Not only was monasticism adopted by Christianity but many practices common to Indian and to Christian worship obtained the approval of the Church at about the same time.  Some of these, such as incense and the tonsure, may have been legacies from the Jewish and Egyptian priesthoods.  Many coincidences also are due to the fact that both Buddhism and Christianity, while abolishing animal sacrifices, were ready to sanction old religious customs:  both countenanced the performance before an image or altar of a ritual including incense, flowers, lights and singing.  This recognition of old and widespread rites goes far to explain the extraordinary similarity of Buddhist services in Tibet and Japan (both of which derived their ritual ultimately from India) to Roman Catholic ceremonial.  Yet when all allowance is made for similar causes and coincidences, it is hard to believe that a collection of such practices as clerical celibacy, confession, the veneration of relics, the use of the rosary and bells can have originated independently in both religions.  The difficulty no doubt is to point out any occasion in the third and fourth centuries A.D. when oriental Christians other than casual travellers had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with Buddhist institutions.  But the number of resemblances remains remarkable and some of them—­such as clerical celibacy, relics, and confession—­are old institutions in Buddhism but appear to have no parallels in Jewish, Syrian, or Egyptian antiquity.  Up to a certain point, it is a sound principle not to admit that resemblances prove borrowing, unless it can be shown that there was contact between two nations, but it is also certain that all record of such contact may disappear.  For instance, it is indisputable that Hindu civilization was introduced into Camboja, but there is hardly any evidence as to how or when Hindu colonists arrived there, and none whatever as to how or when they left India.

It is in Christian or quasi-Christian heresies—­that is, the sects which were rejected by the majority—­that Indian influence is plainest.  This is natural, for if there is one thing obvious in the history of religion it is that Indian speculation and the Indian view of life were not congenial to the people of Europe and western Asia.  But some spirits, from the time of Pythagoras onwards, had a greater affinity for oriental ways of thinking, and such sympathy was specially common among the Gnostics.  Gnosticism consisted in the combination of Christianity with the already mixed religion which prevailed in Alexandria, Antioch and other centres, and which was an uncertain and varying compound of Judaism, Hellenistic thought and the ideas of oriental countries such as Egypt, Persia and Babylonia.  Its fundamental idea, the knowledge of God or Gnosis, is clearly similar to the Jnanakanda of the Hindus,[1133] but the emphasis laid on dualism and redemption is not Indian and the resemblances suggest little more than that hints may