Abstract

There is a quiet revolution afoot in our understanding of Early Buddhism, Pyrrhonism, and the Greek, Indian, and Central Asian cultural worlds of Hellenistic antiquity. The implications for the history of philosophy and religion are potentially profound.Christopher Beckwith's recent remarkable and provocative book, Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism, is the latest work breaking important new ground in this area.1 It offers no less than a wholesale geographical and chronological restructuring of traditional Buddhism, upsetting decades of scholarship. Along the way, Beckwith advances the following audacious claims:That the Buddha was a Scythian, not an Indian.That he lived much later than commonly...