greece, the final frontier? 133
possibly in Kua times, when the region referred to was included in
an empire also covering North India and when Buddhism was certainly
present there.
Silence about Buddhism also reigns at the time of the invasion of the
East by Alexander the Great (327–325 BC in India), with one possible
exception. Pyrrho of Elis († ca. 275 BC), disputedly the founder of
sceptic philosophy in Greece,^4 went to India in the retinue of Alexander.
Scepticism was widespread in India and Evrard Flintoff has tried to
show that regarding all ideas with which Pyrrho was an innovator in
Greece, he is in agreement with the sceptical schools of thought in
India.^5 In general, though, scholars have maintained the Greek basis
of scepticism. One could say that scepticism by its systematic negation
of all standpoints must be similar wherever it originates. But there is
also the assertion of the third century biographer Diogenes Laertius
on the authority of older sources, that Pyrrho developed his philosophy
under the in uence of his contacts with Indian “gymnosophists”.^6 In
particular, attention has been drawn to Pyrrho’s antinomies, which
correspond to the catukoi or quadrilemma as used in India by, among
others, Mdhyamika Buddhism.^7 In the words of Pyrrho, as preserved
by the Church Father Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 260–339 AD): “We
must not say about any one thing that it is, or that it is not, or that
it is and is not, or that it neither is or is not.”^8 The catukoi is, to be
true, only evidenced in Indian texts from much later times than that
of Pyrrho. In essence, the catukoi is a sceptical device, not in the rst
place a Buddhistic one. Probably, both Pyrrho and Buddhism were
in uenced by Indian scepticism. Both for Pyrrhonism and Buddhism
the goal of the quadrilemma was to make the antinomies disappear,
and to bring about a mental transformation in which the world is sud-
denly realised to be unreal in all the ways we conceive it, and in which
all concepts, speech and being troubled are suspended. In contrast to
Greek thought, Pyrrho sees this mental state as the ultimate goal in
itself, not as a part of it. It is not known, however, whether to him this
was merely a technique for making the present life more endurable,
or for other-worldly salvation, an aim which in India was shared by
(^4) Cf. Sedlar 1980, pp. 77–78.
(^5) Flintoff 1980.
(^6) Diogenes Laertius, Vita philosophorum, 9.61, 63; cf. Jairazbhoy 1963, p. 84.
(^7) On the origin and spread of the catukoi in India, see Bhattacharya 1937.
(^8) Flintoff 1980, p. 92.