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ON THE ANCIENT 



of philosophy. Buddhism and other philosophical or 

 religious systems, originated in India, biassed to a great extent 

 the doctrines of early Christianity. This we perceive in the 

 doctrines of Emanation, in that of the Migration of the 

 soul and others. The gnostic Bardesanes of Edessa, a friend 

 of the Indian Ambassadors at the court of Antoninus Pius 

 (138-161) was well acquainted with Indian philosophy. The 

 same can be said of Clemens of Alexandria and Origines. 

 The heretic Mani was a great admirer of Buddhism which 

 proselytizing religion was centuries ago already known to 

 the Greeks. 



The Mahomedan invasion was the means of introducing the 

 sparks of Indian wisdom to the West, which began just then 

 to recover from the violent convulsions, into which it had 

 been thrown by the immigration of the barbarians. The 

 same Arabs who acted at that very period as disseminators 

 of Indian science and as instructors of the West, were trying 

 to destroy and to root out the people who were the represen- 

 tatives of that civilization. Indian Arithmetic together with 

 the Indian figures, which the Europeans call Arabian, as 

 they obtained them through the medium of Arabs, Indian 

 Astronomy, with its nomenclature, Indian Medicine, Indian 

 Philosophy, all these were eagerly studied by the Arabs, then 

 the most civilized and learned people of the world. But 

 though the Mussulmans were thus striving to cultivate these 

 Indian studies and to reintroduce them into the very West, 

 from whence that civilization had originally started, they 

 reduced India to that unhappy condition, in which it was 

 found when the first Europeans put their foot on this 

 country. 



It were untrue to contend that the immediate result of 

 European intervention could be considered to have been 

 beneficial to India. The first and most important reason 

 which directed the eyes of the Western people to this country 



