The Mauryan Polity c11.s2.t7: Views of Colebrooke
The Mauryan Polity c11.s2.t7
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Views of Colebrooke
c11.s2.t7.1
We have again the authority of H. T. Colebrooke² who is disposed to believe that the word Śramaṇa must refer to Brahman ascetics, and who observes, “It may therefore be confidently inferred, that the followers of the Vedas flourished in India when it was visited by the Greeks under Alexander; and continued to flourish from the time of Megasthenes, who described them in the fourth century before Christ, to that of Porphyrius, who speaks of them on later authority, in the 3rd century after Christ.”³ So the attempt of scholars like Schwanbeck to identify the Śramaṇas of the classical writers with the Buddha teachers is an assumption with no legs to stand on.⁴
c11.s2.t7.2
² See his observation on the sect of Jains; Miscellaneous Essays. Vol. II, ch. vii (ed. 1872).
c11.s2.t7.3
³ Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 204-5.
c11.s2.t7.4
⁴ Hultzsch takes this view in his Corpus.