Buddhism, Sāṃkhya and the Brahmanical Avant-Garde

Abstract

The opening chapter proposes that early Buddhism should be understood not as having arisen in opposition to a monolithic Brahmanism – traditionally its first ‘other’ – but rather out of the avant-garde of Brahmanism itself, which would have been quite fluid and diverse in thought and praxis in the fifth century BCE. McGovern argues that the Buddha’s tutelage under Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta is key to understanding early Buddhism’s place within the Brahmanical avant-garde. Alex Wynne has shown that the forms of meditation taught by these two teachers make most sense in the context of Brahmanical cosmologies. Such a connection is further supported by the testimony of Aśvaghoṣa (c. C2nd), who presents Āḷāra Kālāma as espousing an early form of Sāṃkhya. The chapter argues that Buddhism emerged out of a branch of fifth-century-BCE Brahmanical thought that was first demonized by householder Brahmans, and then later codified and included within orthodox Brahmanism as Sāṃkhya. Although the connections between Buddhism and Sāṃkhya have long been a focus of scholarly interest, neither derived from the other; both were identities that emerged much later out of intellectual currents at play in the fifth century BCE.