Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c12.32

c12.32

As we have already seen, there were probably Roman colonies in Southern India, whose inhabitants, settling in the country for a considerable time, acquired a greater intimacy with Indian customs than had been possible before. The Manicheans owed many of their curious tenets to the Indian lore acquired in his Eastern travels by Terebinthus¹, and the Gnostic heresy shews similar traces of Eastern influence. The debt of Neo-platonism to Oriental sources is indisputable, and when we observe the extent of the knowledge about Eastern beliefs exhibited, not only by Origen, but by orthodox writers like Clement and St Jerome, we cannot help wondering whether Christianity does not owe some of its developments,—monasticism and relic-worship, for instance,—to Buddhist influence. But this subject will be dealt with in a subsequent chapter.