When Socrates met the Buddha: Greek and Indian Dialectic in Hellenistic Bactria and India

摘要

Those words come from one of Max Miiller's last essays 'Coincidences', in which he listed the many points of contact between East and West in the period after Alexander the Great's invasion of Bactria and the Indus valley. Miiller thought a translation of a literary work from Greek or Latin to Sanskrit or Pali or vice versa might be the key to resolving the numerous similarities he had found in the myths of East and West, particularly in the sacred texts of Buddhism and Christianity. In fact, according to his son, the collection of these parallels was the project on which Miiller was working at his death. Had the father of the Sacred Books of the East lived another half century, he would have had his translation, but, I believe, he would have been disappointed with the profit accrued so far from the discovery.