CHAPTER LVI

INDIAN INFLUENCE IN THE WESTERN WORLD

The influence of Indian religion on Christianity is part of the wider question of its influence on the west generally.  It is clear that from 200 B.C. until 300 A.D. oriental religion played a considerable part in the countries round the Mediterranean.  The worship of the Magna Mater was known in Rome by 200 B.C. and that of Isis and Serapis in the time of Sulla.  In the early centuries of the Christian era the cultus of Mithra prevailed not only in Rome but in most parts of Europe where there were Roman legions, even in Britain.  These religions may be appropriately labelled with the vague word oriental, for they are not so much the special creeds of Egypt and Persia transplanted into Roman soil as fragments, combinations and adaptations of the most various eastern beliefs.  They differed from the forms of worship indigenous to Greece and Italy in being personal, not national:  they were often emotional and professed to reveal the nature and destinies of the soul.  If we ask whether there are any definitely Indian elements in all this orientalism, the answer must be that there is no clear case of direct borrowing, nothing Indian analogous to the migrations of Isis and Mithra.  If Indian thought had any influence on the Mediterranean it was not immediate, but through Persia, Babylonia and Egypt.  But it is possible that the doctrine of metempsychosis and the ideal of the ascetic life are echoes of India.  Though the former is found in an incomplete shape among savages in many parts of the world, there is no indication that it was indigenous in Egypt, Syria, Babylonia, Asia Minor, Greece or Italy.  It crops up now and again as a tenet held by philosophers or communities of cosmopolitan tastes such as the Orphic Societies, but usually in circumstances which suggest a foreign origin.  It is said, however, to have formed part of the doctrines taught by the Druids in Gaul.  Similarly though occasional fasts and other mortifications may have been usual in the worship of various deities and though the rigorous Spartan discipline was a sort of military asceticism, still the idea that the religious life consists in suppressing the passions, which plays such a large part in Christian monasticism, can be traced not to any Jewish or European institution but to Egypt.  Although monasticism spread quickly thence to Syria, it is admitted that the first Christian hermits and monasteries were Egyptian and there is some evidence for the existence there of pagan hermits.[1102] Egypt was a most religious country, but it does not appear that asceticism, celibacy or meditation formed part of its older religious life, and their appearance in Hellenistic times may be due to a wave of Asiatic influence starting originally from India.