The Buddha From Babylon

by Harvey Kraft

  His espousal of liberty, human rights, and generosity supports the thesis that “Gaumâta” and Gautama were one and the same person. His positions are consistent with the principles of Buddhism. If only the rule of such a man were not so brief, it could have been a very different world today. A man of the Buddha’s compassion would have produced a dramatically different model for political rule from that of Darius and his voracious military appetite for world conquest.

  Did the early biographers of the Buddha know of this contentious time in Babylon?

  Five hundred years later, either Asvaghosa lacked knowledge of Gautama’s Babylonian period, or he purposely avoided it. By cloistering Siddhartha in a royal estate prior to his quest for Buddhahood in the forest, he was able to avoid any mention of the unpleasant battle over the Persian throne. Such an episode would not have comported with his miraculous styling in which the Buddha possesses a supernatural pacifying power. In his adoring biography, people or animals intending to inflict harm upon the Buddha, would be instantly disarmed in his presence overwhelmed by a sense of peace and bliss. To justifiably showcase the Buddha’s demeanor as a powerhouse of peace for the world to come, Asvaghosa had to ignore any association with a chaotic outside world dominated by the destructive power of the empire that Gautama had left behind.

  Asvaghosa was a devout Buddhist teacher who lived in northeastern India, and that’s where in his story the Buddha was born and lived, and where Mahayana Buddhism thrived in his day. He would see no reason to place the early days of the Buddha in Persian controlled Babylon, the world’s largest city when the Buddha was alive, but a place that by Asvaghosa’s time had become synonymous with sin and decay.

  During the writer’s lifetime the Roman Empire occupied western Asia. The specter of their dominant military force was a reminder of the legacy born of the Persian Empire. But the pacifism of Buddhism, as Asvaghosa saw it, was about finding peace within and spreading it to others. Focused on the celebration of the Buddha’s glorious attributes and wisdom, had he known anything of his associations with Babylon, the Magi, or the Persian throne, he would not choose to use it. Asvaghosa kept Siddhartha locked in his father’s estate until his departure for the forest where he attained Buddhahood. The omission of Gautama’s sojourn in Babylon meant that his earlier experiences there would vanish entirely from history.

  EMPEROR OF PxsERSIA

  The sitting Achaemenid sovereign of the Persian Empire, Kambujiya (d. 521 or 522 BCE), had failed to return to Central Asia following his conquest of Egypt, where he had assumed the throne under the name Pharaoh Mesuti-Ra [son of the Sun God Rae].

  His long absence from Babylon broke a traditional edict prized by the Council of the Magi Order. They required the King of Babylon to be anointed once a year in a secret religious ceremony in Esagila, but Kambujiya ignored them. So when he did not return for three years they vacated his throne, and by popular acclaim asked “Gaumâta” to fill the vacuum until the emperor returned to reclaim it.

  In one account Kambujiya decided to rush back from Egypt, once he got word that his throne had been seized. But before he could make it back to Babylon, he died under mysterious circumstances. One version has Kambujiya accidentally falling on his own sword causing self-inflicted, fatal wounds. But was it really an accident? Or, as the next successor Darius had claimed, did he die of “natural causes.” Or, did Darius have a covert hand in seeing to it that Kambujiya would fail to return and reclaim the throne?

  History’s picture of Kambujiya was one of a cruel, self-aggrandized, and possibly a mentally unstable monarch. According to the Egyptians, when he first invaded their land he enslaved its most prominent citizens. He gave each of his soldiers at least one of them to serve as a slave. He also put people to death and destroyed temples particularly in instances when he felt disrespected.

  Meanwhile back in Persia, some of its nobles wanted better leadership, and in Darius, they saw an opportunity to make the change. But any attempt to replace one Persian ruler with another would be treason.

  For his part, Darius, the son of Vishtaspa (aka Hystaspes), a powerful Persian governor of the Achaemenid family, had been groomed for such a role. Since his boyhood, Vishtaspa had placed Darius under the mentorship of Zarathustra Spitamas, also known as Zoroaster, the religious head of a Persian religion.7 Zoroaster convinced Darius that the God Assura Mazda had selected him to be the future emperor and that he was destined to conquer the world. Darius was a wily strategist and a student of the political arts who became skilled in public persuasion and military maneuvering from what he learned from Cyrus the Achaemenid, the first Persian Emperor.

  News of Kambujiya’s untimely, but politically expedient death for Darius and his cohorts, immediately made him a strong candidate to take the helm of the Persian Empire. He charged that “Gaumata” was an imposter who fraudulently contrived to usurp the throne from Cyrus’s rightful successor. Only one other person, Kambujiya’s brother, Bardiya, had the direct bloodline to Cyrus, but he was also dead.

  Darius argued that “Gaumâta” gained sovereignty by pretending to be Prince Bardiya (aka Smerdis). Although Bardiya had been dead for three years, Darius claimed that “Gaumâta” tried to get away with it because Bardiya was unknown in Babylon and his disappearance had been kept secret from the public. Upon his departure for the campaign to conquer Egypt, the Emperor Kambujiya had ordered his brother’s murder to insure that his seat of power would be safe while he was away from Babylon. Was it plausible then, as Darius claimed, that “Gaumâta” would have pretended to be Bardiya? Or, was this clever ruse designed to discredit “Gaumâta” so that Darius can lay claim to the throne?

  Darius, a military strongman, and a member of the Achaemenid family, prepared for his coup with a propaganda campaign designed to legitimize his overthrow of “Gaumâta.” Darius claimed that he and a group of Persian nobles exposed the trickery of the Bardiya imposter and personally tracked down and killed “Gaumâta.” In his public inscription he referred to his cohorts in killing the usurper as the witnesses who would confirm the deed.

  The “witnesses” were in league with Darius so they hardly represented an independent corroboration. Of course, if “Gaumâta” was really Siddhartha Gautama, this assassination had to be a lie,8 because he did go on to become the Buddha. Either someone else was murdered in the name of “Gaumâta,” or Darius shrewdly produced a disinformation campaign designed to cover up what really happened. With the “death of the imposter” the new emperor wanted to send a message to supporters of “Gaumâta” that he would not tolerate rebellions and suppressed any hope for the return of this popular leader. But in the wake of the coup nineteen rebellions arose throughout the empire. It would take Darius more than a year of brutal military action to crush the liberation-minded communities inspired by “Gaumâta.”

  Also recorded in the Bisutun Inscriptions, among the rebel plots against Darius was an Achaemenid Persian nobleman whose bloodline gave him equal right to the throne. Vahyzadâta seized a royal palace near Babylon while the newly crowned Darius was still away suppressing rebellions. In a strangely parallel story, an inscription at Persepolis claims that Vahyzadâta was also a Bardiya imposter. Darius sent an army to capture and crucify this usurper. Could Darius’s words be trusted? Could it be that one story bled into the other? Could this mean that he concocted the Bardiya ruse to justify the elimination of any competitors?

  Certainly Darius had good reason to write history in his own self-interest. While his story appears to be full of cunning deceptions, the real behind the scenes story of this episode has remained elusive to history. It has gone undetected for thousands of years because historians know little to nothing about “Gaumâta.”

  If indeed, as proposed here, Siddhartha Gautama served as King of Babylon/Emperor of Persia for three to seven months, where did he go to next?

  It appears that when he abdicated the throne he headed for the Indus River Valley where for several decades thereafter he would become the
Buddha and teach Buddhism.

  In Asvaghosa’s biography of the Buddha he recounts the decision by Siddhartha Gautama to reject his right to inherit his father’s “Sakya” throne. The abdication expresses his crossing from a secular sovereign to a spiritual one. But the episode may also be an echo of Gautama’s abdication of the Persian throne ahead of Darius’s coup. In actuality, the Buddha had given up the world’s foremost “crown of secular power” in favor of pursuing the crowning achievement of enlightenment. This metaphor undergirds a key principle of the Buddha’s Teachings, the outright rejection of brutal militancy and insatiable materialism.

  THE PURGE

  The first step in verifying that the would-be Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, could have been King “Gaumâta,” requires that he was alive at the same time as Darius the Great. According to 20th-century historians the most widely accepted dating for the Buddha’s lifetime is from 563 BCE to 483 BCE, and Darius the Great is said to have lived from 550 BCE to 486 BCE. Even if these dates are off by a few years, it is clear that the two were contemporaries. Additional clues establishing their coexistence come from a competing religion of the time.

  Darius installed worship of the Zoroastrian God Assura Mazda as the state religion. Zoroaster, who received support from Darius’s father, depicted the Buddha as an evil practitioner, associating him with occult practices and the creation of a new demonic9 religion. Similarly, Darius linked “Gaumâta” to the creation of a new mystical religion.

  In turn, Buddhist literature referred to a competing sage, a pretender who claimed to be enlightened, as a copycat and corrupter of Truth. His name, Devadatta, appears to be the namesake for Zoroaster. Devadatta was charged with plotting to kill the Buddha and take over as the leader of his followers. Given the recording in Buddhist literature of nine unsuccessful assassination attempts on the life of the Buddha, could Darius and Zoroaster have been behind these efforts? Clearly, the Zoroaster who mentored Darius must also be a contemporary of the Buddha, as well as a prime candidate for the role of Devadatta.

  Zoroaster and Siddhartha may have been colleagues in Babylon’s Magi Order. This is indicated by the sudden adoption of Zoroastrian rituals by the Magi Order under Darius’s reign. Gautama, a supporter of the original interfaith tradition of the order, appears to have stood in the way of Zoroaster’s desire to rid it of all Vedic influences and other faiths.

  It appears that coinciding with Darius’s seizure of the throne in Babylon, Zoroaster led a purge of the Magi Order cleansing it of all other religious views. From this point forward the Magi became a wholly Zoroastrian Order.

  DESTINATION INDUS

  The Saka capital of Babil, where Siddhartha Gautama grew up, would have been a sacred learning center—a place renowned for attracting a host of religious practitioners from near and far. After his initial training from teachers of various religions, Siddhartha would have been sent into the field for training in shamanic skill development. That may be why he was no stranger to the Indus when he arrived there following the coup, an indication that he had spent a good period of time there in his youth under the tutelage of various forest seers.

  In the traditional biography of Siddhartha the aspiring young Buddha-to-be studied with the foremost ascetic teachers in the forests of India, covering a period of eleven years between his departure from home and his attainment of Enlightenment.

  According to traditional literature, he marked his entry into Perfect Enlightenment during meditation under a tree in a place called Bodh Gaya. Although the physical spot is believed to have been in India, in mythic terms Bodh Gaya figuratively means the “Enlightened Biosphere.” In other words, the Buddha’s breakthrough came at the anchor point for visionary channeling, a “Sacred Tree” located on the life-supporting planet Earth. There he entered a mind-space that can only be described as a nexus between celestial and physical domains.

  His Perfect Enlightenment came during a trance-induced awakening that gave him unbridled access to see events in the past, present, and future; insight into the psychological behaviors of all human beings individually and in groups; and the distance viewing ability to cross space and dimensions into any realm in the Universe, near or far, large or small.

  Immediately upon achieving Perfect Enlightenment he drew a devoted audience and began to unveil his world vision. From this time forward, Siddhartha Gautama was primarily known by several titles, among them the Buddha, Sakamuni, and World-Honored One. His followers recognized that the appearance of a Buddha on Earth coincided with a messianic advent anticipated by earlier prophets. This identity was referred to as the One-Who-Comes to Declare the Truth (Skt. Tathagata). He shared his destiny with his followers by revealing that they had been with him in past lives, and were indeed bound to him by their desire to be liberated from suffering. Together they traveled on a cosmic journey across Transmigration, a concept that extended relationships beyond one’s present lifetime.

  While earlier seers had peered into the divine realms of Heaven, the Buddha was the first visionary to declare his ability to see into other mortal existences in the Universe—whether they took place in the past or the future, in this world or in other worlds across the Universe. From his enlightened perch he embraced a modified version of the Brahmanic six realms of rebirth (Samsara), and then added a superseding and expanded view of existence. His cosmology featured remote Buddhas and their followers scattered throughout time and in every direction of the Universe, but also extending beyond the boundaries of time-space.

  For approximately forty years Sakamuni, the Sage of the Saka, taught an insightful series of dissertations unveiling his view of the scope, nature, and essence of all existence. Imparting his progressive teachings in a manner that equated with the blossoming of a flower revealing more as it opened wider, he guided his students to comprehend and cultivate their enlightened self through practice and to share in his cosmological vision of a unified and integrated universe.

  In imparting his own original visions over the course of his Teachings, he would at certain junctures craft changes to them and introduce superseding teachings. He used a method of education (Skt. Upaya) replacing one view with a grander one as soon as the student was able to comprehend the larger or deeper insight.

  With his mind’s eye he would fly beyond the dimensions of cosmic time, view the origination of the Universe, delve inside the essence of the atom, and explore the laws of relativity. His point of view was an omnipresent perspective, instantly encompassing the near, the far, the past, the now, and the everlasting. In mythic language, he would be seated beneath a jewel-bearing tree (an image derived from the Epic of Gilgamesh) on a lion throne. This was the seat of enlightenment from where he courageously viewed the diverse facets of life’s ever-changing reality.

  UNIVERSAL TRUTH

  In his Magi days he embraced an interfaith scope. For him, enlightenment was the culmination of his aspiration to share with all religions the mysterious Universal Truth that all of them aspired to align with. Sakamuni understood that India’s Vedic and Brahmanic scriptures (Rig Veda, Brahmanas and Upanisads), as well as Sumerian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Judaic, and Zoroastrian teachings all shared this common source.

  Buddhism gently avoided either rejection of or confrontation with other faiths, preferring to respond using its own rather artful approach— embracing certain doctrines before deconstructing, questioning, transforming, and re-constructing them using profoundly superseding wisdom. In articulating his view of Universal Truth, the Buddha used a wide range of symbols, myths, philosophical themes, and cosmic knowledge. His goal was to define Universal Truth in a way that all religions could agree with, because fundamentally they all sought to get it right.

  During the pyramid-building era of Egypt’s Old Kingdom, the priests called for alignment of social activities with Ma’at, the force of Universal Truth that kept the cosmos in its natural state of harmonious order. Conversely, they blamed chaos, whether natural or manmade, on lies or detriment
al acts that threatened to disturb a fragile cosmic equilibrium.

  The pre-philosophic Greeks believed that creation of the world emerged from a primordial chaos and was converted into “Universal Truth,” Logos, the inherent order and wisdom of the Universe. In the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia, Arta (Akk. Riddum) was the Sumerian word for Universal Truth, which the gods used to infuse the Universe with divine order. Vedism, the shamanic religion that migrated from Eurasia to Central Asia, embraced Rta4 (variation of Sumerian Arta), and defined it in the Rig Veda as the pure wisdom underlying Universal Order, Universal Law, and Universal Truth.

  In Zoroastrian theology, the Vedic Rta was pronounced Asha using the Persian language. As Zoroaster stood in clear opposition to Vedism and Vedic-influenced religions, his view of Universal Truth correlated with the spiritual harmony and blessing achieved through allegiance only to the moral dictums of the Supreme God, Assura Mazda.

  With the founding of Brahmanism in India, its scripture, the Upanisads, transitioned Rta into Dharma, a Sanskrit word defining Universal Truth as an aware Universal-Consciousness—a pure Reality emanating from a transcendent Universal-Mind that kept everything working in harmony. They added the notion that a sage able to tap into it would gain access to view all the inner workings of existence through the divine eye.

  The multicultural beliefs in an all-encompassing Cosmic Harmony revolved around the achievement of alignment of the large-scale Universe, including divinity and nature, with human society and, by extension, to the fate of each individual. Essential to life, all agreed, was humanity’s harmonious alignment with Universal Truth to keep the engine of existence operating with cyclical regularity.