Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c13.63

c13.63

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.