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GREEK SOPHIA
Edward J. D. Conze
Visiting Professor,Universit;vof Lancaster
For two reasons a comparison of the Sanskrit and Greek terms for
Wisdom may be of interest. There is first the current discussion on how
Buddhist terms should be translated. H. Guenther, for instance, claims
that prajr%i should not be rendered as wisdom, but as analytical
appreciative understanding.l One of the many objections to this proposal
is that it fits only the initial stages of pra$i, which in its final consum-
mation, as pra$i+.iramitti, becomes non-discriminative, non-dual,
evincing the sameness of all. Others propose to translate as insight
knowledge, etc.2 My point is that if wisdom is correct for sophia,. it
must be equally correct for praj&i.
Secondly, reliance on wisdom is an essential ingredient of the peren-
nial philosophy. To quote a previous article,3 it maintains:
that the wise men of old have found a wisdom which is true, although
it has no empirical basis in observations which can be made by
everyone and everybody; and that in fact there is a rare and unordinary
faculty in some of us by which we can attain direct contact with
actual reality,-through the ~rajiSi(p&amita) of the Buddhists, the
logos of Parmenides, the sophia of Aristotle and others, Spinozas amor
dei intellectualis, Hegels Vernunft, and so on.
In the following I will indicate this aspect of the perennial philosophy
in some detail. The article is only one of a series of studies in comparative
religious philosophy which have been pursued over the years, and pre-
supposes some of the results which I believe to have established before.4
The topic would fill a book and all I can give are the headlines of its
various chapters. Assertion must take the place of argumentation, and
my conclusions will be more obvious to those who knew them before
than to those to whom they are new.
The sourcesfor this study are, of course, almost infinite. A footnote will
enumerate those for Buddhism, as these are less well known.5 For suphia
I rely greatly on Aristotles Protrejticus,e ca 350 B.C., and contemporary
with a particularly creative period of Buddhist history. The parallelism
is here very close, and even extends to a few side-issues. For instance,
Aristotle clearly states the law of karma,7 i.e. For it is an inspired saying
of the ancients that the soul pays penalties and that we live for the
punishment of great sins. This is akin to NagigBrjunas remark* that
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what happens is that I just suffer the punishment for the perverted
views of my previous lives. And we even meet here with the paradise of
Amitabha, when we read3 that in the Isles of the Blest we get the reward
for our devotion to philosophy, for there we can pursue it without caring
for anything else. Among later sources the value of the Imitatio Christi
lies in that, without scholastic accretions, it concentrates on what is
important for life.
Next a few words about the terminology. In pra-j&i, Bra- is a prefix to
the root j&i, to know, and means superior, excellent, as in Tibetan
Ses-rab, superior knowledge. Often it is synonymous with jZin.a, a term
preferred in the Bhagavad Gita. lo One should not, however, translate
$&a as knowledge, but as cognition, or gnosis, because it is a
special kind of knowledge, distinguished from mere cleverness and from
scientific thinking by its spiritual purpose, which is to cut off the
defilements.rl Other synonyms are investigation into dharmas
(dharmapravicaya), dhi, vidyc, and so on. Antonyms are avidy8, moha,
vicikitsd, ignorance, folly, stupidity, bewilderment, doubt and indecision.
There is no room here to talk about sophia, or such synonyms as
phron&s, ennoia, sapientia, etc. It should, however, be remembered that
in both traditions the word covers both practical and theoretical wisdom.12
Bodhisattvas are expected to be wise as to statecraft, economics, family
life, etc., whereas for monks a certain sancta simplicitas would be more
fitting. In the Protrepticus, sophia and phront%is are not at all clearly
distinguished, phront?sis being a blanket term for everything from practical
skill and commonsense to pure speculative theory.13 It is only later, in
the Rhetoric, that Aristotle clearly distinguished practical from theoretical
wisdom.14
Praj&i and Sophia correspond in at least nine ways:
itself from among the dispersed senses, and employing all its power on
its inward activity, released from the bonds of the body.
7. Personification as a female
(a) Both traditions see wisdom as a mother figure,55 a form of the old
World Mother of the Palaeolithic.
(b) Where they become antinomian, the practitioners of wisdom
advise ritual intercourse of siddhas and gnostics with females who are
known as pra.$i or vidyd, and in Gnosticism as sophia or ennoia.56
and TYBS 2r&zzo.-Chochma, etc. TYBS 220. Buddhism and Gnosis (=BG) in
Le origini dell0 Gnosticismo, Studies in the History of Religions, Supplements to
.&nen, xii, 1967, pp. 65x-67 (=Further Buddhist Studies, 1975, 32-3). Gnostics in
general in BG. Neoplatonists and PrajiXptpPramitZ in BG 39-40.
5. For the school of the Elders we have the Abhidharma books which culminate in
Buddhaghosas Visuddhimagga chapters 14 to 23. For the Mahayana we have a
monograph, though not a very good one, i.e. G. Bugault, La notion de @raj%i ou de
sapience selon les perspectives du Mahayana, 1969, 289 pp. Apart from some edifying
litanies and hymns (e.g. the stotra in Buddhist Scriptures, 1959, 168-171; Astasfihasrikci
vii, 170-1) we have many treatises on the six perfections or the IO stages of spiritual
progress (bhlimi); e.g. M~~~rajli~~ararn~t~-u~a~~a~ ch. 29-30, trsl. E. Lamotte, Le
traiti de la gram& vertue de sagesse, II, 1949, pp. 1058-1 I I 3; Asangas Mahtytinasaw,zgraha,
ch. 8; chapter g of the Bodhicary&atcira: as well as the sixth bh%ni in Dafabhlimika
and Madhyamakrivatira.
6. Throughout I follow Ingemar During, Aristotles Protrepficus, 1961 (=ID).
P. 9.
;: cf. Lamotte, Traiti, 1110.
9. on p. 211.
IO. K. N. Upadhyaya, Ear& Buddhism and the Bhagaavad Gita, I g7 I.
II. Milindapaiiha in Buddhist Scriptures, pp, 151-p.
12. See my The Way of Wisdom, p. 22.
3. ID 87,8g, rgr, 195-6, 201, 204, 206, 211, 223-6, 240 (nous), 256, 260!
4. i.e. fihronZsis from sofihia. Rhet. I, g, 13: phron?sis, prudence, is an intellectual virtue
which enables men to come to a wise decision in regard to good and evil things
which concern their happiness. I, 7, 21: Good is that which would be chosen by
those who have phron&s. About prudence see DeImChr, I, 4, 4.
15. i.e. the five senses, plus mind as the sixth.
16. cf. Lamotte, Le trait& p. I 110.
7. Garma C. C. Chang, T%e Buddhist Teaching of Totality, 1971, p. 87.
18. De anima. Festugibre, La r&lation dHermb Trismigiste III, 1953, 198.
9. According to Phaidon, 67a.
20. indriya: cr. to dynamis, a power by which we do as we do (Rep. v 477).
21. Rhet. I, g, 5. mm? de are&.
22. See my 7?ze Way of Wisdom, The Wheel Publication no. 65-66, Kandy, 1964.
23. A@hasalini, 123; cf. Abhidharmakofa I, 3, II, 154.
24. tattva, safya, yatluibhfitam.
25. xiv 7.-De.Im.Chr. ii, r, 31: Cui sapiunt omnia, prout sunt, non ut dicuntur aut
aestimantur: hit vere sapiens est et doctus magis a Deo quam ab hominibus.
26. ta onta =dbarmas. ID 75; also 89.
27. In more technical language, the Triqsika says that wisdom is the examination
(pravicaya) of an entity (z&u) which should be examined. It sorts out the general
and particular marks which have got mixed up in the presentation of commonsense
obiects. Eschewin the sicrn (nimittu) it knows the true marks (laksaaa) of dharmas,-
first the multiple &es, whether general or particular, and finally their single mark,
which is no mark.
28. ID 73, 771 249.
ag. ID 85; an echo of Plat. lilep. 586, filling with real reality their own essence (ID n52),
30. I, 7, 19-20.
31. TYBS, p. 214.
32. E. Conze, Buddhist Meditation, 1956, 16.
33. Upadhyaya, 208-212.
34. ID 252; Cf. 235.
35. ID 75; cf. 267.
36. See e.g. my Buddhism, rggr, go sq. and 105 sq.
37. e.g. De Im. Chr. I, 2, 17: De seipso nihil tenere et de aliis semper bene et alte sentire:
magna sapientia est et perfectio.
38. ID 87; ouden.
AND GREEK SOPHIA 167