150 erik seldeslachts
common people in the West^91 may well be largely true, but that among
the converts nobody was capable of translating the core Buddhist pre-
cepts into Greek, is a great underestimation of the capacities of the
people of those days.
As already indicated, when Western texts speak about Indians, noth-
ing speci cally Buddhistic is to be gleaned from them. On the other
hand, where Western traditions seem to betray Buddhistic elements
or in uence, there is mostly no direct Indian connection whatsoever
demonstrable. This may simply indicate that Buddhism did not come
directly from India, for “[t]he power-house of Buddhist mission was
no longer our India alone but lands well to her West and North”.^92
But in most such cases it is even well-nigh impossible to prove that it
really concerns Buddhism. Many such apparently Buddhist elements
are found on the crossroads between Judaism, Gnosticism, Christianity,
Neo-Platonism, and similar agents of the orientalisation of the West.
The only gnostic sect in which Buddhist in uence is undeniable is
Manichaeism.^93 Its third-century Persian founder Mani preached for
one year in India. His doctrine, which had a great impact in the West,
contains elements with Indian, especially Buddhistic, reminiscences, like
the division between the “possessors of knowledge” living the life of
an ascetic and the mass of “auditors”. Mani declares himself an heir
not only of Zoroaster and Christ, but also of Buddha. In the Coptic
Kephalaia of the Teacher (ca. 400 AD), containing the teachings of Mani
and tenets of Manichaeism, beside Buddha a certain aurentês appears,
a name derivable through Middle Iranian (Bactrian?) *ahrent from Indic
arha(n)t “an Arhat, the highest rank in Buddhist monastic hierarchy”.^94
From the introduction of Buddhist terms in some Parthian Manichaean
texts, R. E. Emmerick infers that they probably originated in one of
the centres where Manichaeism and Buddhism ourished side by side,
perhaps in Balkh of the third to the eighth century. But the Buddhist
connection goes further back in time. Already Mani’s predecessor
Terébinthos had taken on the name Bouddas and pretended to be born
from a virgin.^95 Terébinthos’s own teacher was Scythianós, an eponym
(^91) Lévi 1891, p. 213.
(^92) Derrett 2000, p. 25.
(^93) Cf. Halbfass 1988, p. 18.
(^94) Gnoli 1991.
(^95) Epiphanius, Adversus octoginta haereses 66.1.7; 66.3.11; 66.4.4; Souda, s.v. ;
Hegemonius, Acta archelaï 63.2; Gaius Marius Victorinus, Ad Iustinum Manichaeum 7.
Cf. Lévi 1891, p. 212.