We have sketched the sphere of influence exerted by the West upon India, and found it on the whole inconsiderable. The Indic religions till the twelfth century assimilated what little they drew from foreign sources, and stand before the world as a peculiar growth, native to the soil in all their essential characteristics.[22]
But to the other side of India's contact with the West we have as yet barely alluded. India has given as she has received. What influence has she had upon Western cults and beliefs? The worship that substituted idols for ideal forms we have traced back to the end of the Vedic period. It is not, however, a mark of early Brahmanism, nor is it a pronounced feature before the age of Buddhism. But in Buddha's time, or soon after, flourished the worship of images, and with it the respect for relics. The latter feature of the new religion made necessary shrines to keep the holy objects, sacred museums, which soon became the formal st[=u]pas, above-ground and under-ground, and these made the first temples of India.[23] Fully developed, they became the great religious buildings affected by Buddhism, with their idol service, prostrations, repetitions of prayers, dim religious light (lamp-service), offerings of flowers, fruits, etc. From this source may have been derived many of the details in the Roman Catholic worship, which appears to have taken from Buddhism the rosary, originally a mark of the Çivaite.[24] By what is, to say the least, an extraordinary coincidence, each of these churches is conspicuous for its use of holy water, choirs, sacred pictures, tonsure, vestments, the bell in religious service, the orders of nuns, monks, and the vows of the monastic system.[25] The most curious loan made by the Roman and Greek churches is, however, the quasi-worship of Gotama Buddha himself (in so far as a Romanist worships his saints), for, under cover of the Barlaam and Josaphat story, Buddha has found a niche as a saint in the row of canonized Catholic worthies, and has his saint-day in the calendar of the Greek and Roman churches.[26] But it is not his mother who is the Virgin of Lamaism, which has made of Buddha the Supreme God.
Besides external phases of the religious cult, India has given to the West a certain class of literary works and certain philosophical ideas. The former consists, of course, in the fable-literature, which spread from India to Eastern Europe (Babrius) and has preserved in many tales of to-day nothing more than Buddhistic Birth-stories or other Indic tales (the Pa[.n]catantra) and legends.[27] Of these we can make only passing mention here, to turn at once to the more important question of philosophical and religious borrowing.
It has been claimed, as we have incidentally stated, that the Logos doctrine was imported from India. Were this so, it would, indeed, be a fact of great historical importance, but, interesting as would be such a loan, we cannot see that the suggestion is based on data of cogent character. The history of the doctrine in India and Greece is simply this: V[=a]c, Speech or Word, appears in the Rig Veda (in the hymn cited above, p. 143) as an active female divine power, showing grace to mortals. In the Brahmanic period V[=a]c becomes more and more like the Greek Logos, and it may truthfuly be said that in this period "the Word was God." In Greece, on the other hand, the conception of Logos begins with Heraclitus, passes on to the Stoics; is adopted by Philo; becomes a prominent feature of Neo-Platonism; and reappears in the Gospel of St. John. It is certainly legitimate to suppose that Heraclitus might have received the idea indirectly, if not directly, from contemporary Eastern philosophers; but the fact that he did so remains unproved; nor is there any foundation for the assumption of borrowing other than the resemblance between the Grecian and Indic conceptions. But this resemblance is scarcely marked enough in essential features to prejudice one in favor of Weber's theory (amplified by Garbe), as it is not detailed enough to be striking, for V[=a]c is never more than one of many female abstractions.
With the exception of the one case to be mentioned immediately, we are forced to take the same position in regard to the similarity between other forms of early Greek and Hindu philosophy. Both Thales and Parmenides were indeed anticipated by Hindu sages, and the Eleatic school seems to be but a reflexion of the Upanishads. The doctrines of Anaximander and Heraclitus are, perhaps, not known first in Greece, but there is no evidence that they were not original to Greece, or that they were borrowed from India, however much older may be the parallel trains of thought on Indic soil.
Quite as decidedly, however, as we deny all appearance of borrowing on the part of the founders of other early Grecian schools, must we claim the thought of India to be the archetype of Pythagorean philosophy. After a careful review of the points of contact, and weighing as dispassionately as possible the historical evidence for and against the originality of Pythagoras, we are unable to come to any other conclusion than that the Greek philosopher took his whole system indirectly from India. His 'numbers,' indeed, are the S[=a]nkhya only in appearances.[28] But his theory of metempsychosis is the Indic sams[=a]ra, and Plato is full of Sankhyan thought, worked out by him but taken from Pythagoras. Before the sixth century B.C. all the religious-philosophical ideas of Pythagoras are current in India (L. von Schroeder, Pythagoras). If there were but one or two of these cases, they might be set aside as accidental coincidences, but such coincidences are too numerous to be the result of chance. Even in details the transmigration theory of Pythagoras harmonizes with that of India. Further (after Schroeder und Garbe) may be mentioned the curious prohibition against eating beans; the Hesiodic-Pythagorean [Greek: pros êlion mê omichein]; the vow of silence, like that taken by the Hindu muni; the doctrine of five elements (aether as fifth); above all, the so-called Pythagorean Theorem, developed in the mathematical Çulvas[=u]tras[29] of India; the irrrational number [square root symbol]2; then the whole character of the religious-philosophical fraternity, which is exactly analogous to the Indic orders of the time; and finally the mystic speculation, which is peculiar to the Pythagorean school, and bears a striking resemblance to the fantastical notions affected by the authors of the Br[=a]hmana.[30] Greek legend is full of the Samian's travels to Egypt, Chaldaea, Phoenicia, and India. The fire beneath this smoke is hidden. One knows not how much to believe of such tales. But they only strengthen the inference, drawn from 'the Pythagorean school,' the man's work itself, that the mysticism and numbers with which he is surrounded are taken from that system of numbers and from that mysticism which are so astonishingly like his own. All subsequent philosophies borrowed from Pythagoreanism, and in so far has India helped to form the mind of Europe.[31]
But we cannot omit a yet more important religious influence exerted by India upon the West. As is well known, Neo-Platonism and Christian Gnosticism owe much to India. The Gnostic ideas in regard to a plurality of heavens and spiritual worlds go back directly to Hindu sources. Soul and light are one in the S[=a]nkhya system before they become so in Greece, and when they appear united in Greece it is by means of the thought which is borrowed from India. The famous 'three qualities' of the S[=a]nkhya reappear as the Gnostic 'three classes,' [Greek: pneumagikoi], [Greek: psuchikoi], [Greek: ulikoi].[32] In regard to Neo-Platonism, Garbe says: "The views of Plotinus are in perfect agreement with those of the S[=a]nkhya system."[33] Porphyry, the disciple of Plotinus, has the Yoga doctrine of immediate perception of truth leading to union with the deity. As is well known and undisputed, this Porphyry copies directly from the treatise of Bardesanes, which contains an account of the Brahmatis;[34] while in many instances he simply repeats the tenets of the S[=a]nkhya philosophy. The means of communication may have been Alexandria, where met the trades of the East and West. Perhaps the philosophers of India as well as of Greece were brought together there. But, if the East and West had a mutual meeting-ground, the ideas common to both occupy no common place in their respective homes. In Greece, Pythagoreanism and Gnosticism are strange, and are felt as such by the natives. In India these traits are founded on ancient beliefs, long current, universal, nationally recognized. The question of giver and receiver, then, admitting the identity of thought, can scarcely be raised. If two men meet, one a Methodist and one a Baptist, and after they have conversed the Methodist be found totally immersed, he will not be credited with having invented independently his new mode of baptism.
India's influence as an intellectual factor in modern European thought has thus far been of the slightest. Her modern deism is borrowed, and her pantheism is not scientific. Sanskrit scholars are rather fond of citing the pathetic words of Schopenhauer, who, speaking of the Upanishads, says that the study of these works "has been the solace of my life; it will be the solace of my death"; but Schopenbauer knew the Upanishads only in a very free form of translation, and it can scarcely have been the loose philosophy so much as the elevated spirit of these works that solaced the unphilosophical bitterness of his life. This general impression will doubtless continue to be felt by all that study the best works of Brahmanism. The sincerity, the fearless search of the Indic sages for truth, their loftiness of thinking, all these will affect the religious student of every clime and age, though the fancied result of their thinking may pass without effect over a modern mind. For a philosophy that must be orthodox can never be definitive. But, if one turn from the orthodox completed systems to the tentative beginnings of the Ved[=a]nta (in the Upanishads), he finds as the basis of this earlier speculation only an a priori meta-physical assumption.[35]
Apart from philosophical influence there is at present more or less interest in Europe and America in Indic superstition and spiritualism, and half-educated people will doubtless be influenced for some time to come by Mah[=a]tmaism and Yogism, just as they are moved by native séance-spirits and mesmerism. Blavatskyism (which represents no phase of Buddhism) will always find disciples among the ignorant classes, especially in an agnostic or atheistic environment, so that one should attribute the mental attitude of such minds to their lack of culture rather than to India; for if Mah[=a]tmaism had not been discovered, they would still profess it under another name. Buddhism, too, apart from Hartmann, may be said to have some influence on popular thought, yet it is a very unreal Buddhism, which amounts only to the adoption of an altruistic creed. But we know of none among the many that profess themselves 'Buddhists' who has really adopted Buddhistic principles, and but few who even understand those principles. A bar to the adoption of Buddhism lies in the implicit necessity of renunciation for all who would become perfected, and in the explicit doctrine of karma in its native form. The true Buddhist is not satisfied to be a third-class Buddhist, that is, simply a man that seeks to avoid lust, anger, and ignorance. He will become a second-class Buddhist and renounce the world, give up all family ties and earthly affections, and enter the Order. But he will not do this, thinking that he is thereby to become perfect. For, to be a first-class Buddhist, he must get wisdom. He must believe in the impermanence of everything, and in the awful continuation of his own karma as a resultant group, which, as such, will continue to exist if, to the purity and peace of the lower classes of Buddhists, he fail to add in his own case the wisdom that understands the truth of this karma doctrine.[36] Now no modern mind will believe this hypothesis of karma and no modern will even enter the Order. Nevertheless, while one may not become a true Buddhist in the native sense, it is possible to be a Buddhist in a higher sense, and in its new form this is a religion that will doubtless attract many Occidentals, though it is almost too chaste to win adherents where marriage is not regarded as detrimental to high thinking. But if one substitute for the Buddhistic karma the karma of to-day, he may well believe that his acts are to have effect hereafter, not as a complex but as individual factors in determining the goodness of his descendants and indirectly of his environment. Then there remains the attainment of purity, kindness,[37] and wisdom, which last may be interpreted, in accordance with the spirit of the Master, as seeing things in their true relations, and the abandonment of whatever prevents such attainment, namely, of lust, anger, and ignorance. But to be a true Buddhist one must renounce, as lust, all desire of evil, of future life, which brings evil; and must live without other hope than that of extinguishing all desire and passion, believing that in so doing he will at death be annihilated, that is, that he will have caused his acts to cease to work for good or ill, and that, since being without a soul he exists only in his acts, he will in their cessation also cease to be.
At least one thing may be learned from Buddhism. It is possible to be religious without being devout. True Buddhism is the only religion which, discarding all animism, consists in character and wisdom. But neither in sacrificial works, nor in kindness alone, nor in wisdom alone, lies the highest. One must renounce all selfish desires and live to build up a character of which the signs are purity, love for all, and that courageous wisdom which is calm insight into truth. The Buddhist worked out his own salvation without fear or trembling. To these characteristics may be added that tolerance and freedom of thought which are so dissimilar to the traits of many other religions.