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Cynics and Pāśupatas: The Seeking of Dishonor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Daniel H. H. Ingalls
Affiliation:
Harvard University

Extract

Probably no two traditions of philosophy differ more widely than those of classical Greece and India. It is only when we force our way through the logical surface to the seemingly illogical practices andgoals of an earlier age that we can see similarities between the two cultures. These similarities, however, are sometimes so striking that the Indian evidence may help our understanding of Greece and the Greek our understanding of India. One gains such a reciprocal understanding, I think, from examining what I shall call the cults, meaning by this the sum of practices and goals as opposed to the philosophy, of the Greek Cynics and the Indian Pāśupatas.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1962

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References

1 References to the older literature will be found in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft s.v. Kynismus and Diogenes von Sinope. Besides this I have used Dudley, D., A History of Cynicism. From Diogenes to the 6th Century A.D., London, 1937Google Scholar; Sayre, Farrand, The Greek Cynics, Baltimore, Md., 1948Google Scholar; Höistad, Ragnar, Cynic Hero and Cynic King, Uppsala, 1948. I have found Sayre especially useful although I disagree with him on some pointsGoogle Scholar.

2 References. Dio: Dionis Chrysostomi orationes, 2 vols., ed. Budé, Guy de, Bibl, . Teubner., 19161919Google Scholar. Diog. Ep.: Diogenis Epistolae as printed in Epistolographi Graeci ed. Rudolph Hercher, Paris, 1873. D.L.: Diogenis Laertii, De Clarorum Philosophorum Vitis, ed. Ant. Westermann and J. F. Boissonade, Paris, 1862. L Luciani Samosatensis opera, ed. Karl Jacobitz, 3 vols., Bibl. Teubner., 1909–1912. Quotations from classical authors other than the above are from secondary sources as noted ad loc.

3 I agree with Sayre, p. 94, in accepting the natural derivation. Pauly-Wissowa prefers D.L.'s derivation from Κυνóσαργεѕ, where the early Cynics are said to have gathered.

4 The best account of the early history of the Pāśupatas is now that of Banerjea, J. N. in A Comprehensive History of India, Vol. II, ed. by Sastri, K. A. Nilakanta, Orient Longmans, 1957, pp. 393 ffGoogle Scholar.

5 A careful translation has been made of this chapter by Mr. Hara, Minoru, Indo-Iranian Journal II (1958), pp. 832. For interpreting Mādhava's text Mr. Hara has made use of the ancient Pāśupata materials which have recently been discovered. It appears from Hara's work that Mādhava relied almost entirely on the ancient sourcesCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Gaṇkārikā, ed. Dalai, C. D., Gaekwad Oriental Series, Baroda, 1920Google Scholar.

7 Pāśupata Sūtras with Panchārthabhāshya of Kauṇḍinya, ed. Sastri, R. Ananthakrishna, Trivandrum Sanskrit Series No. 143, Trivandrum, 1940Google Scholar.

8 The Matharā pillar inscription of Candragupta II, Epigraphica Indica, XXI, pp. 1-9. The data of the inscription have been discussed by Banerjea, op. cit. (see footnote 4), pp. 397-398.

9 Friederich August Schultz, Die philosophisch-theologischen Lehren des Pāśupata-Systems nach dem Pañcārthabhāṣya und der Ratnaṭīkā, Beiträge zur Sprachund Kulturgeschichte des Orients, Heft 10, Walldorf-Hessen, 1958.

10 A complete translation of the P.S. with Kauṇḍinya is in course of preparation by Mr. Minoru Hara (see footnote 5). In the present essay I indicate omissions by dots. Corruptions and words which are unintelligible or doubtful are indicated by questionmarks within parentheses.

11 The text is corrupt. For ṣaḍāśrama I suspect varṇāśrama is meant. In place of avyaktāḥ one wants vyaktāḥ in view of what follows.

12 Kauṇḍinya has a weakness for reading elaborate meanings into the use of prefixes. Occasionally ā- has the meaning of extent or limit, but not in ācāra.

13 The verses bear a strong resemblance to Manu 2.162–163. They are probably corrupt. One could improve the first by reading hy avamānam for naiva mānam. In the second, tasya pāpam is really senseless.

14 Indrakīlavac ca: I am unsure of the meaning.

15 The dictionaries know a kauṇya: ‘paralysis of the hand.’ The noun in this list corresponds to the adjective vāyuruddha on p. 81, line 7, literally ‘hampered by [the humour] wind.’ Vāyugrasta means epileptic, crazy, and I imagine a similar sense is intended here. Why paralysis or epilepsy should be considered pleasurable I cannot say.

16 Vāyuruddha: see footnote 13.

17 As will be seen from the comment on the next sutra, bad karma (pāpa) is both a purifier (pāvaka) and a bondage (pāśa). If one commits evil without suffering dishonor, ill-treatment and slander, the evil serves simply to bind one to the world of transmigration. By means of dishonor, etc., however, it becomes a means of purification.

18 Read prāpikā?

19 Read puruṣenātimala.

20 As much as to say that the trembling should be intentional. This is the accepted Vaiśeṣika sequence: thought (lit., knowledge), will, effort, act.

21 Cf. Hara, Minoru, op. cit. (cf. footnote 5), pp. 2729Google Scholar.

22 Read śucirūpa.

23 This terra also is peculiar to the Pāśupatas.

24 De Civ. Dei 14.20, quoted by Sayre, p. 25.

25 The Pañcatantra in the Recension … of … Pūrṇabhadra, ed. Hertel, Joh., Harvard Oriental Series 11, 1908, p. 235, lines 21–22Google Scholar.

26 Op. cit. (cf. footnote 9), page 6.

27 Cf. footnote 1.

28 See , Ingalls, JAOS 77 (1957), p. 223Google Scholar.

29 Cf. Eliade, Mircea, Le Chamanisme et les techniques archaïques de l'Extase, Payot, Paris, 1951, P. 209 et passim; Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture, Houghton Mifflin, Cambridge, Mass., 1934, pp. 42–43Google Scholar.

30 Onesicratus, a Cynic and disciple of Diogenes, accompanied Alexander to India and wrote an account of that expedition. In his account, now lost, Onesicratus claimed to have talked to Indian wise men. These facts are adduced by Sayre, p. 42. One may add that what Onesicratus heard from the wise men, as it is transmitted to us by Strabo, sounds as much like Pāśupata doctrine as Cynic. Hitherto it has generally been supposed that the gymnosophists encountered by Alexander were Jains, simply because one sect of the Jains is known to have gone naked. It is more likely, though, if we are to put any credence in the Greek accounts of what the gymnosophists said, that they were Śaiva. The Pāśupatas during the first stage of their life might go naked (P.S. I, 11). The Greeks themselves occasionally connected the Cynics with India. Lucian, writing of the death of Peregrinus, speaks of that Cynic's suicide by fire as a Brahmin custom (L. De morte Peregr. 25, 39). He was reminded, of course, of the suicide of the Indian Kalanos (ibid. 25; cf. Arrian 7.3.2 ff.), but the particular fact of Peregrinus' looking to the south just before enteringthe flames must have been borrowed directly from India, as C. R. Lanman long ago noted (F. G. Allinson, Lucian: Selected Writings, Boston, [1905], p. 200). There exists a stronger possibility that the Pāśupatas were influenced by the Cynics. One cannot avoid the suspicion that the name Lakulīśa is derived both semantically and phonetically from the patron saint of Cynicism. Lakulīśa (varr. lakuleśa, nakulīśa), which is used as an epithet of Śiva and as the name of that incarnation of Śiva who was the archegete of the Pāśupatas, means literally ‘lord (īśa) of the club (lakula).’ But the Greek word Ἠρακλñѕ, if it lost its first syllable in order to help out a folk etymology, could quite well become R/Lakuli/esa in Sanskrit by phonetic equivalence. I know of no occurrence of Lakulīśa or its variants which need be put earlier than the time of Christ.

31 Thus, I cannot agree with Sayre, who on much slimmer evidence of similarity than has been adduced above attempts to derive Cynicism from India. Sayre makes much of the fact that Sinope was on the trade route from India to Greece. I admit that Indian sadhus might have come to Sinope, but I find the step from possibility to probability here a long one.

32 Among certain very primitive peoples beast-rituals, such as the Australian intichiuma, are undertaken by an hereditary section, a totem group, of the tribe and it may be that the intention of those rituals was to produce more animals of the sort imitated; cf. Sir Frazer, James G., The Golden Bough, Third ed., Part I, The Magic Art, Vol. I, pp. 85 ff.Google Scholar From these the beast-vows of the shamans differ by the nature of the performers (virtuosi as opposed to hereditary totem members), by the effect of the act (productive of shock and wonder) and by the purpose.