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In the words of Jonathan Silk (1994: 183), the Buddha ‘is essentially historically unknowable’, there being ‘no certain evidence even that such a man lived … there is no actual “fact” or set of “facts” to which any picture of the Buddha might correspond.’ Bernard Faure (2016) allows the Buddha a little more leeway than this. In answering the question ‘what do we actually know about the Buddha?’, he comments that while ‘[i]t is fair to say that he was born, he lived, and he died … [t]he rest remains lost in the mists of myth and legend’.

The Buddha as a creation of nineteenth century Orientalist imagination is a feature of a recent paper by David Drewes, who has claimed that late Victorian scholars created a ‘flesh and blood person … from little more than fancy’ (2017: 1). Extending the perspective of Jonathan Silk, Drewes stresses the failure of ‘more than two centuries of scholarship’ to ‘establish anything’ (2017: 1), and sketches a depressing story of scholarly failure since Burnouf (2017: 15).

What is proof?

Good evidence for the Buddha would perhaps be his mention in a non-Buddhist document from the fifth century BC. Although no such document exists, at least one Indian religious figure from the fifth century BC is mentioned in an objective source: Mahāvīra, founder of the Jains and a contemporary of the Buddha, is mentioned in the early Buddhist texts. Were we to believe this non-Jain evidence for Mahāvīra, it would leave us in a quite curious situation. even if we do not accept the Buddhist depiction of either Mahāvīra or the Buddha, canonical Buddhist texts are the only possible source of evidence about the Buddha; material evidence for the very earliest period of Buddhism is nonexistent. what, then, should we make of the Tipiṭakas of various Buddhist schools, a complete version of which exists in the Pāli tradition, but with large collections also in Chinese, Sanskrit, Tibetan and (now) Gāndhārī translation? Scepticism is only one of many possible approaches to canonical Buddhist literature. Bronkhorst (2000: ix) has summed up the three most common opinions as follows:

• i. stress on the fundamental homogeneity and substantial authenticity of at least a considerable part of the Nikāyic materials;
• ii. scepticism with regard to the possibility of retrieving the doctrine of earliest Buddhism;
• iii. cautious optimism in this respect.

The first position is more or less that of the Theravāda tradition: the Pāli canon is authentic, and while academic study can help recover obscure aspects of early Buddhism, there is no doubt about the general nature of the Buddha’s teaching. Most critical studies, however starting with scholars such as T. W. Rhys Davids and Hermann Oldenberg, incline towards the third position, and assume that careful scholarship can reveal ‘facts’ about the Buddha and early Buddhism. Both scholars, and many more after them, have presented arguments about early Buddhism based more or less entirely on the texts. In short, sceptics must present ‘proofs’; they must argue that the content of the Tipiṭaka(s) is of such a nature that the Buddha’s historicity cannot be assumed, and is indeed quite unlikely. This point has been elegantly made by e. J. Thomas, author of the influential Life of Buddha as Legend and History (1927).

Sceptics such as Drewes fail to understand that such a claim as ‘we do not know how Buddhism originated’ is a thesis which requires ‘proof’. Drewes’ analysis is mistaken in another respect. He claims that E. J. Thomas followed ‘Rhys Davids’ old ad populum argument’ (2017: 13). But neither Thomas nor Rhys Davids claimed anything like ‘we know that X is the case because most people believe that it is’. While Thomas refers to the ‘generally accepted view’ that the Buddha existed, he makes it quite clear that the reason for its acceptance is its persuasive power. Thomas’ point goes something like this: ‘Most scholars accept the Buddha’s existence as a far more credible thesis than the sceptical view that he did not exist’; this is quite different from the ad populum claim ‘I accept it because it is the majority opinion.’

Buddhist texts, Buddhist myth

Gregory Schopen has provided a succinct overview of the sceptical reading of canonical Buddhist literature:

We know, and have known for some time, that the Pali canon as we have it – and it is generally conceded to be our oldest source – cannot be taken back further than the last quarter of the first century B.C.E, the date of the Alu-vihara redaction, the earliest redaction that we can have some knowledge of, and that – for a critical history – it can serve, at the very most, only as a source for the Buddhism of this period. But we also know that even this is problematic since, as Malalasekera has pointed out: “…how far the Tipiṭaka and its commentaries reduced to writing at Alu-vihāra resembled them as they have come down to us now, no one can say.” In fact, it is not until the time of the commentaries of Buddhaghosa, Dhammapala, and others – that is to say, the fifth to sixth centuries C.e. – that we can know anything definite about the actual contents of this canon ( Schopen 1997: 23-24).

Thus the Buddha of the early texts is equivalent to apparently fictitious characters of the ancient world such as Abraham, Moses, lao-tzu, Vyāsa and Vālmīki:
[T]he traditions associated with each of these figures were founded by multiple people whose roles were later either obscured or effaced. Most religious traditions with premodern origins do not preserve an actual memory of their initial formation. Since the actual processes tend to be complex, difficult to remember, and not particularly edifying, they tend to be overwritten with simpler, mythical accounts. (2017: 18)
The mythological tendency was apparently richly and vividly elaborated in classical India:
In ancient India, attributing the origin of family lineages, religious traditions, and texts to mythical figures was not only the norm, but the rule, with very few known exceptions predating the Common Era. (2017: 19)
It follows that even the Buddha’s family were an invention:
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. 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. (2017: 17)

1. Drewes concludes that early Buddhist texts give no reasonable grounds to conclude that we know anything about the Buddha, or even if such a person existed: Though there has long been an industry devoted to the production of sensational claims about the Buddha, nothing about him has ever been established as fact, and the standard position in scholarship has long been that he is a figure about whom we know nothing. My only real suggestion is that we make the small shift from speaking of an unknown, contentless Buddha to accepting that we do not have grounds for speaking of a historical Buddha at all. Of course, it is possible that there was some single, actual person behind the nebulous “śramaṇa Gautama” of the early texts, but this is very far from necessarily the case, and even if such a person did exist, we have no idea who he was. There may similarly have been an actual person behind the mythical Agamemnon, Homer, or King Arthur; Vyāsa, Vālmīki, kṛṣṇa, or Rāma, but this does not make it possible to identify them as historical. If we wish to present early Buddhism in a manner that accords with the standards of scientific, empirical inquiry, it is necessary to acknowledge that the Buddha belongs to this group. (2017: 19)

The formation of the Tipiṭaka

The sceptical estimation of the antiquity of canonical Buddhist literature is not remotely credible. Canonical fragments are included in the Golden Pāli Text, found in a reliquary from Śrī kṣetra dating to the late 3rd or early 4th century AD; they agree almost exactly with extant Pāli manuscripts (Stargardt 1995), Falk 1997). This means that the Pāli Tipiṭaka has been transmitted with a high degree of accuracy for well over 1,500 years. There is no reason why such an accurate transmission should not be projected back a number of centuries, at the least to the period when it was written down in the first century BC, and probably further. A few key facts suggest this (see Rhys Davids 1911, especially chapter VIII), wynne 2005), Anālayo 2012), Sujato and Brahmali 2015):
Indian Inscriptions from the 2nd and 1st century BC indicate indicates the existence of a substantial Buddhist canon, in the form resembling the extant Pali Tipiṭaka; the Aśokan inscriptions suggest a mass of such material was already in existence considerably more than a century earlier.
Canonical Buddhist texts are the product of a complex system of oral recitation, intended to ensure accurate transmission. Scepticism about the reliability of this means of transmission is unwarranted: information about the Buddha could have been preserved for hundreds of years before the Buddhist canons were transmitted in writing.
After the Buddha’s death, the early Buddhist tradition did not appoint a leader to direct the work of composition/transmission. The work must have been carried out within a decentralised network. Hence there was no central committee which exercised editorial control, and if so, invention would have resulted in a plurality of perspectives and significant disagreement. The general lack of such disagreement suggests against invention.

So a large canon, organised already into the divisions of the extant Pāli Tipiṭaka, existed in the Mauryan period, allowing Aśoka not only to name individual texts (in his Calcutta- Bairāṭ edict) (Norman 1992: xxix-xxx), but also to allude to many more texts throughout his inscriptions (Sujato & Brahmali, 2015: 86-90). Although there is no evidence for writing before Aśoka, the accuracy of oral transmission should not be underestimated. In the Pāsādika Sutta (DN III.127-28) the Buddha tells his followers to ‘recite communally and not argue, so that the holy life will be long lasting and endure’. This is to be done by ‘meeting together again and again, (comparing) meaning with meaning (atthena atthaṃ), (comparing) letter with letter (byañjanena byañjanaṃ)’ (Wynne 2004:115). Many more canonical texts say the same thing, and so suggest a concern to ensure accurate transmission even when the Buddha was alive. Indeed, a common refrain, contained in more than 150 discourses and uttered by the Buddha as he is about teach, requests everyone to listen very carefully: ‘Well then … listen, pay close attention, I will speak.’ (tena hi … suṇohi sādhukaṃ manasi-karohi bhāsissāmi). The Aṭṭhakavagga (Suttanipāta IV) is even said to have been recited in the Buddha’s presence (Udāna 46).

The focus of comparative endeavour was doctrine: the words and meaning (pada-vyañjana) of the teachings. Such things as persons and places were not under consideration, and this means that the agreement of contextual aspects of the teachings is historically significant. For the early tradition was acephalous: the Buddha refused to appoint a successor, and there is no evidence for a Buddhist ‘pope’ or ‘Saṅgha-rāja’ in the entire Indian tradition. The general agreement of incidental details, probably unchecked and possibly ‘uncheckable’, lends support to their historical veracity:

[F]or a document of such scale constructed from multiple oral sources, [the Tipiṭaka] contains very few inconsistencies. This lends credibility to its authenticity. Within a decentralised ascetic culture, and in an age of oral composition, it would have been difficult — perhaps almost impossible — to fabricate a coherent version of the Buddhist past. The significant disagreements to be expected of a multi-authored imagination of the past are more or less completely absent, a fact which rules against large-scale invention. (Wynne 2018: 256

Stones and bones (the Sanchi relics)

Apart from lumbinī, which has layers going back to the 5th century BC and earlier (Gombrich, 2013), remains attesting the existence of the Buddhism exist from the Mauryan period (mid 3rd century BC) onwards. A coincidence of epigraphy and post-canonical Buddhist literature was noted by Erich Frauwallner in his seminal The Earliest Vinaya and the Beginnings of Buddhist Literature (1956). The Pāli commentaries and Sinhalese chronicles state that a number of Buddhist missions, in groups of five, were sent out during the reign of Aśoka. The number ‘five’ is important, as it is the minimum number of monks required to ordain new monks in distant lands, according to the Vinaya. The names of the missionaries apparently despatched to the Himalayas were found inscribed on two reliquaries from Sanchi, or ancient Vedisā,17 where they are called ‘Himalayan’ (Hemavata) monks. The inscriptions thus confirm the Pāli accounts of Aśokan missions, and this lends credibility to other textual details, such as the claim that the group led by Mahinda to Sri Lanka stopped in Vedisā on the way. The wording of the edict suggests that Aśoka’s ‘Dharma victory’ was achieved by envoys (dūtas), and not other Aśokan officials such as ‘Dhamma ministers’, as has sometimes been assumed (Norman, 2004: 70, 79). This agrees with the account in the Pāli chronicles, for example the Mahāvaṃsa (XI: 33-35), which states that Aśokan envoys (dūtas) carried ‘palm-leaf messages with the true doctrine’ (saddhamma-paṇṇākāraṃ).

Stones and bones (the Piprahwa relics)

A few other inscriptions go further than this by confirming a few details in the Pali Tipiṭaka. Although Drewes claims (2017: 17) that ‘the Śākyas are not mentioned in any early non-Buddhist source’, this ignores the Piprahwa reliquary, which dates to the late 3rd century BC or not long afterwards (Falk, 2017: 60) and refers to the Sakyas:
sukitibhatinaṃ sabhagiṇikanaṃ saputadalanaṃ iyaṃ salilanidhane budhasa bhagavate yanaṃ.
Falk argues that the inscription refers to the rehousing (nidhane) of a portion of the Buddha’s bones. This portion of relics probably established in lumbinī by Aśoka (Falk 2017: 50, 55, 67); for some reason these relics were then moved to a new stūpa (Falk 2017: 58ff) in Piprahwa, under the care of the Sakyas:
Seen this way, the dimension of the statement changes completely, from a simple “this is the reliquary box [nidhane] of the Śākyas holding the relics of the Buddha” to mean “this whole stūpa construction has been installed [nidhane] by us Śākyas for the relics of the Buddha.” (Falk 2017: 60)
The Piprahwa inscription thus offers material support for the historical reality of the Sakyas, situated more or less exactly where the canonical texts place them. even if the exact site of kapilavatthu has yet not been definitely fixed, Guptaera seals from Piprahwa, recording the ‘Kapilavastu monastic community’ (kapilavastu-bhikhu-saṃgha),23 show that Kapilavatthu was nearby, indicated in the canonical text

Stones and bones (the Deorkothar inscription)

Recent papers by Salomon and Marino (2014) and before them Skilling and von Hinüber (2013) have drawn attention to two recently discovered, early second century BC inscriptions from Deorkothar. Salomon and Marino (2014: 30-31, 37) consider the date of 200 BC, offered by von Hinüber and Skilling (2013: 13-14), as slightly too early. The inscriptions record lineages associated with Anuruddha, a prominent disciple of the Buddha. Inscription 1 mentions the kukkuṭika-Bahusutiya school (line 5: kokuḍikena bahūsūtiy[e]), where kokuḍika- is derived from the kukkuṭārāma monastery of the nearby ancient city of kosambī, capital of Cedi/Vatsa, a region associated with Anuruddha in the Pāli Suttas. The term bahūsūtiya- refers to the Bahuśrutīyas, a branch of the Mahāsāṃghikas which in later accounts of the Buddhist sects is closely aligned with the kukkuṭikas.

A pre-imperial world

Early Buddhist realism, or what committees do not invent

We read of kings, queens, princes, children, farmers, merchants, mendicants, wanderers, Brahmins, grizzled ascetics, faithful (and not so faithful) lay-disciples, parks, meeting-halls, roads, villages, market-towns, cities, kingdoms, seasons, flora, fauna, customs, habits, politics, economics, culture, musicians, courtesans, drunks, gamblers, and on and on. The attempt to describe a whole world should not be underestimated; nor should the fact that later Buddhist texts lose this realistic perspective entirely. Remarkably, the attempt to record time and place is internally consistent, no mean feat given the scale of the literary endeavour. If such realistic attention was given to wildlife, trades, hobbies and so on, we should not assume the treatment of the Buddha to be any different. Thus we should pause to consider whether the following details could be mythic inventions:

• Major sites associated with the Buddha were insignificant in the 5 th century BC. Kapilavatthu was a minor market-town along the northern trade route; lumbinī was still an insignificant locality in the Aśokan period (Falk (2017: 56); and kusināra is called a ‘minor town, a barren town, a provincial town’ in the Mahāparibbāna Sutta (DN II.147). It would have served no purpose to place the story of a mythic hero in these backwaters.
• Perhaps most surprising of all, apart from the Vinaya Mahāvagga’s mythic and late account of Buddhist beginnings – studied in the next section – hardly any Pāli Suttas are set in Uruvelā/Gayā (i.e. Bodhgayā) after the initial events surrounding the awakening. If the canonical discourses are to believed, the Buddha barely returned to the place where he achieved his awakening.
• The first person to visit the Buddha after the awakening is an Ājīvika ascetic who disregards the Buddha’s rather grandiose claims. Not only is this ascetic sceptical of the Buddha, he also speaks with touches of an Eastern dialect different from regular Pāli. The area around Uruvelā/Bodhgayā is thus depicted as non-Buddhist territory in terms of language and religious culture; of course, this fits with the story that immediately before the awakening the Buddha had been practising severe austerities (MN 38).
• In the Sāmaññaphala Sutta (Dn 2), set in Rājagaha, capital of Magadha and not very far from Uruvelā, king Ajātasattu is said to have heard of other religious leaders, but is unaware of the Buddha and cannot recognise him when he visits him; it appears that while other, more ascetic, teachers were renowned in Magadha, the Buddha was not.

Canonical Buddhist texts mostly locate the Buddha in the kingdom of Kosala, particularly its capital Sāvatthī; king Pasenadi of kosala even states that ‘the Blessed One is a Kosalan’. Although the Buddha is a frequent visitor to Rājagaha, he is represented as a marginal figure in its more ascetic religious climate. Given the importance of Magadha in Indian Buddhism, starting with Aśoka, its depiction as less than central to the Buddha’s career is remarkable; the consistent depiction of Magadha as not quite, but almost, a fringe area of early Buddhist activity can only go back to the pre-imperial age. A similar heritage is suggested by a couple of peculiarities contained in the account of the Buddha’s death.

• Although the Buddha says his relics should be placed in thūpas at the sites of his birth, awakening, first sermon and death, the relics were instead distributed to local clans and various kingdoms.44 A mythic invention would not include such an obvious discrepancy.
• no representative from Sāvatthī comes to claim a share of the Buddha’s relics. And yet not only is Sāvatthī closer than the capital cities of some of the other kingdoms mentioned in the account (i.e. Rājagaha and Vesālī), as we have seen it is also central to the canonical account of the Buddha’s life. But this absence fits a historical tradition, mentioned in the Pāli commentaries, of hostility between Kosala and the Sakyas at the time of the Buddha’s death, soon leading to a battle in which the Sakyas were massacred.

Mythic elaboration: the first sermon and the five disciples

We have seen that early Buddhist texts are pre-imperial, realistic and contain numerous peculiarities in their depiction of places and persons associated with the Buddha. None of this looks like a mythic creation. At best, the canonical discourses make a number of excursions into myth, but these are always easy to identify. A simple example is the Mahāpadāna Sutta, which besides elaborating the myth of seven Buddhas, also refers to Kapilavatthu as a ‘royal city’ (rājadhānī). This term is only applied to mythic places in the Pāli canon, whereas Kapilavatthu is a small town in the early texts; Ānanda even fails to mention it among the great cities in which the Buddha could have died, despite it being not far from kusināra, and certainly closer than four cities he mentions (D II.146: Sāvatthī, Sāketa, kosambī and Bārāṇasī). A mythic elaboration of a pre-mythic core of textual realism can also be seen in the Vinaya Mahāvagga account of the beginning of the Buddha’s mission. This account constitutes a small part of what, according to Erich Frauwallner, was once a lengthy myth, composed around the time of the second Buddhist council of Vesālī (mid-late 4th century BC) and concluding with an account of this council. Regardless of Frauwallner’s reconstruction, the Vinaya Mahāvagga opens with a thoroughly miraculous version of Buddhist beginnings, a good example being the Buddha’s conversion of the kassapa ascetics (in Uruvelā) through a series of fire miracles (Vin I.24ff). The account of the conversion of the first disciples (Vin I.9ff) is also somewhat remarkable. All are said to attain ‘vision into the Dhamma’ (dhamma-cakkhu): koṇḍañña’s attainment is first, followed by Vappa and Bhaddiya, and then Mahānāma and Assaji. with koṇḍañña’s realisation, the event at which ‘the wheel of Dhamma’ was ‘set in motion’ (pavattite … dhammacakke), various classes of deities announce the good news, in a relay of information which resounds throughout the cosmos (Vin I.11-12).

Soon enough, all the disciples go beyond their preliminary ‘Dhamma vision’ by attaining liberation, as the Buddha delivers not-self teachings (Vin I.13-14)

The idiosyncratic Buddha

We have seen that the canonical discourses are full of unexpected and nonmythic details about persons and places related to the Buddha. It is hardly surprising that the Buddha is described in similar terms. we can first of all note a few details about his relatives:

• His father Suddhodana, his mother Māyā, his son Rāhula, his aunt Pajāpatī, his half-brother nanda and paternal cousin Tissa are all named in the canon. The Buddha is never said to have had a wife; Rāhula’s mother is anonymous and referred to merely as ‘Rāhula’s mother’

These few details show that the early Buddhist do not present ‘an unknown, contentless Buddha’ (Drewes, 2017: 19). But there is much more content about the Buddha than this. Sujato and Brahmali have shown that the early teachings ‘leave room for many quirky details about the Buddha that convey a realistic flavour; despite the awkwardness they were not removed’ (2015: 74). Such ‘quirky’ details include (2015: 74-75):

• The Buddha sleeping on a pile of leaves in the winter (AN 3.35);
• The Buddha washing his own feet (MN 31); • The Buddha being seen as a simple bhikkhu, and not being recognised (MN 140);
• The Buddha claiming to enjoy going to the toilet (AN 8.86);
• The Buddha teaching Pasenadi how to lose weight (SN 3.13);
• The Buddha avoiding Brahmin householders, because they are noisy (AN 5.30);

• The Buddha dismissing monks because they are noisy, but then changing his mind because lay people persuade him (MN 67);
• The Buddha complaining of back pain and then lying down in a Dhamma talk (MN 53);
• The Buddha warming his back in the sun; his skin is flaccid and wrinkly, his body stooped (SN 48.41);
• Bhaddāli refusing to keep the Buddha’s rule about eating after midday (MN 65);
• The Buddha dying of bloody diarrhoea (DN 16).

The early texts even contain unflattering details about the Buddha, such as the story that he became annoyed with the bhikkhu Upavāṇa, who was fanning him just before he died (DN II.138-39). Such details are valuable in their own right, but much more important is the fact that they convey a sense of the Buddha as a person. Moreover, the Buddha’s personality can be seen to run directly into early Buddhist teaching, which cannot be separated from it:

The EBTs present a highly distinctive personal style, together with a number of revolutionary ideas, which conveys the flavour of a single and exceptional creator. This can be seen in a number of aspects of the EBTs, such as the large number of similes, analogies and metaphors that are vivid, precise in application, realistic and local, and formal in presentation; the analytical approach to language, which was unknown before the Buddha; use of irony and humour; and internal consistency and coherence. Moreover, many of the ideas presented in the EBTs are revolutionary for the time. This distinctive personal style is quite different from anything found in other Buddhist literature, or even in the Upaniṣads. (SB 2105: 67)

EBTs, working out their consequences, and systematising them’ (SB 2105: 72). Apart from lacking the innovation of the EBTs, later Buddhist literature

consists almost entirely of Buddhists speaking to other Buddhists. This difference makes sense if we consider that the EBTs largely stem from the life of the founder, one of whose tasks was to persuade others to his path. (SB 2105: 27)

If the founder had an original and vital message to transmit, it explains much about the focus of the early teachings:

The EBTs are interested in the Dhamma, while after the Buddha’s death interest shifted to his life story. The EBTs display little interest in the Buddha’s biography. This is in stark contrast to other Buddhist literature. This is most naturally explained by the EBTs stemming mainly from the Buddha himself. He was interested in teaching the Dhamma, not telling his life story. (SB 2105: 79)

Impersonalism is prominent throughout the canonical teachings. It can be seen in the Buddha asking King Pasenadi why he offers ‘such elevated respect to this body’;54 more importantly, the same impersonalism can be seen in the Buddha’s refusal to appoint a leader after his death, and his admonition that others be ‘lights unto yourselves, with the Dhamma as your lamp’.55 Early Buddhist doctrine is of course defined by impersonalism at the metaphysical level, for example in the Buddha’s negation of an individual self or soul (attan). Impersonalism, as an idiosyncratic feature of the Buddha’s personality, agrees with impersonalism at the metaphysical level, a fundamental coherence which can be extended into other areas.

1. The silent Buddha

We have seen that MN 67 and AN 5.30 attest to the Buddha’s quietistic nature. In fact, the canonical record is full of instances of the Buddha’s preference for silence:

• The Buddha’s initial response to attaining awakening is to avoid the hassle of teaching (MN I.168: so mam’ assa kilamatho, sā mam’ assa vihesā).
• When agreeing to a request (e.g. to come for a meal), the Buddha stays silent (adhivāsesi bhagavā tuṇhībhāvena).
• The Buddha often recommends mendicants either to talk about the Dhamma, or else maintain a ‘noble silence’ (dhammī vā kathā, ariyo vā tuṇhībhāvo).
• When the Buddha claims to enjoy going the toilet (AN 8.86), he actually says he is at ease (phāsu me) when he sees nobody in front or behind him on the road, even when going the toilet (AN IV.344); the text is really about the joy of solitude.
• The Buddha claims to enjoy being alone in the forest (SN 1.15).
• The Buddha is accused in MN 37 of taking afternoon naps (MN I.249).
• When the Buddha approaches a raucous assembly of ascetics in Dn 9, Poṭṭhapāda asks everyone to be quiet, because Gotama ‘is fond of little noise, and speaks in praise of quietude’ (DN I.179: appasaddakāmo kho so āyasmā appasaddassa vaṇṇavādī).
• when king Ajātasattu of Magadha visits the Buddha in Jīvaka’s mango grove in Rājagaha, he is impressed by the deep silence of the community of mendicants, which is ‘just like a pellucid pond’ (DN I.50: tuṇhībhūtaṃ tuṇhībhūtaṃ bhikkhusaṅghaṃ anuviloketvā rahadam iva vippasannaṃ). Just before this, Ajātasattu cannot recognise the Buddha.
• In MN 85, the Buddha will not enter Prince Bodhi’s new ‘Kokanada’ mansion, because the stairs have been covered in new cloth. Instead

1. Like a flame gone out

Assigning the two teachers to this stream of thought does not mean that they were Brahmins. It only means that they were early figures in a stream of spiritual speculation, reaching back into pre-Buddhist times and continuing into the early Buddhist period, documented in certain Brahminic texts. The canonical material on the teachers suggests a particular ‘training and character’ of the Buddha: his emergence from the speculative world of the early Upaniṣads, followed by the creation of a new doctrine. Although original and idiosyncratic in its expression, the Buddha’s Dhamma was in many ways formulated with the old Upaniṣadic ideas in mind, as can be seen in the dialogue with Upasīva. Such a theory makes good sense of the not-self teaching, which negates a thoroughly Upaniṣadic conceptualisation of the self as permanent (nicca), unchanging (avipariṇāma-dhamma) and blissful (sukha).73 It also explains the dialogue with Upasīva, in which the Buddha responds to Brahminic ideas quite deftly, at the same time introducing new ideas into the old framework. We have also seen that the simile of the extinguished flame agrees with the Buddha’s dialectic of silence; indeed, both are used in response to Vacchagotta’s questions, indicating the impossibility of conceptualising the liberated state. The Buddha’s interaction with Upasīva is similar: when faced with the assumption that liberation is achieved at death, the Buddha articulates his doctrine of ineffable realisation in the present. The few aspects of the Buddha’s teachings studied here suggest that the ‘great man’ theory of history must certainly apply to the origin of Buddhism. In early Buddhist teaching, quietism, pragmatism, the dialectic of silence, ambiguity and ineffability all come together in a singular doctrinal system, one that is consistent with a particular account of the Buddha’s intellectual background.

1. A close study of the origin of Buddhist meditation helps explain the specific historical circumstances behind the highly idiosyncratic formulation of early Buddhist Dhamma.
2. The big picture
3. The main points which prove the Buddha’s existence can be summarised as follows:
   • If a massive corpus gathered from multiple sources included significant invention, discrepancies would have been unavoidable.
   • If the texts had not been composed before the rise of Magadhan empires in the mid-4th century BC, their social and political content would reach into the imperial age; even if great care was taken to depict an earlier period, unintended features of the imperial age would have leaked into the texts.
   • Coins and bricks are two features of the imperial age which have a marginal presence in the early texts. While this suggests that the period of Sutta composition remained open just about long enough to record these material advances, it is also obvious that little was added to an older corpus, which remained largely intact without revision.
   • If the Buddha had been invented, the mythic trends of such texts as the Mahāpadāna Sutta would be more apparent, and the canonical discourses would not be so realistic and modest in tone.
   • If even the marginal amount of mythic elaboration did not belong to the pre-imperial age, the idea of the ‘wheel-turning monarch’ (cakkavatti dhamma-rāja) would not be conceptualised as it actually is (in DN 26).
   • We know what happens when composers or compositional committees create Buddhist discourses with no historical reality whatsoever: the corpus of Mahāyāna Sūtras comprise a monumental edifice of myth, which in style and content is quite different from the canonical discourses
   • If earlier composers had invented many of the extant Suttas, they would not be full of so many ambiguous and peculiar teachings.
   • If there had not been an historical Buddha given to quietism, the idea of a metaphysically reticent teacher, employing such didactic means as negation and the dialectic of silence, could not have been created.
   • A highly original doctrinal edifice, in which pragmatism, philosophical reticence, negation and ineffability blend in and out of the Buddha’s quietistic personality, is too unusual to have been invented. We are forced to conclude that it was not.