Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Megasthenes and Truths

The photo is Oooka river near Kamioooka station. It leads to Yokohama harbor.

Megasthenes (350 BC-290 BC) traveled to India before 298 BC and wrote in "Indica" his amazing discoveries about India that the place had female philosophers and they thrived in vibrant discussions with male philosophers. The philosophers were Buddhists. Megasthenes didn't know detail about the society and apparently nothing about Buddhism.

He misjudged all philosophers as the top layer of India's caste system. He didn't know the philosophers of Buddhism were against the caste system. Of course! He didn't even know about Buddhism. In the very early Buddha teaching and actually even today for ordinary, not even religious, truth seekers, we know all people are equal including philosophers, priests, kings, prostitutes, slaves, and all. Don’t you agree? And we also know Buddhists are to seek truth militantly so I'm saying again and again that I cannot comprehend why those truth seeking experts for 2000 years never corrected the prejudice against women in the sutra.

Let us think about the sutra translators and the culture they lived in such as the ancient India, Korea, and Japan. They were all males as far as I know. Words got twisted through translations and became so powerful. But we can change that.

In a way, we are all translators and we are responsible in spreading our ideas. We need to read the original document although it's difficult and keep asking why.

Megasthenes was Greek and an ambassador to India under Syrian king.

No comments: