12 BUDDHISM COMES WEST
12.1 Europe's Early Contact with Buddhism
P
rior to the opening of sea routes from Europe to Asia, the story of Eu-
rope's contact with Buddhism was one of historical oddities and undoc-
umented possibilities. Among the possibilities, it is known that there
was fairly extensive trade between India and the Mediterranean area in the era
of the Greek city-states and the Roman Empire. This has led scholars to con-
jecture about whether the Platonic and Gnostic doctrines of the transmigra-
tion of souls originated in India, and also whether the references to Buddhism
in the writings of Clement and Origen-two early Alexandrian fathers of the
Christian church-can be taken as evidence that King Asoka's emissaries to
the Mediterranean countries actually reached their destination (see Section
3.3). There is also the question of whether the Egyptian Desert Fathers were
influenced by Buddhists or other members of the Indian sramal).a movement.
Because the Desert Fathers were the direct inspiration for the first Christian·
monastic orders, it is possible that Christian monasticism derived indirectly
from the same sources as did Buddhism, if not from Buddhism itself. Finally,
there is the possibility that the Christian cult of relics was originally inspired
by the Buddhist example.
Among the documented oddities, modern scholarship has revealed that in
the sixteenth century the Catholic church unwittingly included the Buddha
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