greece, the final frontier? 149
Buddhist sphere of in uence from an early period, again nothing which
is recognisable as Buddhistic. Even the man’s name, which stands for
Rakkhiya, or another Rakkhita beside the Mahrakkhita, Mahdhammarakkhita
and Dhammarakkhita already mentioned,^87 is not exclusively a Buddhist
one.^88
What to think also of the accountant Aokas mentioned in a late Greek
papyrus from Oxyrrhynchus in Egypt?^89 The absence of a Greek or
Coptic etymology for his name paves the way for an identi cation with
Middle Indic Asoka, Sanskrit Aoka. Although one should not assume a
direct link with emperor Aoka, who lived nearly a millennium earlier,
it may indicate that this person was a Buddhist, for in Pli sources the
name Asoka is regularly carried by laymen.^90
On the whole, the available evidence of the popularity of Buddhism
among “Western” business communities is thus meagre. Yet, in the
absence of state sponsorship, individual or group-related patronage by
traders may have been a way by which Buddhism could travel further
west from Iranian lands. Anyhow, trade relations provided channels for
the diffusion of religious and philosophical ideas across the Old World,
as will be illustrated below by the case of Scythianós.
- Religious and Philosophical Interplay
It is not known how Buddhism was received by the Graeco-Roman
pagan scene. Maybe not so differently from eastern cults like that of
Isis or Mithras, which were accepted next to or integrated into the tra-
ditional cults. It could also have been treated as a philosophical school,
in which case it could have aroused the suspicion of “atheism” (i.e., of
not respecting traditional cults), as was the case with Epicureanism.
Buddhist propaganda in the West would have reached in the rst
place the people of the lower classes, just like the initially equally
unknown Christianity. Sylvain Lévi’s assumption that the esoteric
concepts of philosophical Buddhism were beyond the grasp of the
(^87) To the same identi cation came Karttunen 1997, p. 341, n. 114.
(^88) It was, e.g., also carried by Jains (Malvania 1970–72, vol. 2, s.v. Rakkhiya 1. and
2.).
(^89) P. Oxy 3867, Elias to Andronicus 8, 16 (ed. Sirivianou 1989, pp. 150–153).
(^90) Malalasekera 1937–1938, vol. 1, pp. 219–220. Sirivianou 1989, p. 152, n. 8,
considers the resemblance to the name of king Aoka as irrelevant.