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

Extract

If with all these openings there had been no exchange whatever between East and West in their literary productions, it would have been strange, to say no more; and though, as I repeat, we have no tangible evidence of anything like translations, whether oriental or occidental, at that time …

Those words come from one of Max Müller'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. Müller thought a translation of a literary work from Greek or Latin to Sanskrit or Pāli 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 Müller 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.