Did Herodotus indirectly mention the first Buddhists in The Histories?

[Old_Scratch]

I happened to be thumbing through The Histories again and came across 3.100 which seems to describe an Indian culture that's both pacifistic and vegetarian. There is only one paragraph about them, which is hardly enough to determine for sure that they were Buddhists, but I found it interesting nonetheless.

Buddha was born around 485 BCE and Herodotus penned The Histories in around 440 BCE. Buddha started his spiritual career at 29 years old, so 456 BCE. That's 16 years before The Histories. So, could this brief mention by Herodotus have been the first Buddhists? It's hard to tell when Herodotus is telling the truth though, and immediately following the paragraph he goes on to explain a series of completely inaccurate things. I just think that a Greek writing about vegetarian pacifists in India at the time that Buddha was alive to be a very interesting coincidence though.

Here is the paragraph copied from my copy of The Histories, translated by David Green.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

There are other Indians, again, and another style of life. These will not kill any living thing, nor do they sow or posses houses; and what they eat is herbs. There are among them a grain about the size of a millet within a husk, and its grain grows unsown out of the Earth. The people collect it and boil and eat it, husk and all. When one of them falls sick, he wanders into the desert and lies down, and no one troubles about him, whether he is sick or dead.

Maybe Herodotus is confusing solitary meditation with an illness. I know, it's a bit of a stretch, but what do you think?

[hellheaven1987]

Well, as Herodotus personally stated, anything happened in the east side of Achaemenid Empire was only heard from others, himself could not check out the truth of the claim (including the eastern provinces of Persia).

[Bovril]

I expect he was refering to a Hindu group or, perhaps more likely, the Jains who have always had astrong pacifistic and vegitarian tradition and had been about for centuries before Herodotus.

[Old_Scratch]

The Jains would probably make more sense, if it is indeed a religious group that is known about today. Jainism would certainly be better established by this time and be more likely to have reached the ears of Herodotus.

[Copperknickers II]

I happened to be thumbing through The Histories again and came across 3.100 which seems to describe an Indian culture that's both pacifistic and vegetarian. There is only one paragraph about them, which is hardly enough to determine for sure that they were Buddhists, but I found it interesting nonetheless.

Buddha was born around 485 BCE and Herodotus penned The Histories in around 440 BCE. Buddha started his spiritual career at 29 years old, so 456 BCE. That's 16 years before The Histories. So, could this brief mention by Herodotus have been the first Buddhists? It's hard to tell when Herodotus is telling the truth though, and immediately following the paragraph he goes on to explain a series of completely inaccurate things. I just think that a Greek writing about vegetarian pacifists in India at the time that Buddha was alive to be a very interesting coincidence though.

Here is the paragraph copied from my copy of The Histories, translated by David Green.



Maybe Herodotus is confusing solitary meditation with an illness. I know, it's a bit of a stretch, but what do you think?

It was not in the slightest indirect. The Greeks and Romans traded with both the Kushans and Mauryans, and there were many Greeks living in India whos sources Herodotus had ready access to. Indeed, Herodotus sources large amounts of Megasthenes' 'Indika' in his histories.

Siddartha 'Buddha' Gautama was the disciple of a famous Jain ascetic, and Buddhism was a hybrid of Hinduism with Jain values.