Zeno

the Phcenician was a child of the East, and only where his Stoicism had Eastern affinities did it differ seriously from the schools of Greek philosophy; and to these affinities may be attributed the intense moral earnestne which was its characteristic” (Bishop Light foot on 2nd Philip pians). Pythagoras, according to Diodorus, taught transmigration as early as the 6th century B.C. Strabo shows the resemblance between this philosopher's doctrines and those of British Druids. After Pythagoras followed a galaxy of great thinkers, Xenophanes (530 B.c.), Prot agoras ‘ the first Sopbist ” (460 B.c.), Anaxagoras, and Sokrates (450 B.c.), followed by Plato, Aristotle, Pyrrho, and Epikouros, bringing us down to Zeno in the days of Asoka. Eusebius and Epiphanius tell us that, about this time (250 B.C.), Demetrios, who was the librarian of Ptolemy Phil a del phos, urged his master to obtain sacred books in India, as well as those of the Jews. Alexander the Great was interested in Indian religion, and from his time onwards Western philosophers sought wisdom in the East. Under the Seleucid, who followed the great conqueror on the throne of W. Asia, Greek influence on the other hand spread to the Panjab. [While the influence of Indian asceticism on the West is clear, it is yet a moot point whether the close connection between the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato and those of the Indian schools, about Asdka’s time, may not best be explained by Greek influence over the Hindu mind, at a time when the Sakya rulers were partly Greek by birth—Eb.] Prof. Darmesteter (Introduction to Vendiddd) says that the plays of Aischylus and Sophocles were read at the Part hi an court (about 200 B.c.); and the relationship between Parthia and Western Asia was very close. The Rev. 8. Beal (Buddhism in China, 1884) traces the introduction of Greek Comedy into India, from Alexandria by Baroch and Ujjain, then under Asdka. There was then constant communication between India and Egypt, by sea as well as by land, but much earlier as Mr Spence Hardy reminds us, the Buddhist “doctrine of an infinity of worlds (was) taught by Buddha’s contemporaries Anaximander, and Xenophanes; and afterwards by Diogenes A poll on i ates, 428 B.c., and by Demo crit us, 361 B.c., as well as by the Stoics” (Manual of Buddhism, pp. 8, 34). The Gnostiks of our 2nd century also believed that Buddha taught “an endle series of worlds,” and agreed because “it showed that the Godhead could never be unemployed” (p. 35). In Gotama’s days (see Rev. T. Foulkes, Indian Antiq., Jany., Feb. 1887) India had “ trading ships carrying as many as 700 travellers each.... These commonly left the ports of Bangal, Kallinga, Ceylon, and Baroda, for all trans-Indiau countries.” The Chinese book Si-yu-ki (confirmed by the Dipa-vans a) speaks of a prince Vijaya, about the time of Buddha, as driven W. to the Persian Gulf in a ship with 700 pa engers, and there founding a kingdom of women. But communication by land with As syria is indicated yet earlier, by the elephant, Baktrian hounds, and Indian deer, on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser about 830 B.c. (see also under Balk), Antigonos of Makedon (see Asdka) was the patron of Zeno the Stoik (240 B.c.), and besought him to visit his court. There was no caste system among Buddhists to prevent their communicating with the Yavanas, as Indian writers called the Greeks, Asoka himself po ibly had Greek blood in his veins, for his grandfather Chandra-gupta is said to have married, in 316 Bc, a daughter of Seleukos whom he recognised as the suzerain of the trans-Indus states. The close connection between India and the west continued down to 150 Bc.; and Dion Chrysostom (after 150 a.c.) appears to have known the contents of the Maha-bharata, as well as Megasthenes about 300 B.c. (see Prof. Weber's Hist. of Indian Lit., pp, 136, 186), He says also that “the influence that the Sankhya-Yoga philosophy exercised, during our first centuries, upon the development of Gnosticism in Asia-Minor is unmistakeable” (pp. 239, 309). 408