rom India, frankincense from Persia, and silks from China, being more in
demand than the exports from the Mediterranean lands, the balance of trade
was against the West, and thus Roman coin found its way eastward. In 1898,
for example, a number of Roman coins dating from 114 B.C. to Hadrian's time
were found at Pakl[=i], a part of the Haz[=a]ra district, sixteen miles
north of Abbott[=a]b[=a]d,[317] and numerous similar discoveries have been
made from time to time.

{80}

Augustus speaks of envoys received by him from India, a thing never before
known,[318] and it is not improbable that he also received an embassy from
China.[319] Suetonius (first century A.D.) speaks in his history of these
relations,[320] as do several of his contemporaries,[321] and Vergil[322]
tells of Augustus doing battle in Persia. In Pliny's time the trade of the
Roman Empire with Asia amounted to a million and a quarter dollars a year,
a sum far greater relatively then than now,[323] while by the time of
Constantine Europe was in direct communication with the Far East.[324]

In view of these relations it is not beyond the range of possibility that
proof may sometime come to light to show that the Greeks and Romans knew
something of the {81} number system of India, as several writers have
maintained.[325]

Returning to the East, there are many evidences of the spread of knowledge
in and about India itself. In the third century B.C. Buddhism began to be a
connecting medium of thought. It had already permeated the Himalaya
territory, had reached eastern Turkestan, and had probably gone thence to
China. Some centuries later (in 62 A.D.) the Chinese emperor sent an
ambassador to India, and in 67 A.D. a Buddhist monk was invited to
China.[326] Then, too, in India itself A['s]oka, whose name has already
been mentioned in this work, extended the boundaries of his domains even
into Afghanistan, so that it was entirely possible for the numerals of the
Punjab to have worked their way north even at that early date.[327]

Furthermore, the influence of Persia must not be forgotten in considering
this transmission of knowledge. In the fifth century the Persian medical
school at Jondi-Sapur admitted both the Hindu and the Greek doctrines, and
Firdus[=i] tells us that during the brilliant reign of {82} Khosr[=u]
I,[328] the golden age of Pahlav[=i] literature, the Hindu game of chess
was introduced into Persia, at a time when wars with the Greeks were
bring