India and Greece
There
is, however, another reason why Apollonius is of importance to us. He
was an enthusiastic admirer of the wisdom of India. Here again a subject
of wide interest opens up. What influences, if any, had Brâhmanism and
Buddhism on Western thought in these early years? It is strongly
asserted by some that they had great influence; it is as strongly denied
by others that they had any influence at all. It is, therefore,
apparent that there is no really indisputable evidence on the subject.
Just as some would ascribe the constitution of the Essene and Therapeut
communities to Pythagorean influence, so others would ascribe their
origin to Buddhist propaganda; and not only would they trace this
influence in the Essene tenets and practices, but they would even refer
the general teaching of the Christ to a Buddhist source in a Jewish
monotheistic setting. Not only so, but some would have it that two
centuries before the direct general contact of Greece with India,
brought about by the conquests of Alexander, India through Pythagoras
strongly and lastingly influenced all subsequent Greek thought.The
question can certainly not be settled by hasty affirmation or denial;
it requires not only a wise knowledge of general history and a minute
study of scattered and imperfect indications of thought and practice,
but also a fine appreciation of the correct value of indirect evidence,
for of direct testimony there is none of a really decisive nature. To
such high qualifications we can make no pretension, and our highest
ambition is simply to give a few very general indications of the nature
of the subject.It is plainly asserted by the ancient Greeks that
Pythagoras went to India, but as the statement is made by
Neo-Pythagorean and Neo-Platonic writers subsequent to the time of
Apollonius,it is objected that the travels of the Tyanean suggested not
only this item in the biography of the great Samian but several others,
or even that Apollonius himself in his Life of Pythagoras was father of
the rumour. The close resemblance, however, between many of the features
of Pythagorean discipline and doctrine and Indo-Aryan thought and
practice, make us hesitate entirely to reject the possibility of
Pythagoras having visited ancient Âryâvarta.And even
if we cannot go so far as to entertain the possibility of direct
personal contact, there has to be taken into consideration the fact that
Pherecydes, the master of Pythagoras, may have been acquainted with
some of the main ideas of Vaidic lore. Pherecydes taught at Ephesus, but
was himself most probably a Persian, and it is quite credible that a
learned Asiatic, teaching a mystic philosophy and basing his doctrine
upon the idea of rebirth, may have had some indirect, if not direct,
knowledge of Indo-Aryan thought.Persia must have been even at this time
in close contact with India, for about the date of the death of
Pythagoras, in the reign of Dareius, son of Hystaspes, at the end of the
sixth and beginning of the fifthcentury before our era , we hear of the
expedition of the Persian general Scylax down the Indus, and learn from
Herodotus that in this reign India (that is the Punjâb) formed the
twentieth satrapy of the Persian monarchy. Moreover,Indian troops were
among the hosts of Xerxes; they invaded Thessaly and fought at Platæa.
From
the time of Alexander onwards there was direct and constant contact
between Âryâvarta and the kingdoms of the successors of the
world-conqueror, and many Greeks wrote about this land of mystery; but
in all that has come down to us we look in vain for anything but the
vaguest indications of what the “philosophers” of India systematically
thought.That the Brâhmans would at this time have permitted their sacred
books to be read by the Yavanas(Ionians, the general name for Greeks in
Indian records) is contrary to all we know of their history. The
Yavanas were Mlechchhas, outside the pale of the Ãryas, and all they
could glean of the jealously guarded Brahmâ-vidyâ or theosophy must have
depended solely upon outside observation. But the dominant religious
activity at this time in India was Buddhist, and it is to this protest
against the rigid distinctions of case and race made by Brâhmanical
pride, and to the startling novelty of an enthusiastic religious
propaganda among all classes and races in India, and outside India to
all nations, that we must look for the most direct contact of thought
between India and Greece.For instance, in the middle
of the third century B.C., we know from Asoka’s thirteenth edict, that
this Buddhist Emperor of India, the Constantine of the East, sent
missionaries to Antiochus II of Syria,Ptolemy II of Egypt, Antigonus
Gonatas of Macedonia, Magas of Cyrene, and Alexander II of Epirus.When,
in a land of such imperfect records, the evidence on the side of India
is so clear and indubitable,all the more extraordinary is it that we
have no direct testimony on our side of so great a missionaryactivity.
Although, then, merely because of the absence of all direct information
from Greek sources, it is very unsafe to generalize, nevertheless from
our general knowledge of the times it is not illegitimate to conclude
that no great public stir could have been made by these pioneers of the
Dharma in the West. In every probability these Buddhist Bhikshus
produced no effect on the rulers or on the people. But was their mission
entirely abortive; and did Buddhist missionary enterprise westwards
cease with them?The answer to this question, as it seems to us, is
hidden in the obscurity of the religious communities.We
cannot, however, go so far as to agree with those who would cut the
gordian knot by asserting dogmatically that the ascetic communities in
Syria and Egypt were founded by these Buddhist propagandists. Already
even in Greece itself were not only Pythagorean but even prior to them
Orphic communities, for even on this ground we believe that Pythagoras
rather developed what he found already existing, than that he
established something entirely new. And if they were found in
Greece,much more than is it reasonable to suppose that such communities
already existed in Syria, Arabia, and Egypt, whose populations were
given far more to religious exercises than the sceptical and laughter
loving Greeks.It is, however, credible that in such communities, if
anywhere, Buddhist propaganda would find an appreciative and attentive
audience; but even so it is remarkable that they have left no distinctly
direct trace of their influence. Nevertheless, both by the sea way and
by the great caravan route there was an ever open line of communication
between India and the Empire of the successors of Alexander; and it is
even permissible to speculate, that if we could recover a catalogue of
the great Alexandrian library, for instance, we should perchance find
that in it Indian MSS were to be found among the other rolls and
parchments of the scriptures of the nations.
Indeed,
there are phrases in the oldest treatises of the Trismegistic Hermetic
literature which can be so closely paralleled with phrases in the
Upanishads and in the Bhagavad Gîtâ, that one is almost tempted to
believe that the writers had some acquaintance with the general contents
of these Brâhmanical scriptures.The Trismegistic literature had its
genesis in Egypt, and its earliest deposit must be dated at least in the
first century A.D., if it cannot even be pushed back earlier. Even more
striking is the similarity between the lofty mystic metaphysic of the
Gnostic doctor Basilides, who lived at the end of the first and
beginning of the second century A.D., and Vedântic ideas. Moreover, both
the Hermetic and the Basilidean schools and their immediate
predecessors were devoted to a stern self-discipline and deep
philosophical study which would make them welcome eagerly any
philosopher or mystic student who might come from the far East.But even
so, we are not of those who by their own self-imposed limitations of
possibility are condemned to find some direct physical contact to
account for a similarity of ideas or even of phrasing. Granting, for
instance, that there is much resemblance between the teachings of the
Dharma of the Buddha and of the Gospel of the Christ, and that the same
spirit of love and gentleness pervades them both, still there is no
necessity to look for the reason of this resemblance to purely physical
transmission. And so for other schools and other teachers; like
conditions will produce similar phenomena; like effort and like
aspiration will produce similar ideas, similar experience, and similar
response.And this we believe to be the case in no general way, but that
it is all very definitely ordered from within by the servants of the
real guardians of things religious in this world.We
are, then, not compelled to lay so much stress on the question of
physical transmission, or to be seeking even to find proof of copying.
The human mind in its various degrees is much the same in all climes and
ages, and its inner experience has a common ground into which seed may
be sown, as it is tilled and cleared of weeds. The good seed comes all
from the same granary, and those who sow it pay no attention to the
man-made outer distinctions of race and creed.However difficult,
therefore, it may be to prove, from unquestionably historical
statements, any direct influence of Indian thought on the conceptions
and practices of some of these religious communities and philosophic
schools of the Græco-Roman Empire, and although in any particular case
similarity of ideas need not necessarily be assigned to direct physical
transmission, nevertheless the highest probability, if not the greatest
assurance, remains that even prior to the days of Apollonius there was
some private knowledge in Greece of the general ideas of the Vedânta and
Dharma; while in the case of Apollonius himself, even if we discount
nine-tenths of what is related of him, his one idea seems to have been
to spread abroad among the religious brotherhoods and institutions of
the Empire some portion of the wisdom which he brought back with him
from India.When, then, we find at the end of the first and during the
first half of the second century, among such mystic associations as the
Hermetic and Gnostic schools, ideas which strongly remind us of the
theosophy of the Upanishads or the reasoned ethics of the Suttas, we
have always to take into consideration not only the high probability of
Apollonius having visited such schools, but also the possibility of his
having discoursed at length therein on the Indian wisdom.Not only so,
but the memory of his influence may have lingered for long in such
circles, for do we not find Plotinus, the coryphæus of Neo-Platonism, as
it is called, so enamoured with what he had heard of the wisdom of
India at Alexandria, that in 242 he started off with the ill-starred
expedition of Gordian to the East in the hope of reaching that land of
philosophy? With the failure of the expedition and assassination of the
Emperor, however, he had to return, for ever disappointed of his hope.
It
is not, however, to be thought that Apollonius set out to make a
propaganda of Indian philosophy in the same way that the ordinary
missionary sets forth to preach his conception of the Gospel.By no
means; Apollonius seems to have endeavoured to help his hearers, whoever
they might be, in the way best suited to each of them.He did not begin
by telling them that what they believed was utterly false and
soul-destroying, and that their eternal welfare depended upon their
instantly adopting his own special scheme of salvation; he simply
endeavoured to purge and further explain what they already believed and
practised. That some strong power supported him in his ceaseless
activity, and in his almost world-wide task, is not so difficult of
belief; and it is a question of deep interest for those who strive to
peer through the mists of appearance,to speculate how that not only a
Paul but also an Apollonius was aided and directed in his task from
within.The day, however, has not yet dawned when it will be possible for
the general mind in the West to approach the question with such freedom
from prejudice, as to bear the thought that, seen from within, not only
Paul but also Apollonius may well have been a “disciple of the Lord” in
the true sense of the words; and that too although on the surface of
things their tasks seem in many ways so dissimilar, and even, to
theological preconceptions, entirely antagonistic.Fortunately,
however, even today there is an ever growing number of thinking people
who will not only be shocked by such a belief, but who will receive it
with joy as the herald of the dawning of a true sun of
righteousness,which will do more to illumine the manifold ways of the
religion of our common humanity than all the self-righteousness of any
particular body of exclusive religionists.It is, then, in this
atmosphere of charity and tolerance that we would ask the reader to
approach the consideration of Apollonius and his doings, and not only
the life and deeds of an Apollonius, but also of all those who have
striven to help their fellows the world over.
Apollonius of Tyana
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- Apollonius Of Tyana Introduction
- The Religious Associations and Communities of the ...
- India and Greece
- The Apollonius of Early Opinion
- Texts, Translations, and Literature
- The Biographer of Apollonius
- Apollonius of Tyana Early Life
- The Travels of Apollonius
- In the Shrines of the Temples and the Retreats of ...
- The Gymnosophists of Upper Egypt
- Apollonius and the Rulers of the Empire
- Apollonius The Prophet and Wonder-Worker
- Apollonius of Tyana Mode of Life
- Himself and His Circle
- Apollonius Of Tyana Sayings and Sermons
- From His Letters
- The Writings of Apollonius
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