Hinduism and Buddhism in Greek Philosophy

THE PARALLELS between Greek and Indian literature, mythology, and philosophy have been stressed often since the days of Sir William Jones, who drew an elaborate and forced comparison between the Hindu philosophical systems and their supposed counterparts in the Greek schools,1 and the days of Colebrooke, who also had some concise remarks to make on the subject.2 Recent scholars have restated some of the evidence, notably S. Radhakrishnan,3 and attention is being increasingly directed to the channels by which Indian influence reached Greece. The purpose of this paper is merely to cite a few of the parallels between the two literatures, and particularly between Hinduism and much of the thought of Plato, so as to indicate their affinity of type more than their identity of origin. Radhakrishnan, as his subject demands, is naturally more concerned with the religious aspects of the question. There seems to have been an early and common stock of primitive beliefs about the heavenly bodies and the face of Nature generally. example, in the Aitareya Brahmana there is a passage describing the nocturnal journey of the Sun back to its starting point,' which may contain in primitive form the legend which appears in Stesichorus5 and Mimnermus of the Sun's traveling over the ocean in a cup. Mimnermus says: For a delightful hollow bears him over the wave, a forged by the hand of Hephaistus, made of precious gold, winged, which bears him sleeping over the water's surface, hurrying him back from the land of the Hesperides to the land of the Ethiopians.' Here Athenaeus says that by couch Mimnermus meant cup

Buddhism · Buddhist philosophy · Hinduism · Theology · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Indian History and Philosophy · Philosophy · Religious studies

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