Monday, March 9, 2015

What are "Aryans" in Buddhism?

Maya, Amber Larson, Sheldon S., Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly
The great Central Asian "Aryan" Tomyris, Iranian/Ukrainian heroine (Castagno/wiki/WQ)
  
Our favorite Nazi (bandito747.livejournal.com)
[TRIGGER WARNING: Candid discussion of Aryans, aliens, and the Scythian/Central origins of the Buddha!] Wisdom Quarterly reader "Turd" writes in, after reading Buddhist Himalayas by Train (Tibet-Nepal), to complain/correct us about our love of ancient Iran and the Iranians:

Indus Valley Civilization map (W)
Iranians are not Aryans; they're Persians, and Iran is a recent name that they adapted. Many North Indians have gold skin and even pale skin. The area of Northern India and Southern Pakistan used to be called Aryavartta, which means "Abode of the Aryans."

LETTER: "The word Aryan comes from the Sanskrit word Arya, which means "noble." 
    Indo-Scythia, Central Asia, Ukraine
  • [Turd, it didn't mean that until the Buddha gave it that meaning, given that the kshatriyas of Shakya Land, his homeland west of "India," did not subordinate themselves to the ruling elite farther east, the Brahmin priests. "India" did not exist yet, but only loosely affiliated kingdoms like Magadha with its capital at Rajgir/Rajagaha, Kāśi with its capital at Varanasi/Benares, and Kosala with its capital at Shravasti/Savatthi.]
"The main sign (or marker) of the Aryan gene is the amount of R1a1 M17. And North India has some of the highest amounts in the world, way higher than Iran. And there are also many swastikas that were found in the excavations of [pre-India] Indus Valley Civilization sites.

What is an Aryan?
Scythian maid, modern Tomyris, devi Swedish fashion model Nygards Anna, like a Central Asian from the Shakyan Clan, Ukrainian, Afghan "Aryan," Scandinavian not Aryan (Bhakti Omwoods/bohopage.com/WQ).
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Buddhist Birth Stories (archive.org)
That may be, Turd, that may be. But what a dangerous topic to tackle. Clearly the word "Iranian" is a cognate of the Buddhist term Ariyan. Who the original Aryans were is hard to say.

But a very important clue is found in The Story of the Lineage as translated by early British Buddhist scholar Dr. T.W. Rhys Davids (Pali Text Society), revised and updated by famed Buddhist scholar C.A.F. Rhys Davids, found in Buddhist Birth-Stories (Jataka Tales) The Commentarial Introduction Entitled Nidana-Katha The Story of the Lineage.

Hindu-Aryan Myth...Nazism
But first, why did the German Nazis (motivated by space aliens and dreams of world domination from the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, Central Asian, Shakyan, Indo-Scythian, Indian, and likely Iranian myth of the World Monarch, chakravartin) appropriate this word, the ancient swastika symbol, and the world ruler dream?

The Nazis were spiritualists consumed with the occult, and part of the "occult" included Eastern Mysticism, the "Wisdom of the East." Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, fellow Nazi Joseph Goebbels, brought Buddhist ideas from  the East and converted them to racist rhetoric about a "master race" like the "nobles" (aryas, enlightened ones) the Buddha praised as living correctly to make an end of suffering.

The "nobles" are often substituted for another group of conventional nobility, or a ruling caste, called the kshatriyas. The Buddha and his family were not part of the caste system. But the Brahmins labelled them "noble warriors." They were certainly nomadic warriors of a sort, and the many who became members of the Sangha, or Monastic Order, indeed became aryas. But in their land there were only the extended family of the rulers and everyone else, who worked as settled farmers in an agrarian economy made rich by many traders and merchants working along the Silk Route.

Our least favorite "Aryan," Paris Hilton
When everyone's a ruler, no one's a ruler if we were to thoughtlessly accept that all of the Buddha's cousins were princes and princesses waiting for the throne? So many translators seem to be suggesting it, but we know there were servants and, Suddhodana, the Buddha's father seems much more like an Afghan chieftain at a loya jurga than any European or Magadhi royal in other lands. (See Dalrymple's Return of a King and the maverick research of Dr. Ranajit Pal).

The modern "Aryans" of modern Iran (Aryan Land) are not "Persians" (klyker.com)

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