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( 69 ) food. It is certain that Orphic doctrines contain much that seems to have its first source in Egypt and it was chiefly through Crete that Egypt influenced Greece. Orpheus was torn to piecesls for reforms in the Olympian religion. Orphism was the Greek spiritual revivalism as Buddhism was the Bhāratīya spiritual revivalism.
The belief of Orphism in Soul, Effortivism, Transmigration and final Attainment are not only peculiarly Egyptian but, significantly enough, strikingly similar to the Bhāratiyan beliefs, and also with the Sumerian beliefs. The same Paņis, who took these beliefs to Sumer and Egypt, took them to West Asia and the Mediterranean. If these beliefs went to Crete via Egypt, they must have gone during the period of old republic in the beginning of the third millennium B. C.
The economic and social conditions of the Ægean and Greece is peculiarly similar to that of the rest of the Śramanic region. The clective republican political institutions are also of the same pattern. The Basic Way confirms to the basic way of the region. But it had its own individuality. Minoanisin stands by itself in history. Hence it may be rightly called an insular offshoot of an extensive Śramanic society.
References 1. V. Gordon Childe ; The Dawn of European Civilization ; 1950;
P. 20. 2. Herodotus ; Op. cit. ; Page 13. 3. V. Gordon Childe; Op. Cit. ; Pages 22, 27. 4. N. G. L. Hammond ; A Hisiory of Greece ; 1959 ; Pages 27, 30, 39. 5. Lewis H. Morgan; Ancient Society ; 1958; Pages 11, 231. 6. (1) V. Gordon Childe; Op. Cit. ; Pages 22, 28.
(2) S. Moscati ; Op. cit.; Pages 164, 297.
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