greece, the final frontier? 161
First of all, we should not forget how limited our information is.
Although many aspects on which I have touched, can be further
elaborated, at present one should beware of jumping to conclusions.
On the other hand, it is also true that what we have is only the tip
of the iceberg and we can only hope that in the future more material
will come to light.
Except maybe under Aoka, there was no centrally orchestrated plan
to bring Buddhism to the West. The practice of proselytising, what we
call “Buddhist missions” was mostly the result of accidental circum-
stances and temporary decisions rather than a real sustained mission
in the Christian sense.
The large proportions assumed by international trade around the
beginning of our era was an important facilitator for the movement
of Buddhist laymen and monks. However, the more Buddhism spread
westwards the less likely became state sponsorship. Therefore, patches
of practicing Buddhists in Egypt and elsewhere were left to themselves,
except for the support of traders and converted locals. When inter-
national trade declined as a result of the crises the Roman Empire
passed through between the late third and the fth century, Buddhism
automatically suffered.
Even if one wants to deny the historical reality behind the indications
of Buddhist presence in the Mediterranean, then one still has to con-
cede that there was during many centuries a wide geographical overlap
between Buddhism and Hellenistic culture in the Iranian areas, from
the eastern border regions of the Roman Empire up to the western
borders of India, and deep into Central Asia. The geographical overlap
between Buddhism and Christianity was possibly even greater, involv-
ing communities in Sri Lanka, South and North-west India, Persia and
Central Asia. In that light, philosophical and religious similarities are the
natural outcome of mutual in uence rather than accident. It is wrong
to see the Parthian and Sassanian Empires in this as insurmountable
geopolitical blocks. Instead, it may be that the common experience of
repression in the Iranian lands brought religions closer together.
A rst wave of Buddhism initiated by the political ambitions of Aoka
in the third century BC was apparently not strong enough to leave any
visible or lasting impact. A second wave from the beginning of our
era onwards, simultaneous with and part of the great expansion of
Buddhism in Asia, spanned most of the Iranian lands, but reached the
West too late to grow in the fertile earth of late Roman paganism.
Becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth cen-
tury, Christianity would wipe out Buddhism together with most other