Tom Smith
My project invstigates the identity of people living in the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan during the Hellenistic period, with a specific focus on the role of belief in the development of an identity. Belief here encompasses what has traditionally been labelled as religion, alongside the philosophical traditions of both India and the Hellenic world, with a particular focus on Dharmaguptaka Buddhism and Pyrrhonism.
8 May 2026
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Project Description
The Yavana are an understudied group who provide a unique opportunity to investigate ancient cross cultural interactions in the ancient Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan. Previously, scholarship of the region has focused on one 'side', either focusing on a Hellenic or Indian/Buddhist persepctive, which has led to a focus on concepts like influence and primacy. However, this project aims to remedy this by combining my experience in both the ancient Mediterranean and in Buddhist studies to bring a clearer understanding of who the Yavana were, what they believed and how belief played a role in developing a new identity. This will be done through the analysis of a variety of textual sources, drawing from the corpus of ancient Greek religious and philosophical texts, and Buddhist texts from the Pali canon, the classical Chinese canon and some of the Sanskrit literature of Nagarjuna. Alongside this, the numismatic and archaeological record with be thoroughly examined so as to understand how belief manifested in daily life, and as a means to cross reference the textual tradtions.