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Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c13: Chapter VIII. The Effects of the Intercourse Between India and the West

Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c13

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Chapter VIII. The Effects of the Intercourse Between India and the West

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WE have seen, in the preceding chapters of this book, that for a period of about a thousand years,—from the invasion of Darius to the sack of Rome by the Goths,—India was in more or less constant communication with the West. Had this long intercourse of nearly ten centuries any influence upon the development of the art, literature, or thought of either India or of the Greco-Roman world?

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It has already been shewn that the intercourse between India and Greece, before the days of Alexander, was of an indirect nature. Indian goods reached the Mediterranean from Persian or Phoenician caravans; the Indian traders themselves never went further than Babylon or the mouth of the Red Sea. Greece had no direct communication with India. What she knew of India, she had learnt from Greeks in Persian employ, like Ktesias or Skylax. Of the great civilization of ancient India, its philosophy and religion, Greece knew—and cared—nothing. The Greeks were singularly indifferent to the literature or civilization of their contemporaries. They looked on them all as “barbarians,” and treated them with equal contempt. It is extraordinary how little they found out about even their near neighbours, the Persians. Hence we may dismiss at once the theory that the Pythagorean philosophy, for instance, owes anything to India. It is curious, however, to notice how many points of resemblance there are between the mystical philosophy of the Orphic and Pythagorean schools, and Indian beliefs¹. First and foremost, there is the doctrine of Metempsychosis (παλιγγενεσία). But this was a tenet neither of the earliest Greeks nor of the original Aryans of the Panjāb. Practically no traces of it are found in the Vedas, or in the poems of Homer. The Vedic hero, like the Homeric hero, goes to dwell in the Elysium of Yama, the proto-man, and returns no more to earth².

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The belief in re-incarnation appears first in India in its most primitive form in the Chāndogya Upanishad. In Greece, it is first traced to the Orphic schools, who acquired it, we may suppose, in Thrace. It seems probable, in a word, that both Greeks and Indians acquired the doctrine from the primitive peoples with whom they came in contact,—the Greeks from the Thracians, the Aryans from the prae-Aryan tribes of the Ganges valley. Once acquired, the doctrine naturally assumed the form it did, for it provides the most natural of solutions to the eternal questions of the destiny of the soul and the existence of evil. Thus we find in Plato (in the closing episode of the *Republic*, for instance), something which resembles very closely the doctrine of karma, or retribution, commonly held by all Hindu sects. Again, the Pythagorean "tabus" on wine, animal food, etc., remind the reader of Buddhism. But Pythagoras lived before Gautama, and the *ahiṃsā* doctrine of Buddhism, shared also by the Brahmins and Jains, was a later development. Gautama himself died of eating some tainted flesh, offered to him by a humble follower. Finally, we may ask why, if Pythagoras, Plato, or any other Greek philosopher before the days of Alexander, borrowed anything from India, we find no mention of the fact in contemporary Greek literature. There are stories about visits paid to Egypt by both Pythagoras and Plato, and there is nothing intrinsically improbable in this.

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But a journey to India, except under very unusual circumstances, was at that time almost a physical impossibility¹. And Plato never mentions Indian philosophy, or India at all, in all his writings. Herodotus says nothing of the Indian doctrine of transmigration, and in a single sentence, he casually remarks that "some Indians kill nothing that has life, but live on herbs¹." Egypt, not India, was the source, if any, from which Greece borrowed her early philosophy. Herodotus tells us distinctly that the Egyptians were the first to propound the theory of the transmigration of the soul, after death, through a cycle of other lives²; and in a well-known passage of the *Laws* Plato talks of the Greeks as children compared to the Egyptians in knowledge. In a word, there is not a single reference in Greek literature before 328 B.C. which gives us the slightest reason for supposing that the Greeks knew of the existence of Indian philosophy at all. The Indians, on the other hand, were equally ignorant of the literature and civilization of Greece, and equally indifferent to any system of thought outside India. If they ever heard of the *Yavanas* (Pāṇini mentions them once), it was in a doubtful and vague way, probably because an occasional Greek, like Skylax of Karyanda, in the service of the Persians, visited the Panjāb.

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It is therefore with surprise that we find no less an authority than Burnet³ writing that “ everything points to the conclusion that Indian philosophy came from Greece.” The resemblances, superficially very striking, are often, on thorough investigation, found to be far less complete than they appear to be at first sight. As for the theory of Metempsychosis, it has been found to exist among many early races. The Celts, for instance, believed in it, as Julius Caesar discovered¹. The legend said to be inscribed upon king Arthur’s tomb

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¹ See for the whole subject the exhaustive article Pythagoras and Transmigration, by A. B. Keith, in J.R.A.S. 1909, p. 569, with a full bibliography. This is the last word on the subject, and sums up all possible sources of information.

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² Rig Veda, x. 14.

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¹ The story of a visit to the Brahmins is told by very late writers, such as Diogenes and Iamblichus, of more than one early philosopher. But there is not the slightest trace of this legend before the 2nd century A.D. It *never* occurs in contemporary literature.

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¹ III. 100. Mention has already been made (Ch. II.), of one or two Indian stories which have found their way into Herodotus. But this does not affect the argument.

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² II. 123. Nor did this doctrine come through Egypt from India. Egypt is centuries older than India.

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³ *Early Greek Philosophy*, p. 21. The chief supporter of the theory is von Schröder, *Pythagoras und die Inder* (1884).

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¹ De Bello Gallico, VI. 14. 5.

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Hic iacet Arthurus, Rex quondam Rexque futurus,

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is one of the many traces, often overlaid by Christianity, of the original Celtic belief in this doctrine. Yet no one will be disposed to contend that the Celts borrowed it from the Greeks. It is far more probable that the belief was a common one among early peoples, and held by Celts and Thracians alike, long before the Greeks acquired it.

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India was totally unaffected by Greece before the days of Alexander. Between the two countries lay the unsurmountable barriers of vast seas, deserts, mountains and hostile nations; these alone would have made intercourse impossible, without the obstacles of an alien tongue and mutual exclusiveness. On the other hand, as we have already seen, there had been a long and continuous intercourse between India and the great nations of Asia Minor. Yet, as we have stated in a previous chapter, the traces of this contact are on the whole doubtful and comparatively insignificant. India may owe to her intercourse with the Semitic races her earliest script, perhaps too her calendar, her system of weights and measures, and some Purāṇic legends. Persia, of course, was in close contact with India for nearly two centuries, and the Panjāb was a Persian satrapy for that period. Indian architecture appears to have assimilated a great many Persian forms, but on the whole, the effects of the contact were surprisingly few. Indian literature could find nothing to borrow from her great neighbour.

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We now come to the invasion of Alexander. Alexander himself, owing to his untimely death, had no direct influence upon India, and in the great upheaval which followed, the Macedonian power in the Panjāb, with its colonies and wharfs and harbours, was swept away in a moment. But the contact between East and West, once established, was never entirely severed. Alexander’s followers, in their numerous narratives of their great adventure, first informed their countrymen of the beliefs and customs of the East. Greeks heard for the first time of Brahmins and Śramaṇas, people with superstitions and beliefs strangely like their own. Besides considerable bodies of settlers who remained behind in the Panjāb, there was the great Greek colony at Baktra, on the highroad to India. At the same time, the Maurya Emperors, thanks to the extraordinarily enlightened policy of the great founder of their dynasty, kept in close touch with their Greek neighbours. Yet here, again, it is remarkable how little the Greek spirit influenced India. Hellenism, which affected profoundly the whole of Western Asia and even Egypt, stopped short at the Hindu Kush, in spite of the presence of a Greek rāṇī at Pāṭaliputra and of the close and friendly relations existing between the Mauryas and their brother monarchs of Syria and Egypt. Chandragupta, who had spent his early days as an exile in the Panjāb, where Persian civilization had taken a strong hold on the country was imbued with Persian ideas. Of Greek culture he and his successors exhibit hardly a trace.

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With the break up of the Maurya Empire, however, came a fresh foreign invasion of North-Western India. Disturbances in Central Asia drove the Baktrian Greeks south of the Hindu Kush, where they established a kingdom with its capital at Sāgala, afterwards splitting up into a series of petty principalities. These Greek principalities, after enjoying considerable power for a time, were succeeded, as we have already seen, firstly by Scythian or Śaka chiefs, and finally by the Kushān tribe, who quickly absorbed all the petty states of the Panjāb and established a vast Empire, with its capital at Peshāwar, stretching from the Oxus to the Ganges.

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It is an interesting and still unsolved problem, how far the Baktrian Greeks actually affected the civilization of North-Western India. Probably the results of their brief reign were not great. They were a mere handful, and their coins shew that they were rapidly absorbed by the surrounding population. The coins of Demetrius, for instance, are purely Hellenic; those of Menander a curious compromise between Greece and India. Again, there is evidence that the Baktrian Greeks very largely adopted the religion of their neighbours, and they could scarcely do this until they had become Hindus in all but name. The conversion of Menander to Buddhism is as dramatic as that of Aśoka. In the Nāsik caves is a leṇa owned by “Indrāgnidatta a Yonaka from Dattamitra (Demetria) in the north.” In the Kārla caves are several votive offerings from Greeks, some of them being from Benākaṭakā near Nāsik¹. Most remarkable of all is the curious inscription on the Garuda pillar from Besnagar, recording that it is the work of “Heliodorus son of Dion, a Greek envoy² from Takhasilā, sent by the Mahārājā Antalkidas³.” From these inscriptions it will be seen that the Greeks in the Panjāb and in Western India rapidly became converts to Hinduism and Buddhism, and were so little distinguishable from their neighbours that they even took Hindu names. Further than this, the solitary monument of Baktrian architecture,—the Besnagar pillar referred to above,—is purely Indo-Persian in type. No trace of Menander’s famous capital at Sāgala has survived, but there is no reason to suppose that it was in the Greek style¹. It is probable, however, that a corrupt Greek was spoken among these half caste settlers, and was perhaps the *lingua franca* of the Greek, Indo-Parthian, and Śaka tribes at that time. The Indo-Parthians had an additional reason to use Greek, as that was the court language of Parthia. They also used the Greek names for the months².

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¹ Bombay Gazetteer, XVIII. Ins. No. 7 & 10. Rapson, Coins of the Āndhras, Int. XXIX., XLVII.

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² Yona-dūta (?)

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³ J.R.A.S. 1909, p. 1092.

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¹ Sir J. H. Marshall, however, traces the Gandhāra sculptures to the workmanship of Baktrian Greeks, *not*, as is usually supposed, to workmen imported by Kanishka (*J.R.A.S.* 1909, p. 1060 ff.).

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² *Panēmus* in the Taxila copperplate inscription of Patika.

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With the Kushāns we come upon different ground. These great rulers, about whom we know only too little, built up a vast Empire, comprising a variety of nationalities. In the Panjāb were semi-Asiatic Greeks, Parthians, Scythians, Hindus. In Afghanistan and Baktria, besides the remnants of the older Scythian and Iranian settlers, were Greeks, Parthians, and their own countrymen from Central Asia. Besides this, the Kushān monarchs were in intimate touch with the Roman power in Asia Minor. With the establishment of the Roman Empire, traders began to come to Western India in great numbers, both by land and sea. The Roman Emperors pursued a forward policy in Asia, and Trajan pushed forward to within six hundred miles of the Kushān frontiers. It was probably in his time that intercourse between India and the Roman power in Asia Minor reached its height. More than one embassy had been sent to the Roman Emperors from the Kushān monarchs. One which reached Rome in the days of Trajan was treated by him with the utmost courtesy and distinction. The cosmopolitan nature of the Empire of the Kushān kings is shewn by their coins. Kadphises I imitates the bronze and copper coinage of Augustus¹. Kadphises II strikes an *aureus* in imitation of the Roman coin,—probably re-striking the actual Roman *aureus*². Some of the coins of Kanishka represent a most curious blending of nationalities and creeds: the king appears in Turki dress, standing by a fire-altar, and the coin bears a polyglot inscription in Greek letters *shaonanoshao Kaneshki Koshano*, “Kanishka the Kushān, King of Kings³.” The use of the Persian phrase *Shahan Shah*, Βασιλεὺς βασιλέων, is very curious. So is the employment of þ to represent *sh*, a sound which finds no expression in the Greek alphabet. These coins were, no doubt, like those bearing the image of NANAIA⁴ (Anaitis, the tutelary goddess of Balkh), and other Iranian deities, struck for use in the Iranian parts of the Kushān Empire. Another typical coin of the time bears a male figure of the moon and the superscription ΣΑΛΗΝΗ¹. The most important achievement of the Kushāns, however, from our present point of view, was the importation of a large number of Greek sculptors from Asia Minor, to decorate the Buddhist monasteries, stūpas, and other religious buildings which were erected all over the Peshāwar district after the conversion of Kanishka². These sculptors appear to have settled down in the Panjāb, and their work, at first purely Greek, becomes much more tinged, as time goes on, with Indian ideas, particularly those of the indigenous Buddhist school of Sānchi and Barhut. Remains of this school have been found extensively in the Gandhāra district, from which they have received their name. The remarkable casket, containing relics of the Buddha, found at Peshāwar in 1908, bears an inscription to the effect that it is the work of "Agesilaus, overseer of works at Kanishka's vihāra." In itself, this curious reliquary is of little merit. It is shaped like a Greek lady's jewel-casket, and the figures are roughly and clumsily executed³. About the fourth century A.D., the Kushān power waned and disappeared. The sceptre now returned to the great indigenous dynasty of the Guptas. Under the Gupta monarchs, a splendid literary and artistic renaissance set in, strongly nationalistic in character, and except perhaps in some coin-issues, Greco-Roman influence entirely disappears. The rise of the Sassanian Empire also placed a barrier which cut off all direct communication between Roman Asia and the East. Intercourse between the Roman world and the East was now almost entirely confined to the great port of Alexandria, to which Indians flocked in ever-increasing numbers. The Roman traders who resorted to Southern India at this time, and even settled at Madura and other places, came for mercantile purposes only, and had apparently no effect whatever upon literature or art.

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¹ Gardner, *Cat. Greek and Scythic Kings in B.M.* xxv. 5.

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² *Ibid.* 6–10.

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³ *Ibid.* xxvi. 4–19. Gardner, of course, fails to see that þ = *sh*. This was first discovered, I think, by Burgess, and propounded in the *Indian Antiquary*. It may be the old San letter revived.

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⁴ *Ibid.* xxvi. 3. etc. See also Stein, *Zoroastrian Deities on Indo-Scythian Coins* (*Babylonian and Oriental Record*, I. 133).

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¹ Ibid. XXVI. 1.

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² This, however, is not Marshall's view, as we have already stated.

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³ Marshall in J.R.A.S. 1909, p. 1060 ff.

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Having thus summarized in general terms the nature of the intercourse between India and the Greco-Roman world, we must seek more specifically its results. As regards Indian art, we may at once say that in the matter of coinage, Indians learnt everything from the West. Coinage never appealed to the Hindu craftsman very strongly, though very occasionally,—as in the case of the life-like portraits of Kanishka, and the beautiful and graceful types of the versatile Samudra Gupta¹,—a fine result is achieved. The Indians were usually content either to imitate foreign coins, generally the Roman aureus, or to restrike them. In the south of India they took the simpler course of importing Roman specie wholesale¹. Not much can be said for the purely native coins of the Āndhras, Chālukyas or Pāṇḍyas.

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¹ J.R.A.S. 1889, Pl. I. 4 and 5.

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¹ The names of the chief coins have passed into Indian vernaculars. *Dramma* (mod. *dām*), is δραχμή. *Dīnāra* is denarius. *Statīra* is stater.

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Besides the Kushāns, the Śaka, Indo-Parthian and the Kshaharāta princes issued coins which are more or less a compromise between Greco-Roman and Oriental ideas. Those of Nahapāna are a clever imitation of the Greek style applied to realistic portraiture². Before Alexander, punch-marked coins were alone issued in India, though Persian and Athenian coins were in circulation in the satrapy of the Panjāb³.

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² Barnett, *Antiq. of India*, v. 2.

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³ Rapson, *Indian Coins*, in *Grundriss*, §§ 7–9.

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As regards art, we must obviously look to Gandhāra for the chief source of Greco-Roman influence upon India. These sculptures, as we have already seen, were probably the work of craftsmen imported from Syria. These craftsmen were not, of course, artists of a high order. None of their productions shews any inspiration or any outstanding merit, and Syrian art at the time was decadent. It appears likely that these artists settled in the Panjāb, as their productions, purely Greek at first, become, as time goes on, more and more deeply tinged with Indian influence. The latest work of the Gandhāra school is a compromise between Greek and early Buddhist art. It has been the fashion of late to abuse the Gandhāra sculptures roundly. This is not altogether fair. They possess, of course, nothing like the beauty or vigour of the graceful and powerful work of the Gupta period, but many of them are by no means devoid of charm and interest. They are a lively commentary on the life of Gautama and the Jātaka legends. The Gandhāra sculptors were the first to portray the Master as a human being. The earlier Buddhist sculptors, with puritanical abhorrence of idolatry, merely indicate his presence by symbols such as footmarks (pāduka), the wheel, or the umbrella. The conventional figure of the Master in modern Hīnayāna Buddhism of to-day, shews in the halo, the arrangement of the drapery, and the treatment of the hair, traces of borrowing from Gandhāra. The Corinthian pillars which appear on some of the friezes, with the figures placed among the foliage of the capital, and finished with stucco, resemble Roman work of the third century¹. These pillars are ornamental, of course, not structural. Kanishka’s buildings were, no doubt, purely Indian in type, but being made principally of wood and brick, in Indian fashion, they have almost entirely vanished. There is no reason to suppose that India was in any way influenced by Greek architecture. By 400 A.D., if not earlier, the Gandhāra school appears to have been completely extinct.

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¹ This degraded workmanship first appears in the Baths of Caracalla (217 A.D.).

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We now turn to Indian literature. A claim has been made¹ that Indian drama, if not Indian philosophy, owes a great deal to the drama of Greece. Many curious resemblances between the two have been pointed out. The *vidūshaka* and the *viṭa*, have been compared to the Parasite and the Pimp of the New Attic Comedy. The *Nāṭya Śāstra* of Bharata lays down as one of the canons of the drama that the number of persons appearing upon the stage should be limited to five. Indian like Greek drama, avoids the portrayal of violent or unseemly actions. The "Greek curtain" (*Yavanikā*) was used, and *Yavanī*, Greek girls, appear as the attendants upon royal persons. At Rāmgarh, a small Greek amphitheatre has been unearthed². The *Toy Cart*³ is compared by critics to plays of the type of the New Attic Comedy. Again, the passage of Chrysostom is quoted, wherein he states that "it is said that the poetry of Homer is sung by the Indians, who had translated it into their own language and modes of expression, so that even these Indians are not unacquainted with the woes of Priam and the weeping and wailing of Andromache and Hecuba, and the heroic feats of Achilles and Hector, so potent was the influence of what one man had sung¹.” Plutarch attributes to Alexander’s invasion the fact that the Gedrosian read Homer, Euripides and Sophokles. A similar statement is made by Aelian².

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¹ Chiefly by Weber (*Sansk. Lit.* p. 224, etc.), Windisch (*Greek Influence on Indian Drama*), and Von Schröder (*Indiens Lit. und Cultur*). The opposite view is held by Sylvain Lévi (*Théâtre Indien*), and Rapson (Art. *Drama*, in Hastings' *Dict. Religion and Ethics*). For a complete bibliography see Macdonell, *History of Sanskrit Literature*, Bibliographical note to Ch. xvi.

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² Bloch, *Annual Report, Arch. Surv. Ind.* 1903-4, p. 123 ff.

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³ *Mṛcchakaṭikā*.

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¹ *Orations*, LIII. 554.

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² *V.H.* XII. 48.

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But here, as in the case of Greek and Indian philosophy, the resemblances are not so close as they appear to be at first sight. On the whole, the Indian drama, with its neglect of the unities, its mixture of prose and verse, comedy and tragedy, resembles the severe Greek tragedy as little as a florid Indian temple resembles the Parthenon. The “Greek curtain” is certainly not borrowed from the Greek stage, for there the curtain was not used³. The presence of Greek girls as royal attendants shews they were commonly found in Rājās’ harems⁴, but this has no bearing upon the question of Hellenic influence on the drama. The supposed resemblances are really confined to a single play, the *Toy Cart*; they are not discernible in the other dramas of Kālidāsa and Bhavabhūti. This seems to shew that the supposed Greek influence in the Indian drama, if it exists at all, is due to the Hellenic element in North-Western and Western India in the first two centuries after Christ, rather than to the later contact with Alexandria. This appears to be the most plausible theory, if we suppose the *Toy Cart* to be an early play. But was Greek ever talked sufficiently in the Panjāb to make a Greek drama intelligible to an Indian, or semi-Indian audience? The point seems very doubtful. The Greek on the coins,—except in the case of the Baktrian kings,—is so corrupt that we are almost forced to conclude that if spoken at all, it was a barbarous jargon, bearing only the remotest resemblance to classical Greek. It may, indeed, have been a dead language, only surviving on the coins along with other traces of imitation from foreign models¹. Menander and his courtiers may have enjoyed a Greek comedy at Sāgala. It is highly improbable that Kanishka ever did. Chrysostom certainly asserts that this was the case. His accounts of India in other Orations are, however, mere poetical fables. He knew little about India. Is his story about the knowledge of Homer in India merely the result of some vague account, communicated to him by an Indian in Alexandria, of the Rāmāyaṇa or Mahābhārata¹, some episodes of which resemble the Iliad to a certain degree? The assertion that an author as late as Kālidāsa had read not only Menander but Plautus seems to be absolutely unwarranted². If the Indian drama was actually affected by Hellenistic influences in the Baktrian or Kushān period, we may trace to the same time the supposed debt of Indian to Greek medicine. Charaka, said to have been the court physician of Kanishka, prescribes rules for the Indian doctor which resemble very minutely the oath which the Greek physician, according to Hippokrates, had to take upon entering on his duties. The Indian theory of the three humours has been also traced to Greek sources³.

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³ It is a curtain made of Greek stuff in all probability,—nothing more.

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⁴ They are mentioned among the imports of Barygaza, (Εὐειδεῖς παρθένοι ἐς παλλακίαν, *Periplus*, 49). See p. 117.

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¹ Not a single Greek inscription has been unearthed. Even Greeks use Prākrit. This is significant enough. On the other hand, Sir J. H. Marshall found at Peshāwar a piece of Gandhāra pottery representing a scene which he considers to be unmistakably from the *Antigone*. He thinks this is evidence for the acting of Greek plays in the Panjāb. *J.R.A.S.* 1909, pp. 1060-1.

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¹ The Mahābhārata, the present recension of which is about 300 A.D., contains some Greek words, e.g. saptantrī vīṇā (ἑπτάτονος φόρμιγξ) III. 134. 14; trikoṇa (τρίγωνος) XIV. 88. 32; barbarān (βάρβαρος) III. 51. 23. Greeks are mentioned II. 14. 4, III. 254. 18, XII. 207. 43. Romans are mentioned II. 51. 17. Greeks are called sarvajñā VIII. 45. 36, probably for their proficiency in astronomy.

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² V. A. Smith, Graeco-Roman Influence on the Civilization of Ancient India (J.R.A.S. 1889).

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³ Hoernle, Ancient Indian Medicine (J.R.A.S. 1908, p. 997, 1909, p. 857 ff.).

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It is, however, in one respect only that we can definitely ascribe any real debt on the part of India to Greece. This is in the science of astronomy⁴. The Indians frankly acknowledged their indebtedness to Greek science in this respect: “ The Yavanas are barbarians,” writes the author of the Gārgī Saṃhitā, “ yet the science of astronomy originated with them, and for this they must be reverenced like gods.” There are five Siddhāntas, or Treatises, on astronomy, in medieval Sanskrit literature,—the Paitāmaha, the Vāsiṣṭha, the Sūryya, the Pauliśa and the Romaka. These frequently mention “ Romaka ” as a “ famous city,” and Romaka is also alluded to several times in the Bṛihat Saṃhitā and Pañcha Siddhāntikā of Varāhamihira¹. This Romaka must be Alexandria, of course. The Pauliśa Siddhānta is based on the astronomical works of Paul of Alexandria (circa 378 A.D.). And Rome had ceased to exist as a centre of culture by the time of Varāhamihira (d. 587 A.D.). Further evidence may be found, if needed, in the fact that these writers all use the Greek names for the planets and the signs of the Zodiac instead of their regular Sanskrit appellations. Thus we have Kriya (Κριός, Aries), Tāvuri (Ταῦρος), Jituma (Δίδυμος), Pāthona (Παρθένος); Āra (Ἄρης), Heli (Ἥλιος), Asphiyit (Ἀφροδίτη), Himna (Ἑρμῆς), and so on. Similarly

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⁴ Kaye, in J.R.A.S. 1910, p. 759. Von Schröder, Indiens Lit. und Cultur. Barnett, Antiquities of India, Ch. VI. Weber, Ind. Lit. p. 247. Fleet attributes to this period the week of

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¹ e.g. Romakākhyā prakīrtitā in the Sūryya Siddhānta, passim. In the Gārgī Saṃhitā Alexandria is called Yavana-pura and is taken as the meridian instead of Ujjain.

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seven days, corresponding to the modern week in names of the days. This seems to me doubtful, the names of the days of the week only appearing very late indeed in Roman and Greek literature.

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technical terms like *trikoṇa* (τρίγωνος), and *jāmitra* (διάμετρον), are freely employed¹. The latter word occurs in Kālidāsa², a contemporary of Varāhamihira. Varāhamihira also wrote a treatise on the *Hora Jñāna* or doctrine of Lunar Mansions. The term is no doubt borrowed from the Greek ὥρα (Latin *domus*) used in this sense by Firmicus Maternus 335 A.D.³ On the other hand Europe borrowed, through the Arabs, a certain number of Sanskrit astronomical terms *e.g.* *aux*, *apex*, the Sanskrit *uchcha*. The Indian numerals, far less clumsy than the Greek and Roman ones, were also borrowed in the same way.

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¹ Von Schröder, *Indiens Lit. und Cultur*, p. 726.

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² *Kumārasambhava*, VII. I.

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³ See Jacobi's pamphlet *De Horæ Originibus* (Bonn, 1872).

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We now turn to the difficult and complicated question of Indian influence on the West. As we have already seen in the preceding chapters, this begins about the third century A.D., and was probably chiefly felt in Alexandria. Clement (d. 220 A.D.), is the first writer to shew any real knowledge of Eastern philosophy, in addition to the commonplaces repeated by successive writers since the time of Megasthenes. Porphyry, writing about 260 A.D., repeats more interesting details from the lost work of Bardesanes. Indians at the time were in the habit of visiting Alexandria and there seems little doubt that the Indian knowledge of Alexandrian astronomy was due to some of these visitors to the great centre of Greek learning. It certainly appears probable that Neo-platonism was affected by Oriental philosophy, though it is difficult to distinguish its borrowings from Pythagoreanism and Buddhism respectively. But perhaps the coincidences between Pythagorean and Buddhist beliefs lent them enhanced credence. Thus the tract Περὶ ἀποχῆς τῶν ἐμψύχων contains the famous description (already quoted) of a Buddhist monastery. Hence we may suppose that the doctrines it inculcates,—abstinence from flesh, subjection of the body by asceticism, and so on,—are derived from Oriental sources. In the case of the earlier Greek philosophers, we were driven to conclude that the resemblances between their tenets and those of the Indian sages were coincidences, because the evidence for intercourse was entirely lacking. In this case the links in the chain are supplied. In one point, we find a resemblance between Neo-platonic and Indian teaching, absent in Pythagoreanism. The Neo-platonist strives by meditation to free his soul from the body, and to attain union with the Supreme. This is the Yoga doctrine of Patañjali. Pythagoras, while teaching rebirth, “remembrance” (ἀνάμνησις), and abstention from flesh, says nothing about the end or aim—Mukti or Emancipation, which is the cardinal Hindu doctrine.

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Did Christianity owe anything to Hindu and Buddhist thought? Many rash statements, which prove, on minute investigation, to be based on coincidences more or less remote, have been made upon this subject¹. Thus the doctrine of the Logos, introduced into Christianity from Philo, superficially resembles the personification of *Vāch* ‘Speech’ as a goddess in the *Rig Veda*². But there is no *Vāch* doctrine, *Vāch* being merely an unimportant abstraction. And moreover Philo borrowed his Logos doctrine from Heraklitus and not from the East at all. The immense popularity of asceticism, on the other hand, and the extravagant forms it assumed in the Thebaid, may very well be traced to the stories of the Hylobioi and Sramanaioi which are so prominent in patristic literature. The first of the great hermits was Paul of Alexandria, who fled to the Egyptian desert in 251 A.D. to escape the Decian persecution. His famous follower St Anthony died in 356 A.D. This is just the time when Indian influence in Alexandrian literature is most in evidence. Of course, monasticism was also practised among the Jews,—the Essenes of the Dead Sea and the Therapeutae in Egypt belong to the first century B.C. One cannot help wondering whether *relic-worship* (mentioned as we have seen by Clement as a Buddhist practice) and the use of the rosary, are not both Eastern survivals.

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¹ To see how far wild speculation can take the untrained thinker, read Lillie, *India in Primitive Christianity* (1909).

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² X. 125.

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Of semi-Christian sects and heresies, and their debt to the East, we have already spoken¹. Manicheism is a strange farrago of Christian, Jewish, Persian, and Buddhistic ideas. Gnosticism, a far more serious and noble creed, together with its later offshoots, shews traces of both Hindu and Zarathustrian influence. Its doctrine of the plurality of Heavens is essentially Indian : its "three qualities" (πνευματικοί, ψυχικοί, ὑλικοί) resemble the "three guṇas" of the Sāṅkhya system. Origen’s heretical belief in Metempsychosis must not be overlooked.

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¹ Nestorianism, however, became the actual Christian church of India, though Nestorianism has no peculiarly Oriental affinities.

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A great deal has been made, by Weber and others, of the supposed resemblances between the Kṛṣṇa legend and the Gospel story². Nanda, the foster-father of Kṛṣṇa, goes up to Mathurā to pay his taxes (kara) to Kamsa; Kṛṣṇa is born in a cow-shed (gokula); the wicked Kamsa, in order to slay him, massacres the infants of Mathurā; Kṛṣṇa raises the son of a widow from the dead; Kubjā anoints him with precious ointment, and so forth. But these parallels (with the possible exception of the "Massacre of the Innocents") are vague and unsatisfactory, in spite of the vast amount of ingenuity which has been expended on them. Still less convincing are the parallels between the Gospels and the *Bhagavad Gītā*, collected with such industry by Lorinser¹. In the same way, Weber takes the incident in the *Mahābhārata* of the visit of Nārada and other Sages to the mysterious island of *Śvetadvīpa* or White Island, to be a poetical account of an actual visit on the part of some Indian travellers to Alexandria or Persia or some other Christian country. The description of the White Island is purely imaginary, and there is no reason to suppose that any reference to Christianity is intended in the remotest fashion². Even less satisfactory are the supposed parallels between the life of Gautama and that of Christ. It is, however, probable that the striking resemblances which Lamaist ritual of to-day bears to Catholic ceremonies may be due to the influence of the Christian Church in Persia. These resemblances seem to be something more than coincidence. They startled the Abbé Huc when he visited Lhassa in 1842. "The crozier, the mitre, the chasuble, the cardinal's robe, . . . the double choir at the Divine Office, the chants, the exorcism, the censer with five chains, the blessing which the Llamas impart by extending the right hand over the heads of the faithful, the rosary, the celibacy of the clergy, their separation from the world, the worship of saints, the fasts, processions, litanies, holy water,—these are the points of contact which the Buddhists have with us¹.''

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² See the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, trans. Wilson, p. 503 ff. for the birth and childhood of Kṛṣṇa. The raising of the widow’s son only occurs in the late Jaimini Bhārata. The Vallabhas of Gujarat worship the Infant Kṛṣṇa and his Mother. Much has been made of this curious coincidence, e.g. by Kennedy in J.R.A.S. 1907.

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¹ *Die Bhagavad Gītā*, Breslau, 1869. Trans. in *Indian Antiquary*, 1873, p. 283. An able refutation is given in the introduction to Telang's translation of the *Gītā* in the *Sacred Books of the East*.

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² The passage is in *Mahābhārata*, XII. 12. 702. Weber's views are in his *Indische Studien*, I. 400. See P. C. Ray's translation (Calcutta, 1891), VIII. 752.

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¹ Huc et Gabet, *Voyages*, I. 29.

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A few brief words on the remaining question of the influence of India upon Western literature must be added in conclusion. Here, again, we must beware of unwarranted assumptions, based upon coincidence. There is, however, good evidence for the steady migration of folk-tales from East to West, from the time of the *Jātaka* stories. Many Eastern legends have found their way into Europe, and may be found in the *Gesta Romanorum*, the *Decameron*, and other medieval collections. This was very largely due to the Arabs of Damascus, who translated much Sanskrit literature and transmitted it in this way to Europe. A typical instance are the famous fables of Bidpai or Pilpay². They were translated from the Sanskrit *Pañcha Tantra* into Persian by Barzuyeh, in the time of Nushirvan, King of Persia. From Persian they were turned into Arabic by Abdalla ibn Mokaffa, at the court of Ibn Jāfar Almansūr at Bagdad. About the same time, at the neighbouring court of Damascus, St John of Damascus also wrote *Barlaam and Josaphat*, which, as we have seen, contains numerous Buddhist stories and apologues. Thus the well-known story of the Three Caskets found its way into the *Merchant of Venice*. Thus, too, Chaucer was enabled to embody in his *Pardoner's Tale*, a Buddhist parable taken from the *Vedabbha Jātaka*¹. On the whole subject, however, the words of a recent writer are worth remembering: "All these parallels prove nothing. In the first place, a large number of them can be considered parallels only by straining the sense of the term: and in the second place, they are the results of obviously independent though partially similar processes in the development of Greek and Sanskrit literature, and should be treated accordingly²."

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² Benfey, *Pañcha Tantra*, Introduction (1859); *Bidpai*, ed. Keith Falconer (1885), Introduction; Sayce, *Science of Language* (1883), Ch. IX.

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¹ Skeat's *Oxford Chaucer* (1904), III. 443. Clouston, *Originals and Analogues*, Chaucer Society, 417.

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² L. H. Gray in the *Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics*, VI. 4. See also Tawney, *Journal of Philology*, XII. 121. F. Lacôte, *Essai sur Guṇādhya et le Bṛihatkathā*, Paris, 1908.

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