reek 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 elion me 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
Culvas[=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 re