Buddha and Jesus: Could Solomon Be the Missing Link? (6 page)

So we get down to the question of whether Buddha was aware of Solomon and Judaism. How likely would that have been?

Ancient East-West Traffic

There is much evidence of considerable traffic, not just of trade but also of travel and migration, between the Middle East and India during the centuries surrounding the lives of Solomon (950
B.C.
), Buddha (525
B.C.
), and Christ (
A.D.
30).

1. Stories about Solomon were well known in India during his lifetime, four centuries before Buddha lived.

The possibility that Solomon’s teachings could have influenced India long before Buddha lived finds direct support in the Old Testament:

Here is a picture of the world around 950
B.C.
People everywhere were eagerly seeking wisdom from credible spokesmen long before Buddha lived. The question, however, is: When the Bible uses the expression “the whole world,” would this include India? Was the author of 1 Kings 10 even aware of India? Verse 22 of this same chapter provides a revealing clue:

Peacocks are native to India, Burma, and Java.
⁷
In contrast, ivory (from elephants) and apes could have come from either Africa or India. In any case, through these many visits from people far and wide, the Bible says, Solomon’s fame and proverbs spread throughout the world:

These three passages portray a world where Solomon was at the center of an exchange of proverbs among every nation in the known world. So, in a very real sense, when comparing the core tenets of Buddhism with Solomon’s writings, we are surveying them side by side with the substance of the
collective
wisdom of the Near East some four hundred years before Buddha lived. Chief among Israel’s neighbors during Solomon’s reign were Egypt and Assyria. Some Egyptian kings and sages collected proverbs, not just a few of which were similar to Solomon’s writings. Most notable among them were Ptah-hotep (c. 2500–2350
B.C.
), Merikone (c. 2106–2010
B.C.
)
⁹
and Amenemope, who lived sometime during the late New Kingdom (1300–1075
B.C.
).
¹⁰

Various historians have commented on the Middle East–India connection. Historian Will Durant offered this assessment of the antiquity of East-West trade: “The foreign trade of India is as old as her history; objects found in Sumeria and Egypt indicate a traffic between these countries and India as far back as 3000
B.C.
Commerce between India and Babylon by the Persian Gulf flourished from 700 to 480
B.C.
; and perhaps the ‘ivory, apes and peacocks’ of Solomon came by the same route from the same source.”
¹¹
And according to English archaeologist John A. Thompson, “there are some Hebrew legends and traditions that there were Jews in India in the days of King Solomon.”
¹²
The Legends of the Jews,
a collection of tales from rabbinic writings compiled by Jewish scholar Louis Ginzberg, contains an intriguing occult reference saying that Solomon “could grow tropical plants in Palestine, because his ministering spirits secured water for him from
India
.”
¹³

In 1568, Spanish explorer Alvaro Mendana discovered the Solomon Islands and gave them that name, believing them to be the land of Ophir mentioned several times in the Bible.
¹⁴
In several passages the Bible calls Ophir a destination of trade ships dispatched from Israel by King Solomon to embark on a three-year voyage of trade.
¹⁵
Many modern scholars believe that Ophir was located either on the coast of Pakistan or India, or somewhere in Yemen.

2. Some trade and travel between India and the Middle East occurred centuries prior to Solomon’s reign.

In 1916, H. G. Rawlinson, the author of several historical studies on India, noted that “an axe head of white jade, which could only have come from China, has been found in the second city of Troy.”
¹⁶
Troy II existed from 2350 to 2250
B.C.
on the western shore of modern-day Turkey, far to the northwest of Israel.
¹⁷
Rawlinson also observed, “Trade between the Indus valley and the Euphrates is . . . very ancient. The earliest trace of this is . . . to be found in the cuneiform inscriptions of the Hittite kings . . . belonging to the fourteenth or fifteenth century
B.C.
”
¹⁸
The Hittites were mentioned as immediate neighbors with the Israelites in numerous books throughout Old Testament history.
¹⁹

The Jewish Virtual Library offered these observations: “Interactions between India and ancient Israel were overlaid upon older cultural patterns between India’s Indus Valley Civilization (IVC, third to second millennium
B.C.E.
) and Sumer. Legendary accounts of the great wealth of India entered West Asian consciousness during antiquity and found their way into the Jewish imagination. Ancient tablets discovered at Ur, the city of Abraham, describe this flourishing trade.”
²⁰

The city of Ur flourished from 2600
B.C.
to 550
B.C.
but was “no longer inhabited after about 500
B.C.
, perhaps owing to drought, changing river patterns, and the silting of the outlet to the Persian Gulf.”
²¹
In other words, almost the entire 2,100-year existence of Ur as a notable city pre-dated the life of Buddha. Further, “Philologists have identified several Sanskrit and Tamil loan words in the Hebrew Bible, dating from as early as the Book of Exodus through the Books of Kings and Chronicles, indicating direct or indirect trade between India and ancient Israel.”
²²
The Book of Exodus, attributed to Moses, dates from around 1300
B.C.
²³
Most of this ancient trade was made possible by large ships plying the sea lanes from the Persian Gulf to India. Numerous references to such trade appear in the Rig Veda,
²⁴
a text that dates to 1500
B.C.
or earlier.
²⁵

3. Trade and travel between India and the Middle East was quite extensive during the four centuries between Solomon and Buddha.

Evidence of travel and trade to and from India and the Middle East in the centuries between Solomon’s death (930
B.C.
)
²⁶
and Buddha’s birth is plentiful. Rawlinson observed that, “on the obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 860
B.C.
, are apes, [and]
Indian
elephants.”
²⁷
Shalmaneser III
²⁸
was the King of Assyria to whom Jehu
²⁹
of Israel sent tribute in 841
B.C.
, soon after Assyria had devastated the territories around Damascus.

Rawlinson also noted that Babylon overthrew the Assyrian empire in 606
B.C.
and, “in the crowded marketplaces of that great city met the races of the world—Ionian traders, Jewish captives, Phoenician merchants from distant Tarshish, and
Indians from the Panjab,
who came to sell their wares.”
³⁰
Around 550
B.C.
, there were “Chinese silks known in Athens.”
³¹
In addition: “The carrying of goods along the Silk Road [from China] to the Mediterranean began in the 6th century
B.C.
. . . At the same time traders began to take advantage of the monsoons for sea-borne trade with India and beyond.”
³²

Trade clearly involves an exchange of goods, yet it inevitably creates opportunities for the exchange of ideas and culture. Regarding the extent of contact between the cultures of the world around the time of Buddha, Durant offered these comments: “It has often been remarked that this period was distinguished by a shower of stars in the history of genius: Mahavira and Buddha in India, Lao-tzu and Confucius in China, Jeremiah and the Second Isaiah in Judea, the pre-Socratic philosophers in Greece, and perhaps Zarathustra in Persia. Such a simultaneity of genius suggests more intercommunication and mutual influence among these ancient cultures than it is possible to trace definitely today.”
³³

4. A colony of Jews settled in India around the time of Buddha’s birth.

Prior to the birth of Buddha, the Jewish people suffered greatly under two expulsions from their homeland:

The first settlement of Jews in India was established in Cochin in 562
B.C.
,
³⁴
a year after the birth of Buddha. This colony would have been at least thirty-four years old at the time that Buddha became enlightened. So we have this chronology.

Given this timetable, it is no stretch of imagination to suppose that Buddha could have actually met one or more Jews who had settled in India. (A “Postscript” to this book provides a fictional portrayal of such contact.)