73. J. N. Postgate, Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History (London, 1992), p. 251.
74. O’Connell, Ride of Second Horseman, pp. 132–42.
75. Keegan, History of Warfare, pp. 130–31.
76. John Romer, People of the Nile: Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt (New York, 1982), p. 115.
77. Keegan, History of Warfare, pp. 133–35.
78. Yigal Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands, 2 vols. (New York, 1963), 1:134–35; Robert McAdams, The Evolution of Urban Society: Early Mesopotamia and Prehispanic Mexico (New York, 1973), p. 149.
79. Kramer, Sumerian Mythology, pp. 123, 120.
80. Kautsky, Politics of Aristocratic Empires, p. 108. See Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000—1700 (New York, 1976), pp. 129–30, 151.
81. Robert L. O’Connell, Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons, and Aggression (New York and Oxford, 1989), p. 38; O’Connell, Ride of Second Horseman, pp. 100–101; William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society Since A.D. 1000 (Chicago, 1982), pp. 2–3; Schneider, Ancient Mesopotamian Religion, pp. 22–23; Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, pp. 153–54; Gwendolyn Leick, Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City (London, 2001), pp. 85–108.
82. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Imperialism and Social Classes: Two Essays (New York, 1955), p. 25; Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1974), p. 32.
83. Anderson, Lineages, p. 31; Anderson’s emphasis.
84. Kautsky, Politics of Aristocratic Empires, pp. 148–52.
85. Marc Bloch, Feudal Society (Chicago, 1961), p. 298.
86. Leick, Mesopotamia, pp. 95, 100. The “Lower” and “Upper Seas” were, respectively, the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean.
87. J. B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, NJ, 1969), p. 164.
88. F. C. Fensham, “Widows, Orphans and the Poor in Ancient Eastern Legal and Wisdom Literature,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 21 (1962).
89. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, p. 178, my emphasis.
90. Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization (Chicago and London, 1974), pp. 1:108–10.
91. Schneider, Ancient Mesopotamian Religion, pp. 105–6. The meaning and derivation of akitu is unknown; see Jacobsen, “Cosmos as State,” p. 169.
92. Nancy K. Sandars, ed. and trans., “The Babylonian Creation Hymn,” in Sandars, Poems of Heaven and Hell from Ancient Mesopotamia (London, 1971), pp. 44–60.
93. Jonathan Z. Smith, “A Pearl of Great Price and a Cargo of Yams: A Study in Situational Incongruity,” in Imagining Religion, pp. 90–96; Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, trans. Willard R. Trask, 3 vols. (Chicago, 1978), 1:72–76; Sandars, “Babylonian Creation Hymn,” pp. 47–51.
94. Smith, “Pearl of Great Price,” p. 91.
95. Sandars, “Babylonian Creation Hymn,” section I, p. 73.
96. Ibid., pp. 73, 79.
97. O’Connell, Ride of Second Horseman, pp. 141–42.
98. Leick, Mesopotamia, pp. 198–216.
99. A. K. Grayson, Assyrian Royal Inscriptions, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1972, 1976), 1:80–81.
100. H. W. F. Saggs, The Might That Was Assyria (London, 1984), pp. 48–49; I. M. Diakonoff, Ancient Mesopotamia: Socio-Economic History (Moscow, 1969), pp. 221–22.
101. Grayson, Assyrian Royal Inscriptions, pp. 123–24.
102. Saggs, Might That Was Assyria, pp. 62, 61.
103. Ludlul Bel Nemeqi, in Jacobsen, “Cosmos as State,” pp. 212–14.
104. Yasna 46. Norman Cohn, Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith (New Haven, CT, and London, 1993), p. 77; Mary Boyce, Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, 2nd ed. (London and New York), p. xliii; Peter Clark, Zoroastrians: An Introduction to an Ancient Faith (Brighton and Portland, OR, 1998), p. 19.
105. Yasna 30.
106. Boyce, Zoroastrians, pp. 23–24.
107. Lincoln, “Warriors and Non-Herdsmen,” p. 153.
108. Yasna 44.
109. Lincoln, “Warriors and Non-Herdsmen,” p. 158.
2 ♦ INDIA: THE NOBLE PATH
1. Jarrod L. Whitaker, Strong Arms and Drinking Strength: Masculinity, Violence, and the Body in Ancient India (Oxford, 2011), pp. 152–53.
2. Rig Veda 3:32:1–4, 9–11.
3. Edwin Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Debate (Oxford and New York, 2001); Colin Renfrew, The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins (London, 1987); Romila Thapar, Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2002), pp. 105–7.
4. Whitaker, Strong Arms, pp. 3–5; Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History (Oxford, 2009), pp. 111–13.
5. Louis Renou, Religions of Ancient India (London, 1953), p. 20; Michael Witzel, “Vedas and Upanishads,” in Gavin Flood, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism (Oxford, 2003), pp. 70–71; J. C. Heesterman, “Ritual, Revelation, and the Axial Age,” in S. N. Eisenstadt, ed., The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations (Albany, NY, 1986), p. 398.
6. Heesterman, “Ritual, Revelation,” pp. 396–98; The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays on Indian Ritual, Kingship and Society (Chicago and London, 1985), p. 206; John Keay, India: A History (London, 2000), pp. 31–33; Thapar, Early India, pp. 126–30.
7. Rig Veda 1:32:5, The Rig Veda, trans. Ralph T. H. Griffith (London, 1992).
8. Shatapatha Brahmana (SB), 6.8.1.1, in J. C. Heesterman, The Broken World of Sacrifice: An Essay in Ancient Indian Religion (Chicago and London, 1993), p. 123.
9. Rig Veda 8:16:1, 8:95:6, 10:38:4.
10. Whitaker, Strong Arms, pp. 3–5, 16–23; Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York, 1992), pp. 180–81, 221.
11. Renou, Religions of Ancient India, p. 6; Witzel, “Vedas and Upanishads,” p. 73.
12. Whitaker, Strong Arms, pp. 115–17.
13. Rig Veda 2:22:4.
14. Rig Veda 3:31, 10:62:2.
15. Witzel, “Vedas and Upanishads,” p. 72.
16. Doniger, Hindus, p. 114.
17. Heesterman, “Ritual, Revelation,” p. 403.
18. SB 7:1:1:1–4, in Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, NJ, 1974), pp. 10–11.
19. Maitrayani Samhita 4:2:1:23:2, in Heesterman, Broken World, pp. 23–24, 134–37.
20. SB 2:2:2:8–10; Heesterman, Broken World, p. 24.
21. Georges Dumézil, The Destiny of the Warrior, trans. Alf Hiltebeitel (Chicago and London, 1970), pp. 76–78.
22. John H. Kautsky, The Political Consequences of Modernization (New Brunswick, NJ, and London, 1997), pp. 25–26.
23. Whitaker, Strong Arms, p. 158.
24. Louis Renou, “Sur la notion de ‘brahman,’ ” Journal Asiatique 237 (1949); Jan Gonda, Change and Continuity in Indian Religion (The Hague, 1965), p. 200.
25. Rig Veda 1:164:46. Garatman was the Sun.
26. Rig Veda 10:129:6–7.
27. Jan Gonda, The Vision of the Vedic Poets (The Hague, 1963), p. 18.
28. Renou, Religions of Ancient India, pp. 220–25; R. C. Zaehner, Hinduism (London, New York, and Toronto, 1962), pp. 219–25.
29. Rig Veda 10:90.
30. Rig Veda 10:90:11–14, Griffiths translation, modified.
31. Bruce Lincoln, “Indo-European Religions: An Introduction,” in Lincoln, Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice (Chicago and London, 1991), p. 8.
32. Bruce Lincoln, “Sacrificial Ideology and Indo-European Society,” in Lincoln, Death, War, and Sacrifice, p. 173.
33. Thapar, Early India, p. 123.
34. Lincoln, “Sacrificial Ideology,” pp. 174–75.
35. Doniger, Hindus, pp. 143–47.
36.Reinard Bendix, Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule (Berkeley, CA, 1977), p. 228.
37. Max Web
er, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism, trans and ed. Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale (Glencoe, IL, 1951), p. 65.
38. Alfred Vagts, History of Militarism: Civilian and Military, rev. ed. (New York, 1959), p. 42.
39. Pancavimsha Brahmana (PB) 7:7:9–10, cited in Weber, The Religion of India, p. 62.
40. SB 6:8:14; Heesterman “Ritual, Revelation,” p. 402.
41. Heesterman, Inner Conflict of Tradition, pp. 68, 84–85.
42. Rig Veda I.132:20–21, Griffiths translation.
43. Taittiriya Samhita (TS) 6.4.8.1, in Heesterman, Inner Conflict of Tradition, p. 209.
44. Taittiriya Brahmana (TB) 3:7:7:14, in Heesterman, Broken World, p. 34.
45. Witzel, “Vedas and Upanisads,” p. 82.
46. TB 10:6:5:8, in Heesterman, Broken World, p. 34.
47. Zaehner, Hinduism, pp. 59–60; Renou, Religions of Ancient India, p. 18; Witzel, “Vedas and Upanisads,” p. 81; Brian K. Smith, Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion (Oxford and New York, 1989), pp. 30–34, 72–81.
48. Jonathan Z. Smith, “The Bare Facts of Ritual,” in Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago and London, 1982), p. 63.
49. Doniger, Hindus, pp. 137–42; Gavin Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism (Oxford, 2003), pp. 80–81.
50. Thapar, Early India, pp. 150–52.
51. The Laws of Manu, 7:16–22, trans. George Buhler (Delhi, 1962).
52. Thapar, Early India, pp. 147–49; Doniger, Hindus, pp. 165–66.
53. Thapar, Early India, p. 138.
54. Hermann Kulke, “The Historical Background of India’s Axial Age,” in Eisenstadt, Origins and Diversity, p. 385.
55. Thapar, Early India, p. 154.
56. Gautama Dharmasutra 16:46; Richard Gombrich, Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo (London and New York, 1988), p. 55.
57. Gombrich, Theravada Buddhism, pp. 58–59; William M. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (Garden City, NY, 1976), p. 60; The Samnyasa Upanisads: Hindu Scriptures on Asceticism and Renunciation, ed. and trans. Patrick Olivelle (New York and Oxford, 1992), p. 34; Doniger, Hindus, p. 171.
58. Thomas J. Hopkins, The Hindu Religious Tradition (Belmont, CA, 1971), pp. 50–51; Doniger, Hindus, p. 165.
59. Chandogya Upanishad (CU) 5:10:7. Quotations from the Upanishads are from Upanisads, trans. Patrick Olivelle (Oxford and New York, 1996). Brhadaranyaka Upanishad (BU) 4:4:23–35; Thapur, Early India, p. 130.
60. Olivelle, Samnyasa Upanisads, pp. 37–38.
61. Ibid., p. xxix; Witzel, “Vedas and Upanisads,” pp. 85–86.
62. BU 1:4:6.
63. BU 1:4:10.
64. BU 4:4:5–7.
65. BU 4:4:23–35.
66. CU 8:7–12.
67. CU 6:11.
68. CU 6:12.
69. CU 6:13.
70. CU 6:10.
71.Thapar, Early India, p. 132.
72. Flood, Introduction to Hinduism, p. 91; Patrick Olivelle, “The Renouncer Tradition,” in Flood, Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, p. 271.
73. Steven Collins, Selfless Persons: Imagery and Thought in Theravada Buddhism (Cambridge, UK, 1982), p. 64; Paul Dundas, The Jains, 2nd ed. (London and New York, 2002), p. 64.
74. Manara Gryha Sutra 1:1:6, in Heesterman, Broken World, pp. 164–74; Gonda, Change and Continuity, pp. 228–35, 285–94.
75. Gonda, Change and Continuity, pp. 380–84; Olivelle, “Renouncer Tradition,” pp. 281–82.
76. Digha Nikaya, in Samnyasa Upanisads, trans. Olivelle, p. 43.
77. Naradaparivrajaka Upanisad 143, ibid., pp. 108, 185.
78. A. Ghosh, The City in Early Historical India (Simla, 1973), p. 55; Samnyasa Upanisads, trans. Olivelle, pp. 45–46.
79. Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, trans. Willard R. Trask (London, 1958), pp. 59–62.
80. Patanjali, Yoga Sutras 2:42, ibid., p. 52.
81. Dundas, Jains, pp. 28–30.
82. Ibid., pp. 106–7.
83. Acaranga Sutra (AS) 1.4.1.1–2, ibid., pp. 41–42.
84. AS 1:2:3, ibid.
85. Avashyaksutra 32, ibid., p. 171.
86. Western scholars once thought that the Buddha was born c. 563 BCE, but recent scholarship indicates that he lived about a century later. Heinz Berchant, “The Date of the Buddha Reconsidered,” Indologia Taurinensin 10 (n.d.).
87. Majjhima Nikaya (MN) 38. Unless otherwise stated, all quotations from the Buddhist scriptures are my own versions of the texts cited.
88. I have described the Buddha’s spiritual method more fully in Buddha (New York, 2001). See also Richard F. Gombrich, How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings (London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1996); Michael Carrithers, The Buddha (Oxford and New York, 1993); Karl Jaspers, The Great Philosophers: The Foundations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Ralph Manheim (London, 1962), pp. 99–105; Trevor Ling, The Buddha: Buddhist Civilization in India and Ceylon (London, 1973).
89. Edward Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development (Oxford, 1951), p. 102; Hermann Oldenberg, Buddha: His Life, His Doctrine, His Order, trans. William Hoeg (London, 1882), pp. 299–302.
90. Sutta Nipata (SN) 118, my translation.
91. Vinaya, Mahavagga 1:ii, in Ling, The Buddha, p. 134.
92. Ibid. 1:211.
93. AG 1:27; SN 700, in Bhikkhu Nānamoli, ed., The Life of the Buddha, According to the Pali Canon (Kandy, Sri Lanka, 1992), p. 282.
94. MN 89, ibid.
95. Thapar, Early India, pp. 174–98.
96. Patrick Olivelle, ed., Asoka: In History and Historical Memory (Delhi, 2009), p. 1.
97. Major Rock Edict 13, in Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, trans. Romila Thapar (Oxford, 1961), pp. 255–56.
98. Ibid.
99. Olivelle, Asoka, p. 1.
100. Pillar Edict VII, in Thapar, Asoka, p. 255.
101. Major Rock Edict 12, ibid., p. 255.
102. Major Rock Edict 11, ibid., p. 254.
103.Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and Sister Nivedita, Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists (New York, 1967), p. 118.
104. Shruti Kapila and Faisal Devji, eds., Political Thought in Action: The Bhagavad Gita and Modern India (Cambridge, UK, 2013).
105. Doniger, Hindus, pp. 262–64.
106. Thapar, Early India, p. 207.
107. Mahabharata 7:70:44, in The Mahabharata, Volume 3: Book 4: The Book of Virata; Book 5: The Book of the Effort, trans. and ed. J. A. B. van Buitenen (Chicago and London, 1978).
108. Mahabharata 5:70:46–66, ibid.
109. Mahabharata 7:165:63, ibid.
110. Mahabharata 9:60:59–63, in The Mahabharata: An Abridged Translation, trans. and ed. John D. Smith (London, 2009).
111. Mahabharata 10:8:39, ibid.
112. Mahabharata 10:10:14, ibid.
113. Mahabharata 12:15, in Doniger, Hindus, p. 270.
114. Mahabharata 17:3, ibid.
115. Bhagavad-Gita 1:33–34, 36–37. All quotations are from The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time of War, trans. Barbara Stoller Milller (New York, Toronto, and London, 1986).
116. Bhagavad-Gita 2:9.
117. Bhagavad-Gita 4:20.
118. Bhagavad-Gita 9:9.
119. Bhagavad-Gita 11:32–33.
120. Bhagavad-Gita 11:55.
3 ♦ CHINA: WARRIORS AND GENTLEMEN
1. Liezi jishi 2, in Mark Edward Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (Albany, NY, 1990), pp. 200, 167–72.
2. Ibid., pp. 176–79.
3. Marcel Granet, Chinese Civilization, trans. Kathleen Innes and Mabel Brailsford (London and New York, 1951), pp. 11–12; Granet, The Religion of the Chinese People, trans. and ed. Maurice Freedman (Oxford, 1975), pp. 66–68.
4. Taijong yulan 79, in Lewis, Sanctioned Violence, p. 203.
5. Ibid., pp. 203, 201.
6. Granet, Chinese Civilization, pp. 11–16; Henri Maspero, China in Antiquity, trans. Frank A Kiermannn Jr., 2nd ed. (Folkestone, 19
78), pp. 115–19.
7. John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China: A New History, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2006), p. 34.
8. Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization, trans. J. R. Foster and Charles Hartman, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK, and New York, 1996), pp. 39–40.
9. Ibid., pp. 41–50; Jacques Gernet, Ancient China: From the Beginnings to the Empire, trans. Raymond Rudorff (London, 1968), pp. 37–65; William Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom, eds. and trans., Sources of Chinese Tradition: From Earliest Times to 1600, 2nd ed.(New York, 1999), pp. 3–25; D. Howard Smith, Chinese Religions (London, 1968), pp. 1–11.
10. Gernet, History of Chinese Civilization, pp. 45–46; Gernet, Ancient China, pp. 50–53; Granet, Religion of the Chinese People, pp. 37–54.
11. The Book of Songs, 35, 167, 185.
12. Sima Qian, Records of a Master Historian, 1:56:79, cited in Granet, Chinese Civilization, p. 12.
13. Gernet, History of Chinese Civilization, p. 49.
14.Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 vols. (Chicago and London, 1974), 1:281–82.
15. Lewis, Sanctioned Violence, pp. 15–27; Fairbank and Goldman, China, pp. 49–50.
16. Fairbank and Goldman, China, p. 45.
17. K. C. Chang, Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China (Cambridge, MA, 1985), pp. 95–100; Fairbank and Goldman, China, pp. 42–44.
18. Walter Burkert, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, trans. Walter Bing (Berkeley, CA, 1983), p. 47.
19. David N. Keightley, “The Late Shang State: When, Where, What?” in Keightley, ed., The Origins of Chinese Civilization (Berkeley, CA, 1983), pp. 256–59.
20. Michael J. Puett, To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2002), pp. 32–76.
21. Oracle 23, in Sources of Chinese Tradition, trans. De Bary and Bloom, p. 12.
22. Lewis, Sanctioned Violence, pp. 26–27.
23. The Book of Mozi 3.25, cited in Gernet, Ancient China, p. 65.
24. Classic of Documents, “The Shao Announcement,” in Sources of Chinese Tradition, trans. De Bary and Bloom, pp. 35–37.
25. H. G. Creel, Confucius: The Man and the Myth (London, 1951), pp. 19–25; Benjamin I. Schwarz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1985), pp. 57–59; remarks by Jacques Gernet in Jean-Pierre Vernant, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd, 3rd ed. (New York, 1996), pp. 80–90.
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