2. The Magas in Buddhist Sources

The reputation of the Maga/Śākadvīpīya Brāhmaṇas in Indian society also led Buddhists to take an interest in them. Buddhist sources appear to suggest knowledge of this group since the early centuries of the Common Era. The scholastic Abhidharma treatise Karmaprajñapti, which belongs to the Sarvāstivāda school and unfortunately is now preserved only in Tibetan translation, states that in the West there are the Maga Brāhmaṇas,^[1] and that in their belief, ‘No sin comes about from the practice of perverted lustful behaviour towards a mother, a daughter, a sister, or a friend, a kinsman or the aged’ (cf. SILK 2008: 346 f.). The reason lies in the fact that they do not make any distinction between different kinds of persons, so even incestuous intercourse carries no consequence for them (Ivi: 347). We cannot be sure about the date of composition of this text, but it has been suggested that it could have been composed in the early centuries A.D. This is significant firstly for the historical evidence that Magas were present on Indian soil during that period; secondly, the text also reveals the geographical location of this community, (North)West India.

Another later Abhidharma text, *Abhidharma Mahā-vibhāṣā, preserved only in the Chinese version, states that in the West there are mlecchas called Magas, who believe that it is not a sin to have intercourse ‘with one’s mother, daughter, elder or younger sister, daughter-in-law or the like’ (Ivi: 438). This is due to their custom of sharing everything, from food and drink to roads and boats, and the same custom is adopted also with women (ibid.). This later text adds another piece of historical information: these Magas were actually foreigners, mlecchas, who came from outside, not Indians. Moreover, if we consider that the Abhidharma scholars generally resided in Gandhāra and Kashmir, they should instead have located the Magas in their south; the Persian Empire was to their west.^[2]

Finally, in another Buddhist text, Bhāvaviveka’s^[3] commentary on his own Madhyamakahṛdayā-kārikā—called the Tarkajvāla and only available in the Tibetan^[4] version—we find some very interesting information about the Magas. First, they are explicitly associated with Persians, ‘who live in the land of barbarians’ (cf. KAWASAKI 1975: 1103), thus confirming that in the fifth century, the idea of the Magas coming from a foreign land, in particular Iran, was still widespread.

Then, we find a list of their teachings, which includes some peculiar elements:^[5]

- ‘[…] killing of ants and others does not go against morality’ (KAWASAKI 1975: 1102). The custom of killing xrafstra- (Avestan; Middle Persian xrafstar) animals, the evil animals, identified in Young Avestan and Middle Persian sources especially with reptiles and amphibians, is well attested (cf. 2.7).

- ‘The doctrines of Maga […] have many points fairly common to the teaching of the Vedas’ (Ivi: 1102).

In Sāmba-purāṇa 26, 46a/Bh I. 139, 90a, it is stated that the Magas are learned in the Vedas; similarly, in Sāmba-purāṇa 24, 7/Bhaviṣya-purāṇa I. 127, 8 the Vedas are accepted completely.

- ‘By killing bulls […] one can hope to reach heaven’ (ibid.). This could be a reference to Mithraism and the slaying of the bull. We should presume that the Magas were not only associated with Persians, but also with Mithraism. In the seventh century, although it had vanished from the Western environment, Mithraism was still widespread in Sasanian Iran. We cannot exclude that the bull of Zoroastrian cosmogony, Gāw ī Ēwagdād,^[6] the progenitor of all beneficial animals, could also have been a could also have been the referent here.

- ‘There an incestuous marriage is also spoken out. It is taught in the sacrificial rite of the bull-observance […]. He should […] have a sexual relation with his mother, with his aunts, with his own offspring like a bull’ (Ivi: 1101).

Again, incestuous relationships are presented as a peculiar feature of the Maga Brāhmaṇas. Probably, the association of the Magas with Iranian Magi led to the direct association with the very peculiar Iranian-Zoroastrian custom of close-kin intercourse and marriage. In later Buddhist philosophers, like Dharmakīrti, Durvekamiśra or Śāntarakṣita, Persians (pārasīka-) are associated with the custom of sleeping with their own mothers and marrying them.^[7]

The Avestan xᵛaētuuadaθa, Pahlavi xwēdōdah, is the marital union between father and daughter, mother and son or brother and sister, the most pious action in Zoroastrianism. For the etymology of the Avestan term, SKJÆRVØ (2013) states, ‘The first part of this compound appears to be xᵛaētu “family” (or similar), commonly thought to be derived from xᵛaē- “own” with the suffix -tu- […]. The second part, -vadaθa-, is today commonly thought to be derived from a verb vada- (from *vadh-) “lead into marriage”, related to words in other Iranian and IndoEuropean languages denoting marriage or a marriage partner.’ In Pahlavi we have both the forms xwēdōdah and xwēdūdah. The close-kin marriage is modelled on Zoroastrian (Middle Persian) cosmogony, which contains a precedent for each of the three kinds of intercourse mentioned above: Ohrmazd himself started this practice, with his daughter Spandarmad, producing Gayōmard; then Gayōmard and his mother Spandarmad had the first human couple, Mašē and Mašyānē; finally, sister and brother had further pairs of sons,^[8] who inhabited the different regions of the Earth. In a Zurvanite version of the cosmogony, we find speculation about Ohrmazd’s intercourse with his mother, too. Bhāvaviveka states that according to Magas’ ideas, ‘it is not right to say that one’s mother, sisters, daughters, and so forth are unproper as one’s object of sexual intercourse’ (KAWASAKI 1975: 1102); this reflects precisely the three kinds of Zoroastrian close-kin interaction: son and birth mother, father and daughter, sister and brother.

It seems that the practice of next-to-kin marriage was also very common among the members of royal or noble families, especially under the Sasanians (third to seventh centuries), although we have even earlier traces of this practice, in Achaemenid and Parthian times. One of the arguments Zoroastrians priests used to justify this practice was that good human qualities were maintained and improved in marriages between close relatives. Particularly for royal and noble families, this religious explanation was probably a pretext for an economical reason, namely to maintain their family’s property. The peculiarity of this Iranian custom had a certain resonance, and some classical authors also mention it: Ctesias of Cnidus, for example, who was a doctor at the Persian court around the fifth to fourth century B.C, reports a brother-sister marriage. Herodotus (3.31) informs us that Cambyses lived with his sister, and that Persians had never lived with their sisters before him.

Catullus (ca. 84–54 B.C.), in his Carmen 90, writes:

Nascatur magus ex Gelli matrisque nefando
coniugio et discat Persicum aruspicium:
nam magus ex matre et gnato gignatur oportet,
si vera est Persarum impia religio,
gratus ut accepto veneretur carmine divos
omentum in flamma pingue liquefaciens.^[9]

Catullus’s poem is very significant, not only because of line 3, in which mentions mother-son intercourse, but also because he was apparently aware that this custom was part of the Persian cult.^[10] Ovid (43 B.C.–17 A.D.), in his Metamorphoses, narrates the story of Myrrha, the daughter of Cinyas, king of Cyprus, who was consumed with love for her father; she states that, in certain tribes, sons couple with their mothers and daughter with their fathers, and she wishes that she were part of those tribes (SILK 2008: 447 n. 42; SKJÆRVØ 2013). She does not specify that this custom is characteristic of Iranian peoples, but we may presume this because other, roughly contemporary authors are aware of this practice. Ovid’s story is quoted in turn in (pseudo-)Plutarch’s Parallela Graeca et Romana 22. Quintus Curtius Rufus (first to second century A.D.), in his History of Alexander (8.2.19), states that the Sogdian governor Sisimithres married his mother and had two sons with her, because ‘among [the Persians] it is considered right for parents to have incestuous intercourse with their children’ (SILK 2008: 448). Tatian (around 170 A.D.) affirms that the Magians in Persia consider it honourable to have intercourse with one’s mother. Clement of Alexandria (second to third century A.D.), in Stromata 3.2.11.1, asserts that the Magi have intercourse with their mothers, daughter and sisters, because women are considered common property; this is mentioned also by Xanthus of Lydia (fifth century A.D.) in Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum F31. Moreover, the idea of Persians having intercourse with their close relatives has influenced the European imagination for millennia; in Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes (1721, Lettre LXVII), we find the claim that Zoroastrians have practised brother-sister marriage ever since Cambyses had introduced the custom.^[11]

In Arabic sources, the custom of close-kin marriage practiced by the majūs, a term for Zoroastrians in general, is deeply despised.

Non-Buddhist Indian texts generally do not report this Persian custom. Only the tenthcentury Jain text Yaśastilaka, by Somadeva Sūri, states that Persians have intercourse with their own mothers, and the thirteenth-century Smṛticandrikā by Devaṇṇabhaṭṭa confirms this practice (cf. SILK 2008: 446). Therefore, this interest in the Magas’ and Persians’ incestuous customs was peculiar to Buddhist sources in the Indian world. After the persecution of Buddhists, Christians, Manicheans and other cults^[12] that followed Kirdīr’s reform^[13] in third-century Iran, it is conceivable that Buddhists (and not only Buddhists!) would be biased against Magians and Persians. Moreover, we are aware of the fact that there were not only commercial, but also cultural ties between the ancient Iranian and Buddhist worlds, and therefore it is understandable that Buddhist texts would show a good knowledge of Iranian customs.^[14]

Finally, there is one last point to discuss. Bhāvaviveka, in the ninth chapter of the Madhyamaka-hṛdayā-kārikā, refers to the ‘book of Maga’ (maga-śāstra).^[15] It seems that, exactly like the Vaiṣṇavas or the Śaivas, the Sauras also had their own canon of scriptures, which consisted of Saṃhitās. Unfortunately there is no remaining trace of any manuscript of this canon. Probably, the superimposition of Śaivism onto the sun cult was due to the fact that the latter progressively lost its patronage and could no longer maintain a separate identity. References to this Sūrya- or Saura-purāṇa are numerous.^[16] We have one Saurasaṃhitā preserved, with instructions for the worshipping of the sun, but it claims to be part of the Śaiva Vāthula/Kālottara.^[17] Under this analysis, even the Sāmba-purāṇa ultimately seems to be a product of the Śaiva environment.

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

SILK (2008: 346, n.6) reports the Tibetan version of their name, bram ze mchu skyes.

[2]:

Ivi: 440. Silk’s statement is pertinent because, as we will discuss later, the incestuous practice attributed to the Magas is clearly associated with the Iranian custom of close-kin relationships. Nevertheless, I would not rule out the possibility that by ‘the West’, Abhidharma scholars meant their own territories, in Northwest India, especially the Gandhāra region, and the nearby area of modern Mathurā, the ancient settlement of the Maga Brāhmaṇas according to the Purāṇas.

[3]:

Bhāvaviveka (or Bhavya, Bhāviveka) was an Indian Buddhist philosopher who followed the Mādhyamika school of Nāgārjuna, but founded what is called the Svātantrika (svatantra, ‘independent’) tradition of Mādhyamika philosophy, which played a very important role in the development of Buddhism in Tibet (cf.

TORELLA 2008: 123). He was quoted by Dharmapāla and Candrakīrti; he in turn mentioned Dharmakīrti and Candrakīrti in his for work. For this reason, we may assume that he was almost their contemporary, and that he lived around the seventh century (cf. LINDTNER 2001).

Bhavya would have acquired his knowledge of the Magas from an Abhidharma work.

[4]:

Here the name Maga is rendered as ma ga (cf. KAWASAKI 1975: 1102 n. 2; SILK 2008: 346 n. 6).

[5]:

Cf. also KAWASAKI 1975: 1100, 1099.

[6]:

For further information about this topic, see MALANDRA 2001.

[7]:

Cf. SILK 2006: 442 f.

(PANAINO 2009: 154f). After Ohrmazd’s intervention, they were able to have seven more sets of twins, who populated the earth.

[8]:

Actually, Mašē and Mašyānē ingested their first set of twins, who were born after a long period of celibacy because of Ahriman’s negative influence; this probably shows a kind of mental disturbance, with a regression to an ‘oral’ phase, and an attempt of ‘re-introject[ing …] a new life, tearing and subsuming it (oralsadistische Stufe)’

[9]:

‘Let a magus be born from the execrable union between Gellius and his mother, and learn the Persian art of divination: as a matter of fact, it is appropriate that a magus is generated by a mother and her own generation (her son), if the sacrilegious cult of the Persians is true. [May he obtain] the favour with [his] invocations for worshipping benevolently the gods, liquefying in the fire omentum and grease.’ The omentum is a fold of the peritoneum; here we find a reference to animal sacrifice.

[10]:

The term religio, in line 4, generally does not indicate the modern idea of religion, but encompasses a wide range of meanings, from ‘superstition’ to ‘customs’; Roman religion was based on social customs, and gods were part of the Romans’ everyday life. Here, Catullus seems to be aware that this kind of intercourse (which he defines nefando) was part of Persians’ cultural and sacrificial life, which in turn is related to magi.

[11]:

Montesquieu, in letter LXVII, tells the story of Apheridon and Astarté, in which the protagonist falls in love with his sister: ‘Mon père, étonné d’une si forte sympathie, aurait bien souhaité de nous marier ensemble, selon l’ancien usage des guèbres, introduit par Cambyse; mais la crainte des mahométans, sous le joug desquels nous vivons, empêche ceux de notre nation de penser à ces alliances saintes, que notre religion ordonne plutôt qu’elle ne permet, et qui sont des images si naïves de l’union déjà formée par la nature.’ (LABOULAYE 1875: 153) The term guèbres was used to indicate the Zoroastrians who escaped from Iran after the Islamic conquest (i.e. Pārsīs).

[12]:

MACKENZIE 1989, §11–text: p. 42, transcription: p. 54, translation: p. 58: ‘[…] And Jews and Buddhists and Hindus and Nazarens and Christians and Baptists, and Manicheans were smitten in the empire, and idols were destroyed and the abodes of the emons disrupted and made into thrones and seats of the gods.’

[13]:

On Kirdēr’s reform, see for example Ivi: 35–38 and PANAINO 2016a: 44, 82.

[14]:

For further information on the exchanges between Buddhist and Iranian culture, see PALLADINO 20??c.

[15]:

See KAWASAKI 1975: 1103.

[16]:

CHENET 1993: 354: ‘C’est ainsi que D.R. Bhandarkar recueillit parmi des Śākadvīpa Brāhmaṇa de la région de Jodhpur l’écho d’un Sūrya Purāṇa, ouvrage perdu (à situer vers 800), auquel font cependant référence le

Tithinirṇaya de Caṇḍeśvara et le manuscrit de Berlin du Bhaviṣyottara […].’

[17]:

SANDERSON 2009: 55.