Mishna¯h, ’Avôt 5: 13 in early Buddhism

Abstract

Though early Buddhist texts are concerned with giving alms and all aspects of the merit to be gained by so doing, the sharp, perhaps witty, categorization of donors that we find in Mishna¯h, ’Avôt 5:13 (one of the six groups of four) has no other counterpart in Pali sources despite the fact that numbered categories are very common in Buddhist texts. The parallel between the Mishna¯h and its Buddhist counterparts is explicable. The two civilizations were at one on the point: Jewish merchants were prepared to expound significant Jewish learning; the first Christian missionaries were Jewish; the items from which Mishna¯h 5 was concocted, especially anonymous ones (as here), could have existed well before the third century and a contact about 200 CE would not offend any known criteria.