Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s13.1

c9.s13.1

India and Greece met in the Persian empire some two centuries before the time of Alexander. Even earlier, Indian ideas seem to have travelled far into the West and influenced Pythagoras and his followers; true, we cannot now say by what channel this contact was made, but the similarities between Pythagorean thought and that of the Upanishads, and between the organisation and ceremonial of the Pythagorean fraternity and the ancient ascetic orders of India are too close to be treated as chance coincidences or the results of parallel developments. Aristoxenus (*c.* 330 B. C.), a Greek writer on harmonics and a pupil of Socrates, is known to have mentioned the visit of an Indian philosopher to Athens and the meeting between him and Socrates at which the scope of philosophy was discussed; and the celebrated simile of the rope and the snake, which is found in Sextus Empiricus and nowhere else in Greek or Latin literature, has been traced to Pyrrho, the founder of the Sceptic system, who accompanied Alexander to India.¹