•ORIENTAL SCHOLARSHIP DURING THE PRESENT CENTURY. 699 



at a third period in the history of aiiti<iuity, which may truly be 

 called the Alexandrian or Alexandrinian period, we need not wonder 

 that the military roads which liave been opened from the Indus to the 

 ]^.nplirates and to the jVIediterranean were soon trodden by peaceful 

 travellers also, carrying both industrial and intellectual merchandise 

 from East to West. From Kashmir, Buddhist missionaries seem to have 

 penetrated into Hellenised Bactri. Alexander Polyhistor, who wrote 

 between 80 and 60 b. C. attests their presence there under the name of 

 Samanioi., which stands for the Pali name Samana, a Buddhist friar. 

 Their presence in Bactria is attested somewhat later, at the beginning 

 of the third century A, D., by Clement of Alexandria, Avho speaks of 

 the Samanaioi as powerful philosophers among the Bactrians, and 

 again by Eusebius, at the beginning of the fourth century, who writes 

 that among the Indians and Bactrians there are many thousands of 

 Brahmans. With regard to Bactria this can refer to Buddhists only, 

 for the old orthodox Brahmans did not leave their country, and 

 Brahman has always been retained by the Buddhists as a title of honour 

 for themselves. Early traces of the Buddhist religion have been dis- 

 covered likewise in the countries north of Bactria, in Tukhara, and in 

 the towns of Khoteu, Yarkand, and Kashyar. M. Darmesteter has 

 shown that in the second century li. c. Buddhist missionaries were 

 hard at Avork in the western part of Persia, and it is a signiticant fact 

 that tlie name of Gantama, the founder of Buddhism, occurs in the 

 Avesta, in the Fravardin Yasht.* This shows how close!}' the most 

 distant parts of the world had been brought together by the genius of 

 Alexander the Great, and by the genius of that still greater conqueror, 

 Gautama Sfdcyamuni. Here again, it is mainly due to the labors of 

 Oriental scholars that so many traces of the work done by Alexander 

 and his successors Iiave been rediscovered. With Alexander we have 

 entered on a new period in the history of the world, a period marked 

 by the first strong reaction of the West against the East, inaugurated 

 in the fifth century B. C. hy the victories of Marathon, Thermopyht;, 

 and Salamis, which were almost contemporary with the first victories 

 of Buddha. But while the victories of Miltiades, Leonidas, and Alex- 

 ander the Great belong to history only, Buddha, the Gina or Victor, as 

 he is called, is still the ruler of the majority of mankind. - - - 



I have so far tried to show what Oriental scholarship has done for us 

 in helping us to a right ai:)preciation of the historical develo])nient of 

 the human race, beginning on the Asiatic continent and reaching its 

 highest consunlmation on this small Asiatic peninsula of ours, which 

 we call Europe, nay, on this Aery spot where we are now assembled, 

 which has truly been called the center of the whole world. It is due 

 to Oriental scholarship) that the gray twilight of ancient history has 

 been illuminated as if by the rays of an unsuspected sunrise. We see 



* "Sacred Books of the East;" vol. xxiii, p. 184. 



