The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c41.30

v2.c41.30

Though Garbe is in favour of the view that these comparisons are proofs of borrowing, he confines his assurance of dependence to the case of Pythagoras, which has been accepted by von Schroeder¹ and Hopkins² with others³ as a clear case of the influence of Greek philosophy on Indian speculation. The question cannot be ignored nor easily disposed of. The theory of Pythagoras clearly included the belief in transmigration, the idea that a series of births serves to purify the souls, and the view that the contemplative life is the highest form of existence and that man by living it most effectively strives to rid himself of the fetters of nature. It is, therefore, argued that he must have borrowed his conception from India, as there is no earlier trace of metempsychosis in Greece, and the principle must therefore have come from an external source. Further arguments are based on detailed coincidences, which must at once be admitted to be of great value in such a question, if only they could be established. The prohibition to eat beans, the rule of ceremonial purity regarding the sun (πρὸς ἥλιον τετραμμένον μὴ ὀμιχεῖν), the vow of silence like that taken by an Indian Muni, the Pythagorean theorem, the irrational root 2, the character of the religious philosophical brotherhood treated as similar to the Indian philosophical schools, and the mystic character of the doctrine are all regarded by Hopkins as valid evidence of the connexion. Other arguments have also been adduced by von Schroeder, but have been abandoned by his own supporters: thus the theory that the Pythagorean numbers are borrowed from the Sāṁkhya system is given up even by Garbe, in face of the fact that in that system number plays no part save in so far that three Guṇas and twenty-five principles are enumerated, and the Pythagorean conception of number is something totally different.⁴ The further argument adduced by Garbe that the five elements are borrowed by Pythagoras from India is open to the grave objection that the five elements are not certainly known in India early enough for this, but to the still more grave objection that the system of five elements cannot be traced back to Pythagoras himself, and further that the five by no means precisely correspond with the five of India in the concepts attached to them; the efforts¹ to show that the word ὁλκάς as used by Philolaos of the ether is the imperfect transcript of the Ākāça of the Indian tradition must be deemed to be methodologically completely mistaken.