Poul Anderson's Benegal Dass/Chandrakumar says that Heraclitus and the Buddha are approximate contemporaries with some closely parallel thoughts.
As I understand it, there was an "axial period." The Wiki article makes the period a bit longer than I had realized, thus able to incorporate Zarathustra, Homer and the pre-Socratics, including Heraclitus.
Poul Anderson's Time Patrollers move through this period but can show us only a small part of it.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Heraclitus and Buddha were not the only philosophers or prophets who lived relatively close together in time. Some commentators think Zoroaster, the founder or codifier of Zoroastrianism, lived between 650 and 560 BC. And Confucius, whose thought, resembling Western Stoicism in some ways, lived approximately from 551 to 479 BC. And this period was also when the post-Prophetic Wisdom writings of Judaism were being composed by post-Exilic sages (e.g., Ecclesiastes, Sirach, Wisdom).
Sean
Sean,
Yes. That is what the Axial Age is about.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
It was a time of upheaval in many spheres of life, not just the political or military. From the Hundred Schools of Warring States China in the East to the Sages of Israel and philosophers of Greece in the West it was a time of unusual intellectual ferment.
Sean
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