The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c11.s1.18

v1.c11.s1.18

The curious phenomenon that in Iran the gods of India appear as demons, while in India the Asuras as demons are contrasted with the great Ahura Mazdāh, has naturally given rise to much discussion: the simplest view, that the divergence of terminology arose directly from a religious split among the tribes caused by the Zoroastrian reforms which led to the differentiation of the two as Indian and Iranian, is now usually admitted not to be tenable; but the terminology has been thought to reflect hostile conflicts between Iranians and Indians in times after the two nations had developed separate lives.³ For this view we would have good authority if we could accept the identification⁴ of a mysterious Gaotema who is found in the Yašt,¹ and who was, it has been asserted, none other than Gautama Buddha. The identification, however, rests merely on the similarity of name, and this being the case, and the name being an old Indian one, it is perfectly clear that it should not be used for serious argument.² Still less seriously can we take the suggestion that the Buddhist religion was really suggested to the Buddha from an outside source, and that not Aryan. The effort³ to show that Buddhism was Tibetan in origin, and the Buddha a Mongolian of Gūrkha type, by such evidence as that of the form of the Stūpa, and the alleged Tibetan affinities of the Vajjis or Licchavis, or the equation of Çākya with non-Aryan⁴ Scyths, and the prevalence of Mongolian feature types on Barhut and Sanchī sculptures, is wholly fantastic, and certainly affords no reason to see any close intercourse with Iran in any early period. Of such intercourse the Vedic literature affords no clear evidence at all: the most that can be said is that the energy with which the fire cult was practised in the north according to the testimony of the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa may be accounted for by the proximity of the north-west to Iran, and the difference between the two forms of fire cult is so great as to render even this conclusion uncertain and precarious.