Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c13.59

c13.59

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.