The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c41.s8.10

v2.c41.s8.10

Frank, who candidly recognizes ⁴ the influence of Egypt on the beginnings of Greek mathematics and derives ⁵ thence the Greek knowledge of the planets—which, of course, were certainly not borrowed from India—insists ⁶ that the essential turning point in Greek thought came with the Persian war, after which Greece broke free from connexion with the general oriental tendency of thought, and Anaxagoras formulated the fundamental principle of the distinction between our subjective world and reality, as it appears to an ideal spectator, in his doctrine of optics. In the Chāndogya Upaniṣad ⁷ we find the assertion that all things can be resolved into one or other of three elements, but no proof is attempted, and the difference is indicative of the distance which separates Greek and Indian trends of thought. Others again tend to argue that Iranian ideas, partly themselves of Babylonian origin, were influential ⁸ on early Greek thought as well as later,⁹ but, whatever the value of these views, they do not support any direct, nor probably any indirect, influence of India on Greece.