Buddha came from the West (Shakya/Scythia)

Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson, Ashley Wells (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly (unrevised pre-publ.) 

Shakyamuni Buddha, Indo-Scythian, Indo-Greco, Gandhara, Afghanistan/Pakistan

The Buddha the Shakyan in stone from Gandhara, first renderings of him in human form.

.

Blue-eyed baby boy

What began as a brief write up to accompany the video presentation of Werner Herzog's "Wheel of Time."

Prince Siddhartha, later known as Shakyamuni or "the Sage of the Shakyas"/Scythians (see below) set off from the foothills of the Himalayas, southwest of the Tibetan plateau, northwest of "India."
 

Prince's presumed path to Magadha/"India"

(Such foothills are nowhere near the site British and other historians have said was the capital Kapilavastu or the birthplace garden park Lumbini; they are the foothills of the part of the Himalayan range known as the Hindu Kush in and around modern Bamiyan and Mes Aynak, Afghanistan. See ranajitpal.com).

Tibet: "Wheel of Time"

The prince traveled east, crossed the river bounding his kingdom, which was the "Land of the Shakyas" (ancient Indo-Scythia, Sakastan) with its capital in Kabil or Kapil'avastu, and sought a spiritual path as a wandering ascetic in modern northern India, in the territory of Magadha and neighboring countries.

 

He wandered widely, studying with meditation teachers, attaining great meditative abilities, then set off on his own still in search of enlightenment and real liberation. Five others confident in his determination followed along.

His goal was to alleviate the suffering of living beings -- earthling- and space-dwelling devas, human beings, less kind unseen beings, animals, and others steeped in craving, aversion, and ignorance.
 
When he at last reached the goal of glimpsing nirvana (authentic moksha) and awakening to truth, he set rolling the Dharma in the suburb of the ancient holy Indian city of Varanasi (Benares).

• Was the Buddha Ukrainian? [In a sense, as a Scythian]
• Shakyamuni the Saka from Scythia, the modern Stans
• Who were the Indo-Scythians in Indian literature?

The Indo-Scythians

Scythian coin from the Buddha's ancestral land: Obv: king on horseback goad in hand, bow behind, Buddhist Triratna symbol. Rev: standing king being crowned by goddess Tyche devi.

.

Scythia extended from India to Ukraine

The Indo-Scythians were named "Shaka" [Shakya, Sakya, Sakka] in India, an extension on the name Saka used by the Persians to designate Scythians. From the time of the Mahabharata wars (1500-500 BCE) Shakas receive numerous mentions in texts like the Puranas, the Manusmriti, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Mahabhasiya of Patanjali, the Brhat Samhita of Vraha Mihira, the Kavyamimamsa, the Brihat-Katha-Manjari, the Katha-Sarit-Sagara, and several other old texts.
 
They are described as part of an amalgam of other war-like tribes [therefore labelled kshatriyas, "warriors," as if they were part of Vedic India and its Indus Valley Civilization inherited caste system] from the northwest. More

Afghan, Kushan, Scythian Buddhism

Kushan Buddha statue

Wikipedia, as of September 2014, goes uncorrected in stating, "The Bamiyan valley [of northern Afghanistan along the Himalayan foothills] marked the most westerly point of Buddhist expansion and was a crucial hub of trade for much of the second millennium CE.

"It was a place where East met West and its archaeology reveals a blend of Greek, Indian, Chinese, Persian, and Turkish influence."

Buddhism began almost simultaneously in Afghanistan (Kapilavastu of the Shakya-land or -stan), where the Buddha was born, and India, where he traveled, became enlightened, and first taught.
 

Kush: Africa to Varanasi

Are the Wiki editors somehow unaware of the Buddhist monoliths of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan in Central Asia (Western China), or those reaching as far north as Northern Asia -- Kalmykia (Europe), Russia, Siberia, Mongolia -- with evidence of monastic Buddhist missionaries in ancient Rome, Greece, and perhaps even Israel, which the Occidental world seems intent on concealing the fact that what we call parts of the geopolitical "Middle East" are actually in Africa. The "State of Israel" is in Africa.
 

Africa: Egypt and Israel connect

Review a map, preferably one that accurately represents land mass rather than distorting to flatten or to politically enhance the importance of some areas while diminishing others. Just like the Sinai Peninsula and the rest of Egypt are, Israel is Africa, just as parts of the Kushan Empire were, where Buddhism was prevalent.
 

The Iranian/Persian/Aryan influence of Persepolis and the Kush -- a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire (which ran from the Balkans and Ukraine down to the Indus River Valley formerly part of India) where one finds Pakistan's Kush mountain in Balochistan province -- suggests that Buddhism made it much farther west and north of Bamiyan.

Bamiyan in Scythia

Modern-day Bamiyan, Afghanistan, site of some of the largest Buddhas in the world, the real Kapilavastu, capital of the Buddha's Shakya Clan territory or janapada, clan-foothold (wiki)

.

Ancient Gandhara, Scythia

Indeed Bamiyan -- perhaps the real Kapilavastu as Dr. Pal has suggested -- was an extraordinary Silk Route crossroads. This is where they remembered the Buddha so well as a native son that they built the largest Buddhist statues and monasteries in the world. They were needed because the Shakyas within seven years of the Buddha's ministry (sasana) began to ordain.

So many Shakyan/Scythian royals (nobles, rulers, kshatriya) went forth that some went just because they missed their family.

The Buddha, Gandhara (W)

The texts speak of the Buddha's triumphant return to what sounds like an Afghan loya jurga, where he proved himself to his proud father the king and others that he was in fact now a spiritually accomplished teacher not merely a prince with many talents.

Others must have gone because they had so much confidence in their erstwhile prince, who went away to become more famous than he ever could have become in his clan's kingdom (janapada) even if he had become a "world monarch" (chakravartin, cakkhavatti), the ideal of nomadic warrior tribes like the Scythians.

The Brahmins must have considered he and his kind "barbarians" -- who did not respect the traditional caste system at the top of which sat Brahmins in India but placed themselves at the top. Compared to themselves he could have been considered "barbaric," unwilling to accept the hierarchy they had in mind, except that he excelled them in their domain -- knowledge of the Vedas, liberated, able to guide others to their spiritual ideal of moksha.
 
Mes Aynak, Afghanistan, the largest Buddhist monastery in the world (most of which is still unexcavated), also in the vicinity of modern Kabul, is said to be 2,600 years old, the same age as Buddhism itself. (Buddhism may be much older, as are the other great religions of the world, and the lesser known Sumerian and Egyptian contributions to human spirituality, according to Dr. Pal and Ukrainian researcher Prof. Valery Bebik, a deputy principal of Ukraine University).

Scythian Buddha with blue eyes as described in ancient Theravada texts (Tenzinosel/flickr)

• These arcane connections might explain why the first anthropomorphic images of the Buddha are clearly of a fair skinned Central Asian exhibiting Bactrian, Indo-Scythian, partial Caucasian features, and other images, particularly those in the Cambodian (connected somehow to the Kambojan Empire of the Kambojas), that show clear African-Asian traits.
• But the Rhys Davids' translation of The Story of the Lineage describes a "noble" (Aryan, ~Iranian)  of the "Solar Race," and these words are put into the Buddha's mouth as describing himself, who he was and where he came from. And this has been extended to suggest what all buddhas are like and where they come from.

So when the Buddha chose to be reborn in the "Middle Country" (Majjhima-desa), he really chose well, picking the part of the world where East and West met, in what is now Central Asia below Europe, above India, east of Mesopotamia, west of China. And Western China is rich with Buddhist sites that Foushan documented as being Buddhist strongholds where the Dharma flourished.
 
Interestingly, the region of what is now called Ethiopia and the Sudan were the Kingdom of Kush, Kemet, extensions of the Kushan and Persian Empires (i.e., Kusana, Iran). And according to Dr. Pal, the Buddha's mother was likely from Seistan-Baluchistan, which is a province just east of Iran (Ariyan-land), south of Afghanistan, and west of Pakistan.
 

The First Buddhas

Gandhara Indo-Greco future Buddha (Wisdom Quarterly)

Kuṣāna under Emperor Kaniṣka was known as the Kingdom of Gandhāra. The Buddhist art spread outward [west] from Gandhāra to other parts of [Central and Northern] Asia. He greatly encouraged Buddhism. Before Kaniṣka, the Buddha was not represented in human form.

In Gandhāra, Mahāyāna Buddhism flourished, and the Buddha was represented in human form for the first time -- just as he is described in the ancient sutras, a tall, blue eyed, curly blacked haired, fair to golden skinned royal from the northwest, in what had been called Scythia, the real Land of the Shakas or Shakyas, not Nepal.

 

The region known to classical authors as "Scythia" included:

• The Pontic-Caspian steppe: Ukraine, southern Russia and western Kazakhstan (inhabited by Scythians from at least the 8th century BCE)
• The Kazakh steppe: northern Kazakhstan and the adjacent portions of Russia
• Sarmatia, corresponding to Ukraine and the eastern Balkans
• Saka tigrakhauda, corresponding to parts of Central Asia, including Kyrgyzstan, southeastern Kazakhstan and Kashgar
• Sakastan, corresponding to southern Afghanistan and eastern Iran, extending to the Sistan Basin
• Parama Kamboja: corresponding to northern Afghanistan and parts of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan
• Scythia Minor: corresponding to the lower Danube river area west of the Black Sea, with a part in Romania and a part in Bulgaria
• The northern Caucasus area

Shakyamuni Buddha (BBC)

One would wisely guess that the first representations by the people in the area where he had lived would be the most accurate not later fabrications by the ancient Greeks in Bactria the way it is reported and explained away nowadays. Some of the best examples of Gandharan Buddhist art reside in our own town of Pasadena, California on permanent display at the Norton Simon Museum of Art.

Most amazing of all, of course, for readers who cannot believe the Afghans or Scythians could have extended their reach all that far beyond northwest India (where the Indo-Scythians rules), Western historian Edward P. Vining in 1885 published their discovery of America long before Columbus along with the Chinese missionary monk Hwui Shan. More 

• Credit is due to Dr. Ranajit Pal for his maverick insights
• Mar 20, 2009 ... “It is quite possible that  [the Buddha] belonged to the Scythian nation of Budins that lived on the territory of Ancient Ukraine during the first or the... 
• First Buddha stupa in Ukraine - Ступа - священный курган Мира
• The first Buddha stupa in Ukraine is a perfect manifestation of all kinds of life in the universe and an ancient cosmological [Buddhist] mysticism brought together. Being a... 
• (Wisdom Quarterly) Buddha Was Ukrainian?
• March 20, 2009... “It is quite possible that Buddha belonged to the Scythian nation of Budins that liv(ed on the territory of Ancient Ukraine during the first or the second millennium B.C. The name of the nation is still preserved in the names of Ukraine’s contemporary settlements -- Seredina-Buda, Buda, and some others”... UPDATE: Was the Buddha Ukrainian?
• (Shambhala SunSpace) Was the Buddha Ukrainian? 
• Mar 21, 2009 ... [The] Buddha was a Scythian Arian [Aryan, but not as the Nazis co-opted and ruined the word], a member of the Budin tribe. ...region of Ukraine, as well as on the neighboring lands of Belarus and Russia. [Note the dates of publication. Does Shambhala SunSpace read Wisdom Quarterly the way WQ reads SSS? :)]
• Buddha, Jesus Christ, and Ancient Egyptian were Ukrainians