by Harvey Kraft
According to the Old Testament Bible, the Book of Esther, an important advisor to the emperor had implored Xerxes to order the death of the Jewish community in Persia and Babylon. This Zoroastrian minister and noble, Haman, a name associated with Haoma (the Elixir of Immortality), accused Queen Esther's uncle and guardian, Mordecai292 of refusing to bow to him, a Persian noble. In the Achaemenid culture the custom of bowing, called proksynesis, was an important aspect of acknowledging the hierarchy of social standing. Not bowing properly to a royal personage could result in death. Haman charged that the Jews would bow only before their God, an insult to the Emperor, Persians, and Assura Mazda.
At risk to her life, Esther convinced Xerxes to spare her people. When the Emperor learned that Mordecai had once saved him from an assassination attempt, he ordered Haman to be hanged on the gallows he had prepared for the Jews.
Xerxes continued to rule to 465 BCE when the chief commander of his royal bodyguards, Artabanus, assassinated the Emperor. His son, Achaemenes, the cruel governor of Egypt, and two other sons, the Crown Prince Darius and Hystaspes were also murdered in conjunction with the effort Artabanus made to dethrone the Achaemenids. In the end, Artaxerxes I, the surviving son of Xerxes, took the throne and executed Artabanus and his seven sons.
Artaxerxes I continued a state of war with Athens until they signed a cease-fire treaty in 449 BCE. About fifty years later (400 BCE), the Achaemenid dynasty still ruled the empire, but by now Babylon had regained some of its prosperity under Artaxerxes II, grandson of his name sake.
ALEXANDER IN BABYLON
The Greco-Persian Wars continued sporadically for nearly a hundred more years until Alexander III of Macedon (356–323 BCE) invaded the Persian Empire. As predicted by Chaldean seer-astrologers from Babylon, Alexander the Great decisively defeated the last of the Achaemenid Persian Emperors, Darius III, at the battle of Gaugamela (today northern Iraq) in October of 331 BCE. He had already taken Egypt, Anatolia, Syria, and the Levant. The victory at Gaugamela opened for him the road to Babylon and other Persian territories all the way to the Indus.
With a few exceptions, because most of the vassal kingdoms hated the Persians, they welcomed Alexander. Alexander treated the dead with respect, whether they fought on the Greek or Persian side, and showed generosity for those who accepted his rule in place of the Persians. He spared the families of his fallen soldiers from further taxation and pubic service.
Jerusalem had surrendered without a battle. But the Judeans made Alexander aware of the prophetic vision of the Ram and the Goat in the Bible's Book of Daniel. They interpreted this myth as an astrological prophecy foreshadowing the defeat of the Persian Empire at the hands of the Greeks.
Upon entering Babylon (331 BCE) the Greeks saw a cosmopolitan population. Men generally were clothed in a linen tunic reaching to the feet, layered with another tunic made in wool, and a short white cloak. Hairstyles were long and turbans were popular. Fashionable shoes were copies of a Greek style. People anointed their whole body with perfumes and many carried walking sticks carved on top with a rose, lotus, apple, or vulture motif.
The people of Babylon uniformly despised the Achaemenids. They warmly welcomed Alexander as their liberator and cheered the surrender of their Persian occupiers. In appreciation Alexander made ceremonial sacrifices to Marduk, also known in Greece as Zeus Belus, or Zeus of Babylon. Noting that the local seers had predicted his victory he ordered that repairs be made to the Etemenanki Ziggurat in Esagila.
He continued on with his military campaign into Persia where he destroyed the Achaemenid capital at Susa and captured its treasury, and then stormed the glorious capital of Persepolis. His soldiers looted it for the first five days, but Alexander chose to stay there for five months until a fire broke out and engulfed the city. The burning of Persepolis echoed Daniel's prophecy of Nebuchadnezzar's dream declaring that the fourth empire to rule Babylon, the Achaemenid Persian Empire, would end in the fire of annihilation.
Having taken his vengeance on Darius the Great, he continued from there to acquire territories across the northern climes of Medes and Greater Aryana (today Afghanistan). Alexander invited members of the Magi Order of Medes to perform various religious rituals, although he destroyed Zoroastrian ritual sites and writings and killed their priests, who Greek historians referred to as Magians. The difference in treatment indicated that he held Zoroastrians responsible for their allegiance to Persian military might and possibly responsible for the purge at Esagila some two hundred years earlier.
East of Persia, he reached the chieftains of Gandhara (today Pakistan) who agreed to come under his authority. Establishing a footprint in Bactria, Alexander introduced the people to statues of Greek philosophers. Impressed and inspired, local Buddhist artisans produced the first sculptures of the Buddha's sacred image. Their iconography continued to evolve and in time became the essential focus of Buddhist worship, although Sakamuni had stated that he did not want his likeness to be engraved. He preferred the picturing of the Sacred Tree or the Dharma Wheel as the means for connecting with the Universal-Mind.
Still heading east, when Alexander encountered the leaders of Kamboja, he found them to be stubbornly loyal to the Persians, so he destroyed them utterly in a battle. Although injured in that fight, Alexander continued on and crossed the Punjab into the Indus River Valley of India. After winning a major battle there, although his army absorbed a beating, he respected his local opponent so much that he appointed him governor. But then exhausted, his armies refused to march further east.
Curiously, on his return route, Alexander personally led a portion of his army through a southern route through Makran, the original home of the Saka nation. The reason for this journey may have had to do in part with his desire to explore Gautama's homeland. While crossing it, Alexander declared the Saka area to be immune from taxes.
Aristotle (384–322 BCE) was a personal tutor of Alexander the Great. Aristotle's teacher was Plato, who was a student of Socrates. These three men established the system of Western philosophy. The pre-Socratic philosophic traditions of metaphysics, logic, and democracy had their roots in Mesopotamia. Perhaps Alexander's teacher, Aristotle, had passed on to Alexander his knowledge of Asia's legacy of wisdom and some of the views of Siddhartha Gautama. This would explain why Alexander appeared to be well aware of the religious history of Babylonia and Persia. In Aryana he employed Sramana tutors to learn more about the Vedic, Jaina and Buddhist ethos. He may have been schooled about the philosopher-king Buddha, and the conspiracy that caused the purge of the interfaith Magi at the hands of the Zoroastrians.
Alexander could have identified with the Saka in part because his family had claimed a heritage related to the Sun deity. They may have been members of the Sun-Lion Fellowship, and on that basis, he could have felt a sense of kinship. In any case, by the age of thirty Alexander the Great was venerated as an invincible god under the protection of the Sun deities embodied in the Greek Zeus, the Egyptian Ra, and the Vedic Vishnu.
While his return journey from India across the Gedrosian Desert cost many men, the bulk of his army had taken an easier path. The two forces reunited in Susa. There he recovered the statues that Xerxes had stolen from Athens and returned them to the Acropolis. Next, he headed back to Babylon.
As he prepared to re-enter Babylon, the local seers predicted that he faced mortal danger inside the city. They had asked him to stay away until the danger passed. But his Greek advisors convinced him to ignore the advice of astrologers.
Back in the city, Alexander embarked on an ambitious campaign to restore Babylon to its former glory. He planned on making Babylon the capital seat of his Asian territories and to connect the Euphrates River with a great new port he would build on the Persian Gulf. He immediately ordered work on the great ziggurat complex at Esagila assigning some 20,000 men to demolish and clear the grounds in preparation for its rebuilding and restoration to its former glory. He intended the new Esagila tower to be even larger than the previous
one.
One day, however, his guards found a strange man sitting on his throne in the royal palace originally built for Nebuchadnezzar. The astrologer-advisors of Esagila advised that this man, whom they sent, should be put to death. He was executed. The clergy explained that they had followed a long-held custom among Mesopotamian ministers to the kings. Based on a reading of astrological divination they had found that Alexander was in danger, so they sent a substitute, an "imposter" destined to die in his place.
The tradition of offering the fates a "king imposter" failed this time.
Days later Alexander fell ill. At the age of thirty-two he died (323 BC) in the ancient palace of Nebuchadnezzar. His death, perhaps from malaria contracted during his Indus campaign, complications from war injuries, or possibly an assassination, ended the possibility that Babylon would arise once more to its former prominence.
After his death the political and economic center of the civilized world shifted to the Mediterranean. Following the division of Alexander's empire among a handful of generals, little interest remained in resuscitating a decaying city known so well for its stubborn, independent streak.
The city of Babylon had already lost its preeminence as the center of the civilized world under the Persians, and when power shifted west, its light slowly dimmed until it faded into oblivion.
The territory from Babylon to the Indus came under the rule of the Macedonian lord Seleucus. The religious functions of the Esagila Temple, in the half-completed state Alexander had left behind, continued to be maintained by an order of Anu-Enlil priests. But by the following century the city was nearly abandoned and the temple grounds had decayed from neglect.
Seleucus built the city of Seleucia293 on the Tigris River (305 BCE), some eighty kilometers north of Babylon. Shortly thereafter the majority of its population was moved there from Babylon.
Meanwhile, on the eastern front of the Seleucid Empire, a new challenge arose from the first Mauryan Emperor Chandragupta (340–298 BCE). The Mauryan King had conquered the northern portion of the Ganges and then negotiated the takeover of Greater Aryana by marrying Seleucus's daughter. Next he acquired the southern subcontinent of India. The Mauryan Empire unified India for the first time, encompassing all of the populations following the Vedic, Jaina, Buddhist, and Brahmin faiths.
Chandragupta abdicated his throne (298 BCE) to become an ascetic Jaina. He died quickly that same year as a result of extreme fasting. His grandson Asoka the Great (304–232 BCE) ruled the empire for thirtyseven years (269–232 BCE). He gradually converted to Buddhism. Asoka launched a Buddhist missionary campaign making a great effort to establish Buddhism as an Indian religion with an international mission. Emperor Asoka used the principles of Buddhism to promote cultural harmony. Coins of his image have been found as far as the English isles.
Echoing the compassion of the Buddha, he viewed his people with the love of a parent for his children.
SURVIVING
History has been unkind to Babylon and too kind to Darius the Great. Virtually nothing is known about his reigning predecessor "Gaumâta," who Darius curses as an imposter to the throne. Ironically, in traditional Buddhist literature "Devadatta" is deemed to have been an imposter pretending to be a Buddha.
Peering behind the scenes of the mysterious plots and subplots surrounding the takeover of the Persian throne has been one of the greatest challenges for ancient historians. By showing that this nexus involved the emergence of competing visions, Buddhist and Zoroastrian, and the implications on later generations of religious thought is profound.
The Buddha from Babylon has shined a light on this episode of ancient history because it serves as the breadbasket of spiritual ideas that have taken root across the world. Beneath today's Islamic Asia is hidden the lost histories of Sumer/Akkad, Babylonia, the Arya Vedics, the Magi from Medes, the Buddha of the Saka, and Zoroaster of Parsa.
The Zoroastrian religion lasted for one thousand years before the Arabian invasion of Persia and vicinity forced its adherents under the threat of death to convert to Islam, causing many to flee. The survival of Buddhism was also precarious. Buddhists were driven out of their original localities in Aryana and India by competing religions. That they were able to find homes across various kingdoms in Asia is a beautiful testament to the faith's wisdom, adaptability, and commitment to preserving the Teachings. The strength of faith in and devotion to the Buddha is one of the greatest spiritual achievements in history. Buddhism's survival would not have happened if not for its willingness to co-mingle with local beliefs. As a result, its doctrines were kept alive in many pieces in many ways. Due to its ability to adapt, Buddhism has lasted for 2,500 years.
In various places and through different teachers carrying portions of its scriptures the legacies of Buddhism survived as a rainbow of practices and interpretations. Although nearly all Buddhist sects agree on some basic tenets, primarily the Four Noble Truths, as the means for awakening people to the underlying cause of suffering, its various clergies, practices, objects of worship, and local customs have survived to modern times. The iconic images of Siddhartha Gautama, other Buddhas, and Bodhisattvas, and various expressions of Buddhist artwork, have attracted hundreds of millions of devotees to some version of Buddhism. In that respect, Buddhism today is many religions with a common source.
The Buddhist Diaspora first came into being soon after the Buddha's passing. In the west Indus region once known as Uttarapatha (today Pakistan, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Tajikistan), Buddhist worship had to compete with Zoroastrian and Jaina religions. At the time underground cave-temple-shelters (Vihara) served up mixed portions of these religions.
But ethnic and religious upheavals forced a large number of Buddhists out of the area and many migrated to the more docile environs of the northeastern Ganges region in India. There, the early Mahayana school of Buddhism blossomed and presented the area's Brahmins with strong competition for adherents. Some Buddhists exported the teachings of Kuru in western India when they migrated south and found a base on the island of Sri Lanka where the Theravada School of Buddhism succeeded.
In India Buddhism and Brahmanism had coexisted for a couple of centuries after the establishment of the Mauryan Empire. However, meeting the challenge of the increasing popularity of Buddhist views, Brahmanism advanced into Hinduism with the creation of the epic Mahabharata. This new testament of Hinduism included the Bhagavad Gita as well as the older testaments of the Vedas, Brahmanas, Upanisads, and Puranas. It said the Buddha was drawing away believers, a sure sign of religious campaigning at the time.
Hindu advocates were very effective in providing ritual protections and divine council to leaders and showed an extraordinary ability to keep in place its caste system. While Buddhism continued to play a winning hand in philosophical debates in India for a time, its leaders could not overcome Brahmin control of political power and social programs. As Brahmanism morphed into Hinduism, the religion became nationalistic in character. During the Gupta Period (320–600 CE), a golden age of creativity in India, Hinduism eclipsed Buddhism. The latter's believers would become marginalized, estranged, and then ostracized. Buddhism had struggled from its arrival to prove to ordinary Indians that it was truly Indic, but in the end it failed to survive there.
In Persia, in the 6th century CE, an Arabian invasion instituted Islam as the religion of the state. Zoroastrians were subjected to persecutions by harassment and discrimination, humiliations, outright killings, firings from work, enslavement, imprisonment, and heavy taxation. Their places of worship and ritual shrines were destroyed. Libraries were burned to the ground. Many converted to Islam to save their lives.
Because a host of the doctrines of Islam were derivative of Zoroastrian, most new converts only had to address God as Allah and never again speak of Ahuramazda. The Saka culture in Greater Aryana converted to Islam and so they remain to this day.
When the spread of Islam extended into India, the invaders attacked Hindu temples and chased out the remainin
g Buddhist presence.
Buddhism found new homes. Mahayana Buddhism moved from India to China and then to Korea, Tibet, Bhutan, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and Vietnam. Theravada Buddhism became prominent in Sri Lanka and then crossed into the Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar.
Today Buddhism is global. Adherents are found in nearly every country in the world.
MODERN EYE
In The Buddha from Babylon, you have been presented with a work of spiritual archeology, an interpretation of the oral teachings of the Buddha, an exploration of the mythically rendered Buddhist cosmology, as well as an accounting of the lost history of Siddhartha Gautama.
This study of the Buddha reveals a vision and farsightedness that extends beyond the range of most philosophical and theological observations, empirical sciences, or the range of modern space telescopes. This examination has unraveled his integrated insights regarding cosmic laws and the human condition, levels of consciousness, and psychological patterns— altogether as profound as any religion or science could propose. The range of visionary wisdom, if properly understood, indicates that the human capacity for evolutionary advancement is greater than our ability to see externally even with advanced technologies. Against the background of modern knowledge, the Buddha appears surprisingly omniscient and surreal.
Because Western history is Euro-centric, modern ideas seemingly originate with the Greeks. But the Greeks themselves considered the Mesopotamians and Egyptians to be the real founders of astronomy, medicine, philosophy, mathematics, harmonic music, and psychology. Yet, even these contributions could not have been achieved without the earlier work of visionary shamans who excelled in super-conscious trance navigation, skills that are either rare or non-existent today.
