Experts on the whole agree that the most ancient Indian architecture which has been preserved—­that of the Maurya dynasty—­has no known antecedents in India, but both in structure (especially the pillars) and in decoration is reminiscent of Persepolis, just as Asoka’s habit of lecturing his subjects in stone sermons and the very turns of his phrases recall the inscriptions of Darius.[1148] And though the king’s creed is in some respects—­such as his tenderness for animal life—­thoroughly Indian, yet this cannot be said of his style and choice of themes as a whole.  His marked avoidance of theology and philosophy, his insistence on ethical principles such as truth, and his frank argument that men should do good in order that they may fare happily in the next world, suggest that he may have become familiar with the simple and practical Zoroastrian outlook,[1149] perhaps when he was viceroy of Taxila in his youth.  But still he shows no trace of theism or dualism:  morality is his one concern, but it means for him doing good rather than suppressing evil.

After the death of Asoka his Empire broke up and races who were Iranian in culture, if not always in blood, advanced at its expense.  Dependencies of the Persian or Parthian empire extended into India or like the Satrapies of Mathura and Saurashtra lay wholly within it.  The mixed civilization which the Kushans brought with them included Zoroastrianism, as is shown by the coins of Kanishka, and late Kushan coins indicate that Sassanian influence had become very strong in northern India when the dynasty collapsed in the third century A.D.

I see no reason to suppose that Gotama himself was influenced by Iranian thought.  His fundamental ideas, his view of life and his scheme of salvation are truly Hindu and not Iranian.  But if the childhood of Buddhism was Indian, it grew to adolescence in a motley bazaar where Persians and their ways were familiar.  Though the Buddhism exported to Ceylon escaped this phase, not merely Mahayanism but schools like the Sarvastivadins must have passed through it.  The share of Zoroastrianism must not be exaggerated.  The metaphysical and ritualistic tendencies of Indian Buddhism are purely Hindu, and if its free use of images was due to any foreign stimulus, that stimulus was perhaps Hellenistic.  But the altruistic morality of Mahayanism, though not borrowed from Zoroastrianism, marks a change and this change may well have occurred among races accustomed to the preaching of active charity and dissatisfied with the ideals of self-training and lonely perfection.  And Zoroastrian influence is I think indubitable in the figures of the great Bodhisattvas, even Maitreya,[1150] and above all in Amitabha and his paradise.  These personalities have been adroitly fitted into Indian theology but they have no Indian lineage and, in spite of all explanations, Amitabha and the salvation which he offers remain in strange contradiction with the teaching of Gotama.