I find this book to be intriguing for a couple of reasons. First, Professor Kuzminski lays out a very convincing argument that the ancient Greek philosopher Pyrrho of Elis (380 - 270 BCE), drew a good deal of inspiration from Indian Buddhists who are in the Madhyamaka tradition of the Mahayana ('Greater Vehicle') school. To be able to do this properly, he first explains what Pyrrhonism is and what it is not. Most historians of philosophy lump Pyrrho in with his older contemporary Democritus and with the post-Aristotlean Academics - those who came after Aristotle in the Academy at Athens. There is a serious flaw in the standard view, which may be simply defined: Pyrrho and all subsequent Pyrrhonists were not dogmatic about anything, anything. Instead they exercised a mental process which through practice led them to a state of tranquility which Pyrrho named ataraxia - roughly, 'freedom from passions.' Is something true? It can be shown to be untrue through dialectic reasoning. But he goes further: it is neither true nor untrue, nor is it not true and not not untrue. Since a definitive statement cannot be made about things, the wise man - the Pyrrhonist - will suspend judgment. Done according to this practice, one's causes for upset, sorrow and worry fall away. Now, if you're a Buddhist, you'll right away notice that this is very similar to the concept of emptiness - sunyata - which goes back to the Tathagata himself. Pyrrho actually went to India with Alexander the Great and according to two other ancient writers, Democritus and Diogenes Laertius, spent time with the Indian sages who he met there. Ergo, it appears that he brought back some form of Buddhist practice.

The second reason that I find this book to be exciting is because about two months ago I'd had a conversation with a Zen practitoner and we kicked around the idea that Buddhism might have been in the great cities and cultures of the Mediterranean. I knew that Clement of Alexandria (150 - 215 CE) was supposed to be the first Greek writer on antiquity to specifically mention the Buddha - as bo Boutta - in his Hypotyposes. I also knew that India and Greece long had a thriving international trade going on by land and by sea. There was nothing to stop Buddhists from coming to places like Alexandria, Athens, Damascus, Ephesus and Rome; and aside from Alexander's incursions into the empires east of the Levant (current Palestine), Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Persians and Babylonians (among others) made their way to India as well. Many were merchants, some were military people, some were scholars.

Before I found this book my chief candidate for "Greek philosopher who brought Buddhism from India" was / is Pythagoras (570 - 496 BCE). Even his name Pythagoras may be an Hellenized form of Pitta guru, which title is very Indian indeed. But as I looked over what actually survives of Pythagoras' original teachings (not a helluva lot) I was struck that some of his thinking and his way of life reflects an earlier Indian philosophy - Jainism, which was the creation of an Indian philosopher, Mahavira (599 - 527 BCE). Jains will not eat meat because to take the life of anything is an horrendous sin; so it is that the Jains compromise by being vegetarians. Just like Pythagoras.

For anyone seeking direct ties between Buddhism or Jain and the West, there simply is no 'smoking gun,' no text in either Greek or Indian literature which specifically states that Indian sage X spoke with Greek inquirer Y or vice versa. Therefore such a hunt must rely upon secondary and tertiary sources of information in both traditions. There are a number of sources, some of them quite old but quite reliable. I am thinking of W. W. Tarn's The Greeks in Bactria and India (1950) which fleshes out much of the post-Alexandrian empires for which primary texts are scant. Tarn's great contribution was to construct plausible outlines of these empires by a constant referral to the numismatics - the study of the coins recovered in archaeological digs throughout the entire region. What emerges is a picture of a very lively exchange of goods and ideas in both directions.

What Professor Kuzminski has done is to very much put a backbone into the speculations about Greek - Indian philosophic exchange; from here the idea has gone from "it's possible" to "it's very likely" and especially so with Pyrrho of Elis. Kudos to the good professor for giving us this work!

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Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism (Studies in Comparative Philosophy and Religion)