David Drewes argues compellingly in the JIABS that “no basis for treating the Buddha as a historical figure has yet been identified”
The position of David Drewes is simple but quite profound: we know nothing about a “historical Buddha” and reading sūtras or the vinaya as reflective of a historical reality (which is common practice even among secular scholars) is problematic.
Introduction
Although the western encounter with Buddhism goes back centuries, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, hardly anything was actually known, and the question of Buddhism’s origin remained completely open. Many authors felt comfortable treating the Buddha as historical, but opinions varied widely. The idea that the Buddha was from Africa, proposed by engelbert Kaempfer in the early eighteenth century, retained sufficient currency that Jean-Pierre Abel-rémusat, the leading french authority, devoted an article to refuting it in 1819 (Kaempfer 1727: 1.35–39, rémusat 1819; cf. Jones 1788: 352–353, lopez 2013: 133–139, 151–157). In 1825, horace hayman wilson, arguably the leading British authority, proposed a version of the so-called two-Buddha theory, according to which there was an elder Buddha who lived between the tenth and twelfth centuries B.C.E., and a younger one who lived in the sixth or seventh. he also suggested that Buddhism may have been brought to India from central Asia (wilson 1825a: 83–84, 1825b: 106–110). At the highest level of scholarship, the Buddha’s historicity was regarded as something that remained to be established. rémusat, though sympathetic to the idea that the Buddha was historical, suggested in his 1819 article that it was necessary to avoid “prejudging the question one could raise on the reality of the historical existence of the figure called Buddha” (rémusat 1819: 629). In 1827 henry colebrooke, the other leading British authority, similarly referred to the Buddha noncommittally as the “reputed author of the sútras” (558).
Versions of the tradition of former Buddhas had already been reported by several authors, going back to at least the seventeenth century, but the fact that it was found in hodgson’s Sanskrit texts, which were presumed to be significantly older and more authentic than anything previously available, pushed it to the fore as the central piece of evidence on Buddhism’s origin. hodgson tentatively treated the tradition as historical, writing that “it has not occurred to me at present to doubt the historical existence of Sákya’s six predecessors”; “Sákya is the last of the seven genuine Buddhas.” Trying to make sense of why Buddhist scriptures depict Śākyamuni, but not any of the other Buddhas, as their speaker, he suggested that Śākyamuni was “to Buddhism what Vyása [was] to Brahmanism,” in that he “collected and secured … the doctrines taught by his predecessors, and himself (hodgson 1828: 422, 445).
The two main scholars who established the Buddha’s historicity in scholarship were T.w. rhys davids and hermann oldenberg. Both focused on Pali texts, which had come to be generally accepted as older than hodgson’s Sanskrit texts, and used them to work up exciting depictions of the Buddha’s life and teaching. rather than using their texts to justify treating the Buddha as historical, however, they took the Buddha’s historicity as a premise and used it as the basis for interpreting their texts as historical records. Though many found their presentations compelling, this approach left both scholars unable to respond to doubts about the Buddha’s historicity in more than somewhat embarrassing ways. In his influential 1878 Encyclopædia Britannica article “Buddhism,” rhys davids comments (rhys davids 1878: 425; cf. 1877: 16–17). Two things are noteworthy here. first, rhys davids, the day’s leading advocate of the idea of the historical Buddha, presents nothing more robust than an ad populum argument: we know that the Buddha lived because people accept that he did. Second, however, his claim that scholars agreed that the legends preserve a “basis of truth … sufficiently clear to render possible an intelligible history” was not true.
In his 1927 Life of Buddha as Legend and History, Thomas presented the most in-depth analysis of the legends of the Buddha’s life published to that date. Though he believed firmly in the historical Buddha, he doubted whether any historical data could be located in the sources, and suggested that “historical criticism” is insufficient to “extract the thread of a credible story” (227). Addressing the question of the Buddha’s historicity, he quotes wilson’s old suggestion that the Buddha may have been an “unreal being” (Thomas 1927: xvii–xviii).
- Although André Bareau was an equally strong believer in the Buddha’s historicity, he also failed to add anything to the old arguments. In his 1966 “le Bouddhisme indien,” he notes the views of oldenberg, wilson, Senart, and Kern, and states merely that “nowadays, however, the most widespread opinion, founded on a greater knowledge of philological and archaeological sources, admits that there really was a man to whom one must attribute the founding of Buddhism, a man the principal features of whose life and personality can be found through a thorough criticism of the data” (17). we thus again see rhys davids’ old ad populum argument. Though Bareau states that current opinion is based on “a greater knowledge of the philological and archaeological sources,” in his own voluminous work on the matter he himself suggests that only a few minor details, such as the name Gautama, the names of a few of the Buddha’s disciples, and the Buddha’s death at Kuśinagara are most likely historical, though he concludes that even these are not certain ( 1963–1995: 1.379–385, 1974, 1979).
- None of these scholars made arguments from evidence. Although Thomas, lamotte, and Bareau were all strong advocates of the idea of the historical Buddha, they each concluded that no evidence could be identified.
For more recent comments on the lack of factual evidence for the Buddha, see:
Silk 1994: 183, walters 1998: 23–24, williams (2000) 2002: 25, christian wedemeyer quoted in Gombrich 2009: 193–194, App 2010: 136. Some have suggested that recent archaeological discoveries may be relevant to the question of the historical Buddha. coningham et al. present evidence of what seems to have been a tree shrine, dating to some time between the ninth and sixth centuries, found beneath the Aśokan layer at lumbinī. Presuming that the Buddha must have lived before the creation of the shrine, the authors suggest that it may represent “the first archaeological evidence for the date of the Buddha” (2013: 1108–1109, 1119). As several scholars have pointed out in online forums, however, there seems to be nothing to connect the pre-Aśokan shrine to Buddhism. It thus seems more likely that Buddhists appropriated an originally non-Buddhist shrine for the site of the Buddha’s birth. Skilling and von hinüber (2013) and Salomon and Marino (2014) present two recently discovered pillar inscriptions from Madhya Pradesh, apparently dating to the second century B.C.E., that record monastic lineages going back to the Buddha. As Salomon and Marino point out, however, there is no way to know the extent to which these lineages may have been fabricated (2014: 33). Because they represent assertions of legitimacy and prestige, unsubstantiated lineage claims cannot be treated as historical evidence, as has clearly been shown, e.g., by studies of early chan lineages. Though richard Gombrich scornfully rejects skepticism about the Buddha’s historicity in his What the Buddha Thought, surely the boldest recent publication on the matter, he does not present any clear argument to defend it (2009: 194).
In the decades since lamotte and Bareau, scholars of early Buddhism have continued to presume the Buddha’s historicity, without adding anything to the old attempts to establish it. early Buddhist authors make little effort to associate the Buddha with any specific human identity. familiar narratives of the Buddha’s life may seem to tell the story of a specific person, but these are only found in late, non-canonical texts. early texts, such as the suttas of the Pali canon, say hardly anything about the Buddha’s life, and identify him in only vague terms.
He appears primarily as a generic, omniscient, supra-divine figure characterized primarily in terms of supernatural qualities. Indeed, although this fact is almost invariably obscured in scholarship, early texts fail to provide us with a proper name. Though we often hear that the Buddha was Siddhārtha Gautama of the Śākya clan, the name Siddhārtha (and its variants, Sarvārthasiddha, etc.) is not attested in any early source. we do not, for example, find it used as a name for the Buddha anywhere in the Pali canon. linking the Buddha to the Śākyas certainly seems to provide realistic historical texture, but as wilson pointed out long ago, the Śākyas are not mentioned in any early non-Buddhist source (1832a: 7–8, 1856: 247). further, according to ancient tradition, the Śākyas were annihilated prior to the Buddha’s death, suggesting that Buddhist authors themselves may have been unaware of their existence. The entire clan could easily be entirely mythical (Bareau 1974: 268–69 and 1981; lamotte 1944– 1980: 1.508–509). This leaves only Gautama, which is not so much a name as an epithet identifying the Buddha as being associated with the Gautama gotra, one of eight ancient gotras, or lineages, recognized by Brahmanical tradition that are said to have descended from eight mythical ṛṣis. Though it is often presented as the Buddha’s surname, the term has a broader application than Śākya. All the Śākyas in Buddhist texts are Gautamas, and many others besides. central figures in other Indian traditions, including the upaniṣadic sage Yājñavalkya; Indrabhūti, said to have been Mahāvīra’s chief disciple; and the traditional founder of the Nyāya darśana, are also identified as Gautamas. On Gautama as a gotra name, see, e.g., Burnouf 1844: 155, oldenberg 1881: 420– 421, Thomas 1927: 22–23, Brough 1953: 5–6 and 5, n. 3.
