Well, yes. But tantric overlaps are a different level. For instance, in the sense I was talking about, plain Indra in Buddhism and Hinduism are just the same deities and Buddhists and Hindus would accept that. They are not just one-off tropes or themes, but are central to the Buddhist worldview. Tantric uses of Hindu narrative themes, like you mention, appear to be more targeted strategies. Buddhists simply lifted Hindu materials wholesale in some cases, and the opposite also occurred.Malcolm wrote: ↑Mon Oct 25, 2021 3:33 pm I wasn't referring to the distinction between an avatāra and a nirmāṇa. Both are docetic in nature. I was referring the obvious adherence by Buddhists to standard forms of Indian mythopeia, the use of common tropes, which indeed can include avatāric themes, such as Rudra Cakravartin's aka Kalki, defeat of the mlecchas in the final battle to restore world peace from mleccha domination, after the latter attack Shambhala; or the taming of Mahādeva by Śrī Heruka in the Cakrasaṃvara literature or the taming of Rudra found in the lower tantras, etc., in which these beings initiated an age of chaos and inequity, requiring Vajradhara to step in and intervene, etc.
So, still Team Indra.
Paradisical garden descriptions, like those in the Sukhāvatī sūtras, are so ubiquitous in Buddhist texts and are even found in Pāli materials like the Apadāna. The longer Sukhāvatīvyūha just takes it to another level. The same can be said for themes of light and fire. The arguments that Persian influences gave rise to these ignore that paradises and light are major parts of almost all world mythology. So, I think that Sukhāvatī clearly is Indian in thematic content goes to support your argument—since it of course captured the imaginations of those in other cultures.Malcolm wrote: ↑Mon Oct 25, 2021 3:33 pm Its true that the Bonpos work in some Iranian themes into their quasi-Buddhist mythopeia, and that the Chinese and Japanese work in native cultural themes into their mythopeia, and there is indeed some reason to think that the Iranian "paradise", that is the walled garden, may have some influence on the conception and depiction of Sukhavati. Nevertheless, Indian mythopeia is so strong a current wherever Buddhism spread from India that it completely dominates the local myths, which only survive through being appropriated, like domestic animals.
Textually, it's hard to see any major influence from local deities on texts. But some early Chinese translations are so thoroughly Daoist that it sometimes comes across as distortion (I am thinking of some of the Ratnakuta translations). However, in terms of practice, local deities find their way into rituals everywhere. In Japan, although the Indian deities are present in statue form at temples, with few exceptions they are rarely worshipped. Rather, it is the local kami who are worshipped. A temple by my house has some mountain gods and they are invoked daily by the Zen monks.
So, if there was Persian influence on Buddhism, I would suggest it would have been something like that. In Afghanistan, there are so many remnants of Zoroastrian temples right next to Buddhist vihāras. It's conceivable that monks worshipped at the Zoroastrian temple as well.
Buddhism really wasn't interested in refuting or upsetting brāhmaṇas in India because it needed to show that it fits within the local logical of power construction. The state utilises religion as its ideological state apparatus (Althuser's term), and thus religion needs to show how it legitimates the local monarch by fitting within the logic of that region's power structure. In time, the principles of the ideology come to influence and take over the state and we end up seeing, for instance, Chinese cities laid out like maṇḍalas.