Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c13.3.2

c13.3.2

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.