RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT INDIA 473 



the huge collection of material with which ethnology must work, 

 and I believe that that science rightly appreciates this fact. But on 

 the whole, he plays the role of the recipient. For some time to come 

 he will make many a blunder in sifting and working over that which 

 he appropriates to himself. Where such distant vistas have been 

 opened up to research, as in this case, one's vision must necessarily 

 often become distorted. This does no harm. He is faint-hearted 

 who does not have faith that our very mistakes will bring us nearer 

 the truth. 



IV 



Let us now turn from the prehistoric relations which students of 

 Indian religions are engaged in interpreting to historic times. The 

 wanderings of the Aryans have come to an end. The old tribal rela- 

 tions have been broken up. Boundaries have been made that frus- 

 trate every attempt to treat the history of ancient India as merging 

 into a general history of antiquity. Still such boundaries do not 

 exclude the existence of some intercourse at the frontier. Even over 

 greater distances there was for centuries, by land and by water, a 

 never wholly interrupted intercourse between India and the outer 

 world. What religious possessions has this intercourse borne hither 

 and thither? 



When one simply expresses such a question, it suggests the varied 

 relations in which Indology must stand to all allied branches of scien- 

 tific inquiry. No single individual can grasp all this. It is not the re- 

 sult of any undervaluation of the investigations in question, but only 

 the feeling of my own insufficiency, if I do not call to mind many 

 things. What problems does the quick and brilliant development of 

 Assyriology set for us? What questions arise from the estimation 

 of the mighty influences of Brahmanism, and particularly Buddhism 

 upon Central Asia, farther India, and China? I cannot trace these 

 tendencies; I shall only speak of a few problems that deal with a world 

 closer at hand. 



Both Indologists and students of Greek philosophy we find exam- 

 ining the question whether the teachings of Pythagoras show traces 

 of Indian influence, as a daring and ably defended recent hypothesis 

 maintains, and whether, many centuries later, Indian sages and thau- 

 maturgs likewise had a share in the varied and confused influences 

 of Oriental mysticism that are found in the writings of the neo-Pla- 

 tonists. In another field there is a problem that may arouse us still 

 more: How can we account for the similarities between the narratives 

 and speeches of the four Gospels and those of the Buddhists? The 

 story of Jesus in the temple, the encomium of Simeon are they con- 

 structed from the story of the wise old man Asita, who approaches 



