| any chance you could provide me with entry refs for the tipitaka? The zoroastrian Ahuna Vairya and (especially) Ashem Vohu do seem to contrast following asha with worldly power. (compare med. {bellatores, laboratores, oratores} or PIE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifunctional_hypothesis ) Given the relative dates, I'm proceeding with the very tentative hypothesis that Zoroaster (who does seem to comment, in stuff I have yet to read, on immortality?) might be the common source for both? (oddly enough, the "silk road" as such is supposed to be more recent than all three, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road#Chinese_and_Central_... suggest many possibilities for bits to already have been travelling back and forth across eurasia even if trade in atoms had not reached its later heights) As for the nuptial number: at this point I'm not convinced it isn't just technakos barbar (technobabble)? IIRC elsewhere in the Republic it's argued that the guardian class will reproduce by sending its youth to the ancient greek equivalent of open-air music festivals, where they will camp together letting nature (as with bulls and cows) run its course, so the passage here seems to be a deliberate contrast. (but to what end?) Edit: think I found it, via source attribution. The speaker of those lines is neither Platon, nor Socrates (whom he supposedly quotes), but the Muses (as "quoted" by "Socrates"): http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
in which case technobabble makes perfect sense. [at one point I ran across a Soviet book on religion —because a colleague had relied upon it in the 01960's to follow the Western CS literature and their use of Easter calculation as a running example— and was amazed at how much detail it went into on minor european sects but disappointed in how relatively broad its coverage was for other continents] Edit: HN can express the sumerian signs for 3 and cow! 𒐈𒀖 |
I'm an idiot about the tipitaka: escaping samsara (or least loosening the fetters of maya) is kind of the point; eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39128233