________________
is based on data of cogent character. The history of the doctrine in India and Greece is simply this: V[=a]c, Speech or Word, appears in the Rig Veda (in the hymn cited above, p. 143) as an active female divine power, showing grace to mortals. In the Brahmanic period V[=a]c becomes more and more like the Greek Logos, and it may truthfuly be said that in this period "the Word was God." In Greece, on the other hand, the conception of Logos begins with Heraclitus, passes on to the Stoics; is adopted by Philo; becomes a prominent feature of Neo-Platonism; and reappears in the Gospel of St. John. It is certainly legitimate to suppose that Heraclitus might have received the idea indirectly, if not directly, from contemporary Eastern philosophers; but the fact that he did so remains unproved; nor is there any foundation for the assumption of borrowing other than the resemblance between the Grecian and Indic conceptions. But this resemblance is scarcely marked enough in essential features to prejudice one in favor of Weber's theory (amplified by Garbe), as it is not detailed enough to be striking, for V[=a]c is never more than one of many female abstractions.
With the exception of the one case to be mentioned immediately, we are forced to take the same position in regard to the similarity between other forms of early Greek and Hindu philosophy. Both Thales and Parmenides were indeed anticipated by Hindu sages, and the Eleatic school seems to be but a reflexion of the Upanishads. The doctrines of Anaximander and Heraclitus are, perhaps, not known first in Greece, but there is no evidence that they were not original to Greece, or that they were borrowed from India, however much older may be the parallel trains of thought on Indic soil.
Quite as decidedly, however, as we deny all appearance of borrowing on the part of the founders of other early Grecian schools, must we claim the thought of India to be the archetype of Pythagorean philosophy. After a careful review of the points of contact, and weighing as dispassionately as possible the historical evidence for and against the originality of Pythagoras, we are unable to come to any other conclusion than that the Greek philosopher took his whole system indirectly from India. His 'numbers,' indeed, are the S[=a]nkhya only in appearances.[28] But his theory of metempsychosis is the Indic sams[=ara, and Plato is full of Sankhyan thought, worked out by him but taken
