History confirms Açoka's testimony and declares him to have been no less successful in sowing the seeds of medicinal plants than those of the "saving doctrine." Buddhism enrolled numerous converts and zealous apostles all over the civilised world, and in Ceylon, Egypt, Bactria, and Persia, the yellow flag floated aloft from the roofs of the monasteries of Bhikshus.[161] But its influence, in other ways equally powerful while considerably more subtle, has oftentimes escaped the vigilance of the historian. None of the great religions of ancient or modern times succeeded in escaping its contact, or failed to be improved by its spirit. In the second century B.C. there were flourishing Buddhist communities in inhospitable Bactria, where they maintained a firm footing for nearly a thousand years. A Greek,[162] who wrote about the year 80 B.C., and a Chinese pilgrim,[163] who passed through the land in the beginning of the seventh century A.D., allude to them as important elements of the population of the country in their respective ages, and the Buddhist monastery founded in Balkh, the capital of Bactria, in the second century B.C., was become a famous pilgrimage in the days of Hiuen Thsang. The Zoroastrian priests of Erân hated and feared the followers of the strange creed while silently adopting and unconsciously propagating many of its institutions. Several of the Eranian kings incurred the censure involved in the nickname of "idolaters" in consequence of the favour they extended to the preachers of Nirvana.[164] No religion of antiquity was less favourable to a life of passive contemplation than Zoroastrianism, which defined life as a continuous struggle, and considered virtue as a successful battle with the powers of darkness; and yet little by little Zoroastrian monasteries sprang up by the side of the Fire Temples, and offered a quiet refuge from the turmoil of the world to the pious worshippers of Ahura Mazda.[165]
So saturated were the Eranian populations with the spirit of Buddha—antagonistic though it was to their own—that the two great Eranian sects,[166] one of which bade fair to become a universal religion,[167] were little else than adaptations of the creed of the Buddha to the needs of a different time and people. Mânî, for instance, prohibited marriage, which was one of the principal duties and holiest acts of a true servant of Ahura Mazda; forbade the killing of animals which, in the case of ants, serpents, gnats, &c., was enjoined by the priests of Zoroaster, and discouraged agriculture lest plants should be destroyed in the process. And the two classes of perfect and imperfect disciples in Mânî's community were copied from those of Buddhism, which divides all believers into two categories: those who sincerely and fervently seek to attain to Nirvana and are termed Bhikshus, and the Upasakas or laymen who, while holding on to life, practise such virtues as are compatible with this unholy desire.
The Jewish religion, in certain of its phases, reveals in like manner unmistakable traces of the influence of the religion of the Buddha. To take but one instance, the Essenians in Judaea, near the Dead Sea and the Therapeutes in Egypt, practised continence, eschewed all bloody sacrifices, encouraged celibacy, and extreme abstemiousness in eating and drinking. They formed themselves into communities, and lived, after the manner of Buddhist Bhikshus, in monasteries. During the life of Jesus, the Essenians, who lived mostly in cloistered retirement on the shores of the Dead Sea, played no historic role; but after the destruction of Jerusalem, they embraced Christianity in a body, and originated the ascetic movement of the Ebionites, which did not finally subside until it had deposited the germs of monasticism in the Church of Christ.
Koheleth, who lived either in Jerusalem or in Alexandria—more probably in the latter city—about the year 205 B.C., had exceptional opportunities for becoming acquainted with the tenets and precepts of the religion of Buddha. He was evidently a man of an inquiring mind, with a pronounced taste for philosophical speculation; and the social and political conditions of his day were such that a person even of a very incurious disposition would be likely to be brought face to face with the sensational doctrine which was responsible for such amazing innovations as hospitals for men and for animals. Alexandria, the museum and library of which had already been founded, was one of the principal strongholds of non-Indian Buddhists. It is mentioned in the Milindapanho, a Pali work which deals with events that took place in the second century B.C.;[168] it is expressly included by Açoka in the list of cities into which he introduced a knowledge of the "path of duty," and so devoted were its inhabitants to the creed of Sakhya Mouni,[169] that thirty years after Augustine had died at Hippo, thirty thousand Bhikshus set out from Alasadda[170] to annex new countries to the realm of truth.
Footnotes:
[140] Cf. the epilogue (xii. 9-14), for example, which is one of the most timid and shuffling apologies ever penned.
[141] i. 9.
[142] i. 14.
[143] Malachi iii. 14.
[144] Professor Cheyne remarks: "To me, Koheleth is not a theist in any vital sense in his philosophic meditations."—"Job and Solomon," p. 250.