Researching Indo-Greek Bactria and its various Aryan-migration predecessors I
was, inspired by Doctrine of Awakening, led to believe that a great European
Buddhism could have taken root were it not for the roaming hordes of Islam which
eventually cut asunder the connection between the two civilizations. It seemed
that Buddhism could have been a proper Northern renewal, with Aryan roots going
at least as far back as Androvnovo culture.
My pessimism came about not by the reception that the Indo-Skythians and
Indo-Greeks took to Buddhism (see the following links,) but the fact that the
roots of Buddhism now strike me as hardly Aryan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxila_copper_plate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menander_I#Buddhism
Vedic Aryanism was resolutely rooted in ritual, sacrifice, and hierarchy, and
despite the physical characteristics of the Shakyamuni (including blue eyes) he
was and remained a child of the wondering ascetics (shramanas) who forever stood
in an almost egalitarian revolt against the Brahmins.
Buddha's ksatriya tribe existed outside of Vedic centers of learning. The
founders of Jainism all claimed ksatriya lineage, as well.
It was during the end of Buddha's austerities that he reached enlightenment, and
it was during this time he gathered his immense terminology for the Buddhist
weltanschuuang such as "samsara," Nibbana" "dukkha" etc.
All of which come from Pre-Aryan India:
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=bRQ5fpTmwoAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Heinrich+\
Zimmer&lr=&cd=4#v=onepage&q=this%20is%20the%20view%20that%20jainism%20shares%20w\
ith&f=false
Not to mention the egalitarian premises of the Shramana paths such as non-caste
society, vegetarianism, non-violence (to the point of not harming insects, etc.
This is a far cry from the warrior ethos of the Bhagavad-Gita and the Rig Veda.
It seems that Buddhism should be classified as a "child of the South," through
and through which in turn influenced Christian asceticism, not as an echo of
ancient Northern Aryan path but as an indigenous Dravidian sect which migrated
north through contact with various conquering races (Persians, Greeks, etc).
Already in the 1 century CE we find a distinct connection between the Indian
shramanas and European sources, Strabo the Roman historian records an event of a
shramana in Greece performing suicide by self-immolation.
Porphyry, the successor of Plotinus regarded asceticism as "the olympics of the
soul," and was quoted as being impressed by the shramanas several times:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/27204597/Asceticism-in-the-Graeco-Roman-World
He wrote extensively on the shramanas in his treatise on vegetarianism, "On
abstinence from animal food, Book IV."
The shramana practices eventually came to morph into Christian monasticism at
least as far back as Clement of Alexandria, another vegetarian mystic inspired
by the shramanas.
"Thus philosophy, a thing of the highest utility, flourished in antiquity among
the barbarians, shedding its light over the nations. And afterwards it came to
Greece. First in its ranks were the prophets of the Egyptians; and the Chaldeans
among the Assyrians; and the Druids among the Gauls; and the Sramanas among the
Bactrians ("Σαρμαναίοι
Βάκτρων"); and the philosophers of the Celts;
and the Magi of the Persians, who foretold the Saviour's birth, and came into
the land of Judaea guided by a star. The Indian gymnosophists are also in the
number, and the other barbarian philosophers. And of these there are two
classes, some of them called Sramanas
("Σαρμάναι"), and others Brahmins
("Βραφμαναι")." Clement of
Alexandria "The Stromata, or Miscellanies" Book I, Chapter XV
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/clement-stromata-book1.html
Therefore, it seems that with roots in Pre-Vedic India, Buddhism stands in stark
contrast to the Solar deities of the Vedas, Eddas, and other IE mythologies, and
although the Buddha used the word "Ariya" (noble) to describe the truths of
Buddhism, the past itself is in itself a Southern phenomena.