Table Of ContentU
N
I
V
E
‘The philosophical traditions of Greece and India are divergent but also R
show striking convergences. This book is an important and valuable A S
N E
contribution to the comparative study of the two ancient cultures. The D A
various chapters are learned and sophisticated and considerably enrich N
E
our understanding of Greek and Indian philosophy.’ A D
R
I
Phiroze Vasunia, University College London L N
Y
N
How can we explain the remarkable similarities between G E
R R
early Indian and early Greek philosophy? E UNIVERSE AND
E S
E
K
Around the middle of the first millennium bce there occurred a T LF
revolution in thought, with novel ideas such as that understanding the H I INNER SELF
N
inner self is both vital for human well-being and central to understanding O
the universe. This intellectual transformation is sometimes called the U E
A
beginning of philosophy. The revolution occurred in both India and G R IN EARLY INDIAN
H L
Greece, but not in the vast Persian Empire that divided them. How was Y
T
this possible? This is a puzzle that has never been solved. IN AND EARLY GREEK
D
This volume brings together Hellenists and Indologists representing
I
a variety of perspectives on the similarities and differences between A
N THOUGHT
the two cultures, and on how to explain them. It offers a collaborative
contribution to the burgeoning interest in the Axial Age, and is of R
interest to those intrigued by the big questions inspired by the ic
ancient world. h
E
a d
Richard Seaford is Emeritus Professor of Ancient Greek at the r i
d t
University of Exeter.
S ed
e
Cover images: Detail from The School of Athens, 1511, Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, a b
f y
Wikimedia Commons. Bodhisattva Padmapani, Ajanta, cave 1, India, Abdulsayed/ o
Wikimedia Commons. r
d
Cover design: Barrie Tullett
ISBN 978-1-4744-1099-1
Edited by
edinburghuniversitypress.com Richard Seaford
Universe and Inner Self in Early
Indian and Early Greek Thought
EDITED BY RICHARD SEAFORD
Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK.
We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the
humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high
editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance.
For more information visit our website: www.edinburghuniversitypress.com
© editorial matter and organisation Richard Seaford, 2016
© the chapters their several authors, 2016
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun – Holyrood Road
12(2f) Jackson’s Entry
Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
Typeset in 10.5/13 Times New Roman by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire
and printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4744 1099 1 (hardback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 1100 4 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 1101 1 (epub)
The right of Richard Seaford to be identified as the editor of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the
Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
Contents
Acknowledgements v
Notes on contributors vi
Abbreviations viii
Introduction 1
1 The common origin approach to comparing Indian and Greek
philosophy 12
Nick Allen
2 The concept of ṛtá in the Ṛgveda 28
Joanna Jurewicz
3 Harmonia and ṛtá 40
Aditi Chaturvedi
4 Ātman and its transition to worldly existence 55
Greg Bailey
5 Cosmology, psyche and ātman in the Timaeus, the Ṛgveda and the
Upaniṣads 71
Hyun Höchsmann
6 Plato and yoga 87
John Bussanich
7 Technologies of self-immortalisation in ancient Greece and early
India 104
Paolo Visigalli
8 Does the concept of theōria fit the beginning of Indian thought? 118
Alexis Pinchard
iv Contents
9 Self or being without boundaries: on Śaṅkara and Parmenides 134
Chiara Robbiano
10 Soul chariots in Indian and Greek thought: polygenesis or diffusion? 149
Paolo Magnone
11 ‘Master the chariot, master your Self’: comparing chariot metaphors
as hermeneutics for mind, self and liberation in ancient Greek and
Indian Sources 168
Jens Schlieter
12 New riders, old chariots: poetics and comparative philosophy 186
Alexander S. W. Forte and Caley C. Smith
13 The interiorisation of ritual in India and Greece 204
Richard Seaford
14 Rebirth and ‘ethicisation’ in Greek and South Asian thought 220
Mikel Burley
15 On affirmation, rejection and accommodation of the world in Greek
and Indian religion 235
Matylda Obryk
16 The justice of the Indians 251
Richard Stoneman
17 Nietzsche on Greek and Indian philosophy 265
Emma Syea
Bibliography 279
Index 303
Acknowledgements
The astonishing similarities between early Indian and early Greek thought have
long attracted great interest, but seldom the collaboration that is required for
a real advance in explaining them. This volume contains most of the papers
delivered at a conference at the University of Exeter in July 2014, as part of
the project ‘Ātman and Psychē: Cosmology and the Self in Ancient India and
Ancient Greece’. The conference, and the project as a whole, were funded by
the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to which we are most grateful. The
conference consisted of days of lively discussion between Indologists, Hellenists
and others: interdisciplinary discovery at its best. Another outcome of the project
will be a monograph by myself.
I would like to thank Richard Fynes for his help with Sanskrit, and Edinburgh
University Press for their enthusiastic efficiency.
Richard Seaford
Exeter, January 2016
Notes on contributors
Nick Allen qualified in social anthropology at Oxford, after studying classics
and medicine, undertaking fieldwork in Nepal. From 1976 to 2001 he taught
Social Anthropology of South Asia at Oxford, publishing on the Himalayas, kin-
ship theory and the Durkheimian Tradition. Since the 1980s he has also worked
on Indo-European Cultural Comparativism.
Greg Bailey, formerly reader in Sanskrit, is an Honorary Research Fellow in the
Program in Asian Studies, La Trobe University, Melbourne. He has published
translations and studies of the Gaṇeśa Purāṇa, Bhartṛhari’s Śatakatrayam and
books on the god Brahmā, early Buddhism, contemporary Australian society and
many articles on Sanskrit literature.
Mikel Burley is Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the
University of Leeds. His publications include Classical Sāṃkhya and Yoga: An
Indian Metaphysics of Experience (2007), Contemplating Religious Forms of
Life: Wittgenstein and D. Z. Phillips (2012) and Rebirth and the Stream of Life:
A Philosophical Study of Reincarnation, Karma and Ethics (2016).
John Bussanich is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico.
He co-edited with Nicholas D. Smith The Bloomsbury Companion to Socrates
(2013). He is the author of The One and its Relation to Intellect in Plotinus: A
Commentary on Selected Texts (1988) and of articles on Socrates, Plato and the
Neoplatonists. Other research interests include comparative philosophy, and phi-
losophy and mysticism in South Asia.
Aditi Chaturvedi is a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at the University of
Pennsylvania, writing a dissertation on the role of harmonia in Plato’s metaphys-
ics and ethics.
Notes on contributors vii
Alexander S. W. Forte and Caley C. Smith are doctoral students at Harvard
University. Alexander’s dissertation is on metaphor in the Homeric poems.
Caley’s dissertation examines mimetic performance in the Ṛgveda and its impli-
cations for the social project of the early ritual and the redaction of the text.
Hyun Höchsmann has studied philosophy, art history and literature at the
Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Munich and the University of London. She
has taught at the Juilliard School of Music, the American University in Cairo and
East China Normal University in Shanghai. Her publications include On Chuang
Tzu (2001), On Philosophy in China (2003) and Zhuangzi (2006).
Joanna Jurewicz is a professor in the Oriental Studies Department of Warsaw
University. She uses an interdisciplinary methodology of philology and cog-
nitive linguistics to analyse ancient Indian texts. She is the author of Fire and
Cognition in the Ṛgveda (2010), of Fire, Death, and Philosophy. A History of
Ancient Indian Thinking (2016) and of many articles.
Paolo Magnone teaches Sanskrit Language and Literature at the Catholic
University of the Sacred Heart as well as Oriental Religions at the Higher
Institute for Religious Sciences (both in Milan). His research interests include
thematic studies in the epico-purāṇic literature; the philosophy of the Upaniṣads
and Sāṃkhya–Yoga in the light of the commentators; comparative studies in
Ancient Greek and Indian philosophical thought.
Matylda Obryk is a visiting professor of Classics at the Northeast Normal
University in Changchun, China. After studying classics and philosophy
in Kraków and Jena, she obtained a PhD from the University of Cologne,
with a dissertation published as Unsterblichkeitsglaube in den griechischen
Versinschriften (2012).
Alexis Pinchard is ‘professeur agrégé’ of philosophy at the Lycée Militaire
d’Aix-en-Provence (France) and associate member of the CNRS, UMR 7528
‘Iranian and Indian Worlds’. His PhD dissertation was published as Les langues
de sagesse dans la Grèce et l’Inde anciennes (2009). His research focuses on the
connection between ancient metaphysics, ancient soteriology and comparative
linguistics.
Chiara Robbiano is Assistant professor of Philosophy at University College
Utrecht. Her PhD dissertation (Leiden) on Parmenides was published as
Becoming Being (2006). She publishes her work on comparative and ancient
philosophy in Philosophy East and West, Ancient Philosophy, and elsewhere.
viii Notes on contributors
Jens Schlieter studied Philosophy, Tibetology / Buddhist Studies and
Comparative Religion in Bonn and Vienna. He is Professor of the Systematic
Study of Religion at the Institute for the Science of Religion, University of Bern
(Switzerland). His contributions comprise method and theory in the study of
religion, comparative philosophy and Buddhism in India, Tibet and the West.
Richard Seaford is Emeritus Professor of Ancient Greek at the University
of Exeter. His publications include many articles; commentaries on Euripides’
Cyclops (1984) and Euripides Bacchae (1996); and Dionysos (1996), Reciprocity
and Ritual (1994), Money and the Early Greek Mind (2004) and Cosmology and
the Polis (2012). His current project is a monograph comparing early Indian with
early Greek thought.
Richard Stoneman is an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Exeter
and Chairman of Westminster Classic Tours. His books include Alexander the
Great: a life in legend (2008) and (most recently) Xerxes: a Persian Life (2015).
He is currently writing The Greek Experience of India from Alexander the Great
to Menander Soter.
Emma Syea is currently completing her doctoral studies in Philosophy at King’s
College London. Her research examines Nietzsche’s philosophy of mind, specif-
ically his views on self-knowledge and self-deception.
Paolo Visigalli’s work explores the interplay between language ideologies, her-
meneutic techniques and the production and renegotiation of textual meaning.
He received a PhD in South Asian Studies from the University of Cambridge.
His current research focuses on etymological theories and practices in Hindu and
Buddhist texts, in Sanskrit, Pali and Chinese. He is currently teaching at Fudan
University, Shanghai.
Abbreviations
AiĀ Aitareya Āraṇyaka
AiB Aitareya Brāhmaṇa
AV Atharvaveda
BG Bhagavad Gītā
BSB Śaṅkara, Brahmasūtra-bhāṣya, in E. Deutsch and R. Dalvi (eds),
The Essential Vedānta: A New Source Book of Advaita Vedānta,
Bloomington, 2004.
BU Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad
ChU Chāndogya Upaniṣad
DK H. Diels and W. Kranz (eds) Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th edn,
Berlin, 1951.
DL Diogenes, Live of the Philosophers
FGrH F. Jacoby (ed.), Die Fragmente der Griechischer Historiker, Berlin and
Leiden, 1923–58.
KaU Kaṭha Upaniṣad
KauU Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad
KU Kena Upaniṣad
MaiU Maitrāyaṇīya/Maitrī Upaniṣad
MuU Mundaka Upaniṣad
RV Ṛgveda
ŚB Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa
ŚvU Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad
TĀ Taitttirīya Āraṇyaka
TaitU Taitttirīya Upaniṣad
TB Taittirīya-Brāhmaṇa
TS Taittirīya Samhitā
TU Taittirīya Upaniṣad
YS Yoga Sūtra
