The language of Buddhist archaeology

Indo-Greek Hashtnagar Pedestal symbolizes Bodhisattva with Kharosthi script
Dated to 384 of unknown era. Found near Rajar in Gandhara, Pakistan. British Museum.

The history of Buddhism, as told by its archaeology, is Greco-Indian. Buddhism began as Greco-Indian, was expressed in Greco-Indian language and when Greco-India died, so did Buddhism.

The earliest Buddhist texts – as we saw in our previous post – are from the 1st century of this era and written in a now-dead script belonging to a kingdom named Gandhara. This is the heartland of Greco-India.

Who made the Kharosthi script is unknown, though we can speculate, using the facts as a historical framework.

• The Kharosthi script was used by this culture from the middle of the 3rd century BCE until it died out in its homeland around the 3rd century CE.
• An analysis of the script forms shows a clear dependency on the Aramaic alphabet, but with extensive modifications to support the sounds found in Indic languages.
• Kharosthi included a set of numerals that are reminiscent of Roman numerals.

Coin of Gurgamoya, king of Khotan. Khotan, 1st century CE.

From coins bearing this script found in trading posts, we know that as with Buddhism, Kharosthi spread along trade routes. When Islamic armies conquered Persia and entered the Eastern world, Buddhism was overwhelmed in its homeland by this new faith and by the 8th century, Kharosthi had died.

What we do not know is who invented the script. The prevailing scholarly opinion is that it came out of a generation of Greeks who had formed Greco-India and intermarried with the local community and so produced – as the British did in 19th-century India, an administrative class. They would have been fluent in both Greek and Indic languages. Kharosthi is a bridge between the two.

The end of Greco-India ended this class and its language.

The Macedonian conquests of the 4th century were followed by settlement; the appearance of Kharosthi in the following century – the middle of the 3rd – matches the rise of these Alexandrian cities across Greco-India.

The few facts we can discern from this script is that this language of Gandahara – Greco-India and Buddhism – relates to Roman culture, Greek (by definition) and Aramaic.

Aramaic is a Semitic language and has served variously as a language of administration of empires and as a language of divine worship. It was the day-to-day language of Israel in the Second Temple period (539 BCE – 70 CE), was the original language of large sections of the biblical books of Daniel and Ezra, and is the main language of the Talmud. Aramaic is retained as a liturgical language by certain Eastern Christian sects, in the form of Syriac, the Aramaic variety by which Eastern Christianity was diffused.

Coin of Alexander Jannaeus (103 to 76 BCE).
Obv: Seleucid anchor and Greek Legend: BASILEOS ALEXANDROU “King Alexander”.
Rev: Eight-spoke wheel or star within diadem. Hebrew legend inside the spokes: “Yehonatan the King”.

The invention and use of this language, in my opinion, ties Buddhism into the Greco-Roman world – including Judea – along the trade routes linking the Alexandrian cities of Greco-India, across Hellenistic Persia to the western terminus in Alexandria, Egypt.

We will have to see how the legend of Siddhartha Gautama – the Buddha – fits into this historical framework.

Related posts:

1. The Zen of Buddhist archaeology: earliest texts
2. Archaeology and identity of the first Buddhists
3. Archaeology of a magical, distant land
4. Archaeology of faith and trade
5. Archaeology of good governance
6. Manimekalai: Dancer with Magic Bowl
7. Cleopatra’s legacy: the Sacred Lotus of India
8. Greco-India: an introduction
9. Archaeology of Ein Gedi
10. Greco-Indian contact with Rome