as a mediating agency once Dariusinitiated contact with India around
510 BCE.^12 There are hints that some Indian influences were known in the
Greek world by the fifth or sixth century BCE.Herodotus(born in 484 BCE),
for example, knew something of India though he was given to some over-
statement: India had enormous wealth, was given to extreme forms of
religion, etc. These perceptions may have been learned from one of his
“neighbors” – one Scylax of Caryanda, who had been sent to India by
Darius.^13 It appears that Indian soldiers had participated in the Greek
invasion of Persia in 480 BCEand Greek officials were appointed to serve
throughout the empire, including India. There are some hints that Indian
ideas were known in the classical Greek world. Pythagoras(born in 580 BCE),
for example, who lived in cosmopolitan Samos, shared ideas of reincarna-
tion also found on the subcontinent. PlatoandEmpedoclessimilarly
entertained notions of metempsychosis. Were these results of contacts or
coincidence? It is hard to say; however, one Greek writer, Eusebius, claimed
that certain learned Indians, presumably Buddhist or Jain, had visited Athens
and conversed with Socrates.^14
AfterAlexander, contacts increased. Not only did influences come into the
subcontinent, during the time of the Mauryas, Kus.a ̄n.as, and Bactrians; they
went out as well. As ́oka sent emissaries into cities in the Greek world and
subsequently one finds small settlements of Indians in such cosmopolitan
cities as Alexandria, Antioch, and Palmyrah. By the end of the first century
CE, Alexandria was a major port where one-half of the world’s ships were
said to dock, and there is relatively frequent reference to Indians living in
the city, more than likely Buddhist or Jain as orthodox brahmans may have
been reluctant to cross oceans into unknown (and from the standpoint of
brahmanic cosmography, profane) spaces. Similarly, Antioch and Palmyrah
- a city in the desert near the Red Sea, which was an important trading center
from 130–273 CE– would have hosted merchants and/or teachers from India.
Indeed H. A. Rawlinson argued that specific Middle Eastern figures may have
had Indian teachers: Appollonius of Tyana(about 50 CE) is said to have gone
to Taxila to study under brahmans. Bardesanes, a Babylonian gnostic, is said
to have learned from an Indian embassy official during the years 218–22 CE.
Plotinus, the founder of Neo-Platonism, is thought to have accompanied an
expedition into Persia in 212 CEapparently hoping to meet Indian teachers.
Clement of Alexandriamentions Buddha in his writings and Basilides, an
early second-century gnostic teacher and Hellenized Egyptian, is thought to
have been influenced by Indian thought.^15 While many of these specific
contacts remain speculative, it is at least plausible that some forms of Middle
Eastern gnosticism were influenced by Buddhism.
By 762 Baghdad had replaced Alexandria as a major cultural center.
Under the fourth and fifth ‘Abba ̄sid caliphates, scholars were brought to the
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