sounds a lot like Pyrrho’s belief that there’s nothing really existent. Moreover, both Madhyamaka and Peronian thought employed the logical tool known as the Tetralemma when evaluating a truth claim. It’s called a Tetralemma instead of a Dilemma because it has four parts.

Proposition can be true, not true, both true and not true, or neither true nor not true. The Tetralemma is very popular in Indian philosophy, so its appearance in Pyrrho’s philosophy is notable. Peronian texts also say that the ultimate goal of this suspension of judgment is to attain Ataraxia, a state of serene tranquility, which some have compared to the Buddhist concept of awakening.

By not adhering to rigid beliefs and acknowledging the uncertainty and contradictions in all truth claims, one can remain undisturbed by the world’s variability. These connections led Nietzsche himself to call Pyrrho a Buddhist for Greece. Now, to be clear, this connection has not been definitively proven, and critics of the theory have pointed out that the Madhyamaka school emerged a few hundred years after Pyrrho, but many scholars think that there are too many connections with early Buddhist philosophy to be a coincidence.

In the centuries after Alexander the Great, Buddhism expanded into these regions with a little help from one of the most famous Buddhist emperors of all time, Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty, who governed almost the entire Indian subcontinent from around 268 to 232 BCE. Like many larger-than-life historical figures, later generations crafted all sorts of fantastic legends about him, and for the longest time, that’s really all we knew about him as a historical figure until 1837. That’s when the Brahmi script was deciphered, and suddenly historians realized they had near-direct access to Ashoka himself, by translating the Edicts of Ashoka.

In one inscription, he declares, Notice here that formulation of the three jewels. As it turns out, Ashoka was less about the conquering and more about the converting. Well, at least initially.

Ashoka may have had a dramatic conversion experience himself, and a few times in his Edicts he references being overcome with remorse for having ordered the deaths of tens of thousands of people in his conquests. One Edict reads, After turning to Buddhism, he apparently sponsored missionary efforts across his kingdom and abroad, even sending missionaries as far away as the Mediterranean. The conquest by Dharma, this has been won repeatedly by Ashoka, both here and among all borderers.

And he goes on to name-drop Hellenistic kings, like Antiochus II of Syria and Ptolemy II of Egypt. If he’s not exaggerating, this means that Buddhist missionaries were mingling with Egyptians and Greeks by the 3rd century BCE. In the same Edict, he then says that the Greeks closer to home were also being converted.

Likewise, here in the king’s territory, among the Greeks, everywhere people are conforming to Ashoka’s instruction in Dharma. These Edicts were multilingual, with Aramaic and Greek translations side-by-side. And historians think that these Edicts were made specifically to introduce Buddhist ethics among the Hellenic people of Asia.

And we see hints of Buddhism being repackaged for a Greek-speaking audience. In another inscription, the concept of Dharma was translated with the Greek word Eusebia. Eusebia, like Dharma, is a semantically rich word that we could translate as piety, reverence towards the gods, or filial respect.

Ashoka’s Greek translators apparently chose this as the best way to translate the Buddha’s message. Ashoka called his efforts a Dharma conquest, and even references a special rank within his government called Dharma commissioners, presumably some sort of government official who traveled around helping to establish Buddhism in major towns and cities. And his efforts apparently worked.

One Edict references those who are devoted to Dharma among the Greeks and Persians. Greeks were starting to convert to Buddhism. Chief among them was King Menander, the most famous Greek who converted to Buddhism, at least according to the historian Olga Kubica.

Well, it’s tricky, because it’s possible that there were two King Menanders. King Menander I, who ruled an Indo-Greek kingdom from 165 to 130 BCE, and a later King Menander II, who may have been his grandson. But in any case, a King Menander is the main character in an early Buddhist text, the Melinda Panha, or Melinda’s Questions.

This text possibly dates as far back as 100 BCE, and it’s a philosophical dialogue between King Melinda, identified usually as King Menander I, and a Buddhist monk named Nagasena. In the text, Menander plays the skeptic, grilling Nagasena with a bunch of questions about Buddhism. But Nagasena expertly answers each and every question.

And finally, Menander decides to convert. While the text probably describes a legendary encounter, other evidence supports the broad outlines of the story, that an Indo-Greek king named Menander converted to Buddhism. For example, check out the so-called Shingkat Reliquary.

This was a round stone container discovered in northern Pakistan, and is said to have originally held a casket inside it with some ashes. An inscription on the lid of the box references the reign of Maharaja Menedra, the great King Menander. It goes on to describe that it holds the bodily relics of the Lord the Shakya Sage, the Buddha himself.

Now, this inscription is not much to go off of, and it doesn’t definitively prove that Menander was a practicing Buddhist himself, but it does suggest he’s more than just a fan, and maybe even a patron of Buddhism. Menander may have commissioned reliquaries like this, and endowed buildings called stupas to house them, perhaps to gain public favor, moral authority, or enhance his own legitimacy as a ruler. Most scholars identify this Menander as Menander I, whose fame even stretched back to the Mediterranean world.

Plutarch writes that Menander I died in a military camp, and his ashes were equally distributed among several cities, and stored in what he calls memorials, which scholars think is a reference to stupas. If Plutarch is right, this may lend credibility to the idea that Menander I had converted, and may have even achieved an exalted status as an awakened being, with his Buddhist subjects venerating his relics. So it looks like, by the reign of Menander I, Buddhism was already becoming established in the Indo-Greek elite circles.

Menander’s son Strato issued coins like this one, where he’s labeled as Dharmakasa, follower of the Dharma. And over the centuries, we start to see evidence for religious syncretism, or hybridization. Check out this coin of Menander II, which shows the god Zeus enthroned, next to the goddess Nike, and right here, the Dharmachakra, the eight-spoke wheel of Dharma that represents the Buddha’s teachings.

The historian Georgios Halkias, who I mentioned earlier, has argued that Indo-Greek religious attitudes may have helped this syncretism. He says, for the most part, the Indo-Greeks were followers of several Hellenistic and foreign cults. So, adopting the hero-cult image of the Buddha would have been embraced without much difficulty, along with all the ritual practices that go along with everyday Buddhism.

Reciting prayers, propitiating deities, venerating relics, and so on. Greco-Buddhism also sometimes refers to an artistic movement, though modern historians criticize the terminology. See, scholars have long noticed that ancient Buddhist artwork from Gondora, now northwest Pakistan and northeastern Afghanistan, seems to be influenced by Greek artistic methods, or even crafted by Greek artists.

For example, Buddhist sculptures like these portray the Buddha or the Bodhisattva Maitreya with real-to-life features, wearing a robe resembling draperies seen in Greek sculptures. Back in the early 20th century, the French scholar Alfred Fouché coined the phrase Greco-Buddhism to refer to these sculptures, saying all these technical details indicate in a striking manner the hand of an artist from some Greek studio. Basically, Fouché was arguing that only Greeks could produce such masterpieces.

This, of course, is not true. Local artists definitely could make these, and so historians have since debated how to characterize this art. The historian Olga Kubica argues that we can’t exclude the idea that Greek artists manufactured them, but we also can’t assess their role accurately.

Others argue that these sculptures, and others like them, actually date to a century or more after the Indo-Greek kingdoms fell, so it’s more likely that these works stemmed from later interactions with the Roman Empire, with local artists imitating imported Roman art, or Roman artists moving to Gondora to create prestigious commissions for local wealthy connoisseurs. Regardless, it’s clear that Buddhist art from this time borrowed Greco-Roman imagery, like figures resembling Hercules and the goddess Tyche. These two appear in the artwork of the Kushan dynasty, and the iconography appears to have been borrowed to represent local deities or bodhisattvas.

The bodhisattva Vajrapani, for example, is frequently depicted as a Hercules-like figure. Vajrapani is recognized as a protector and companion of the Buddha, and these artists apparently were familiar with Hercules as a powerful hero, and used these attributes to communicate Vajrapani’s own qualities as a guardian. Likewise, local goddesses like Ardakso and Hariti are sometimes portrayed with the attributes of the Greek goddess Tyche, holding a big cornucopia or a ship rudder.

Examples like this are often labeled as syncretism, commonly understood as the blending or mixing of different religious traditions, but I think syncretism is often oversimplified. The term itself implies two distinct monolithic entities, Hellenistic culture on one side and Buddhism on the other side, merging like a Venn diagram. But in real-world scenarios, ideas, practices, and artistic expressions from different cultures often combine and influence each other in complex and asymmetrical ways.

Scholars in recent years describe syncretism more as a process of indigenization or localization, when individuals in a local culture actively seek to make sense of another culture in their own terms and idioms. The Greek translator who decided to translate Ashoka’s Dharma with the Greek word Eusebio was engaging in syncretism, trying to make sense of a different concept in their own terms, quite literally, their own Greek term. Compare this to the inscription from the beginning of this video.

Whoever carved this inscription decided not to fully translate the original mantra into Greco-Bactrian words, but still used Greco-Bactrian letters so the mantra could be read and pronounced. The pronunciation and legibility mattered more than the meaning, like how Christians today might sing Hallelujah without knowing the word’s original Hebrew meaning. Greco-Buddhism thus illustrates the often deliberate and selective adaptation that occurs when different cultures meet.

Dr. Andrew Henry is a scholar of religion and the creator of Religion for Breakfast. He launched the channel in 2014 to address the lack of educational content about religion available on YouTube. Andrew holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Boston University, where he focused on magic and demonology in the late Roman Empire.