The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c41.8

v2.c41.8

A more serious attempt to prove connexions of a literary and religious nature is made by A. Götze, who compares ¹ the doctrine of correspondence of macrocosm and microcosm as enunciated in the Bundahišn ² with the pseudo-Hippokratean treatise περὶ ἑβδομάδων. The latter work appears to have been known to Plato, and therefore goes back to the fourth century B. C., while W. H. Roscher has endeavoured to assign the short treatise to the seventh century and to regard it as the earliest work extant of Greek science and cosmology. The Bundahišn, of course, is late, and this particular portion cannot even for certain be attributed to the Sassanian recension. On the other hand we have in the Upaniṣads and even in the Brāhmaṇas ³ the idea of the parallelism of macrocosm and microcosm, so that the possibility that oriental influence lies at the basis of the Greek composition cannot be excluded. It may be conjectured also that oriental influence is to be seen in the doctrine of the pseudo-Hippokratean treatise περὶ φυσῶν, where the breath is a ground of illness, and even in the doctrine of the humours, for Pāṇini already knows in the fourth century B. C. of wind, bile, and phlegm as affecting health.⁴ But, even if we grant that there was influence in these matters, the date is late; the doctrines suggested by Persia were, it is believed, introduced into Greece not before 480 B. C. by the Knidian school of medicine. We know in fact of three Greek physicians at the Persian court, Demokedes under Dareios I, Ktesias under Artaxerxes II, and Apollonides, whom Ktesias mentions. It must, however, be borne in mind that we have no evidence that the doctrines alleged to have influenced Greece were actually known in Persia in the fifth century B. C., and that a case can quite fairly be made out for Greek independence in these regards.