Note 46 — V THE BIRTH OF THE MESSIAH. THE BAPTISM

For the rest the supposition of Indian influences in the Gospel story is not by any means an improbable one. It is pure theological prejudice, resting upon a complete ignorance of the conditions of national intercourse in ancient times, when it is denied, as, for example, by Clemen in his “Religionsgeschichtlichen Erklärung des Neuen Testaments” (1909), that the Gospels were influenced by Indian ideas, or when only a dependence the other way about is allowed;46 and this although Buddha left to his disciples, as one of the highest precepts, the practice of missionary activity, and although as early as 400 B.C. mention is made in Indian sources of Buddhist missionaries in Bactria. Two hundred years later we read of Buddhist monasteries in Persia. Indeed, in the last century before the Christian era the Buddhist mission in Persia had made such progress that Alexander Polyhistor actually speaks of a period during which Buddhism flourished in that country, and bears witness to the spread of the Mendicant Orders in the western parts of Persia. Buddhism also reached Syria and Egypt at that time with the trade caravans; as we have to suppose a frequent exchange of wares and ideas between India and the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean, especially after the campaigns of Alexander. Communication took place, not only overland by way of Persia, but by sea as well. Indian thought made advances in the Near East, where Alexandria, the London and Antwerp of antiquity, and a headquarters of Jewish syncretism, favoured the exchange of ideas. With the rediscovery of the South-west Monsoon at the beginning of the first century after Christ the intercourse by sea between India and the Western world assumed still greater dimensions. Thus Pliny speaks of great trading fleets setting out annually for India and of numerous Indian merchants who had their fixed abode in Alexandria. Indian embassies came to Rome as early as the reign of Augustus. The renown of Indian piety caused the author of the Peregrinus Proteus to choose the Indian Calanus as an example of holiness. Indeed, so lively was the Western world’s interest in the intellectual life of India, that the library at Alexandria, as early as the time of the geographer Eratosthenes under Ptolemy Euergetes (246 B.C.), was administered with special regard to Indian studies. The monastic organisation of the Essenes in Palestine also very probably points to Buddhist influence. Again, although the Rigveda, which contains the groundwork of all Indian religions, may have been unknown in Nearer Asia, yet the Fire Worship of the Mazda religion at any rate reaches back to the time before the division between the Indian and Persian Aryans. Certain fundamental ideas, therefore, of the Fire Religion may through Persian influences on Nearer Asia have been known to the surrounding peoples.47