India and the Greek World: A Study in the Transmission of Culture

Description

What was India’s contribution to Western civilization? This question, which began to be seriously discussed nearly two centuries ago, remains a controversial subject into our own day. How did it happen that the Orphics and Pythagoreans of ancient Greece believed in a kind of soul-wandering almost identical to the Indian concept, but found nowhere else? Or that similar notions of the nature of the world appear in the Indian Upanishads and in the Greek philosophers of Ionia? The question is intriguing because, to the best of our knowledge, the Greeks knew little of India as such. New information about India penetrated into the Greek world in the wake of Alexander the Great’s invasion. Tradition has it that Alexander himself discussed philosophy with Indian Brahmins. A regular commerce in gold, spices and fine cloth developed between India and the Mediterranean world. Seamen and merchants, perhaps also preachers and monks, travelled back and forth. Hence there are reasons to believe that India may have made a serious impact upon the Hellenistic world. Stories similar to those about Buddha are told of Jesus, both in the New Testament and the Apocrypha. Gnosticism, which influenced early Christianity, shows close analogies with some Indian thought-systems. Important Hellenistic thinkers like Apollonius and Plotinus held Indian wisdom in high esteem. Manichaean and Indian asceticism show striking similarities — paralleling the rise of monasticism in 3rd- and 4th-century Christianity. India and the Greek World explores these and many other connections. What did the Greeks really know about India? Can we speak of a true Indian influence on the Hellenistic world, or can the undoubted cultural similarities be traced to other factors? These and similar questions are discussed in this remarkable contribution to cultural history on a global scale. Jean W. Sedlar is associate professor of history and political science, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. She is the editor, with William H. McNeill, of six volumes of the Readings in World History series.