Vedic Indians of Ancient Greece and Mid-East

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The average person does not connect India with the ancient

Middle East, but the existence of some trade between these two

regions is documented, even in the Bible. Note the reference to

spikenard in the Song of Solomon (1:12; 4:13-14) and in the

Gospels (Mark 14:3; John 12:3). This is an aromatic

oil-producing plant (Nardostachys jatamansi) that the Arabs call

sunbul hindi and obtained in trade with India. It is axiomatic that

influence follows trade, and the vibrant culture of India could not

help but impact on anyone exposed to it. The influence on

Judaism came for the most part indirectly, however, via the

Persians and the Chaldeans, who dealt with India on a more

direct basis. (Indeed, the Aryans, who invaded and trans- formed

India over 1500 years before Christ, were of the same people

who brought ancient Persia to its greatest glory. Persia's name

today--Iran--is a corruption of Aryan.) The ancient Judeans

absorbed much of this secondhand influence during the

Babylonian captivity of the sixth century B. C., and during the inter

testamental period, when Alexandria became the crossroads of

the world, intellectuals both Jew and Gentile were exposed to a

variety of ideas, some of which originated on the Indian

Subcontinent. 

 

>From Pythagoras, who believed in the transmigration of souls,

apparently because of his contacts with religious teachers from

the east. Pindar, who believed in metempsychosis, Plato, who

could not have been ignorant of Karma, through Klaxons, the

Indian sage, who accompanied Alexander, Apollonius of Tyana,

who came to Taxila to study under the Brahmins, Clement of

Alexandria, the early Christian teachers of the second century

A.D., who refers to Buddhists and Brahmins in his work and

Plotimus, who went to Persia to meet the Brahmins, the

Contacts between India and Greek thinkers seem to have been

continuous. 

 

According to Klaus K. Klaustmaier, in his book A Survey of

Hinduism pg 18-19 

 

" The kings of Magadha and Malwa exchanged ambassadors

with Greece. A Maurya ruler invited one of the Greek Sophists to

join his court, and one of the greatest of the Indo-Greek kings

became famous as the dialogue partner of the great Buddhist

sage Nagasena, while in the opposite direction, Buddhist

missionaries are known to have settled in Alexandria, and other

cities in the Ancient West. It is evident then, that Indian thought

was present in the fashionable intellectual circuit of ancient

Athens, and there is every reason to suppose that Indian

religious and philosophical ideas exercised some influence on

early and classical Greek philosophy. Both Greeks and Romans

habitually tried to understand the religions of India by trying to fit

them as far as possible into Greco-Roman categories. Deities in

particular were spoken of, not in Indian but in Greek terms and

called by Greek names. Thus Shiva, was identified as

"Dionysos," Krsna (or perhaps Indra) as "Heracles." The great

Indian epics were compared to those of Homer. Doctrinally, the

Indian concept of transmigration had its counterpart in the

metempsychosis taught by Pythagoras and Plato; nor was

Indian asceticism altogether foreign to a people who

remembered Diogenes and his followers."