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from Pythagoras. Before the sixth century B.C. all the religious-philosophical ideas of Pythagoras are current in India (L. von Schroeder, Pythagoras). If there were but one or two of these cases, they might be set aside as accidental coincidences, but such coincidences are too numerous to be the result of chance. Even in details the transmigration theory of Pythagoras harmonizes with that of India. Further (after Schroeder und Garbe) may be mentioned the curious prohibition against eating beans; the Hesiodic-Pythagorean [Greek: pros élion mê omichein); the vow of silence, like that taken by the Hindu muni, the doctrine of five elements (aether as fifth); above all, the so-called Pythagorean Theorem, developed in the mathematical Çulvas[=u]tras[29] of India; the irrrational number (square root symbol]2; then the whole character of the religious-philosophical fraternity, which is exactly analogous to the Indic orders of the time; and finally the mystic speculation, which is peculiar to the Pythagorean school, and bears a striking resemblance to the fantastical notions affected by the authors of the Br[ra]hmana.[30] Greek legend is full of the Samian's travels to Egypt, Chaldaea, Phoenicia, and India. The fire beneath this smoke is hidden. One knows not how much to believe of such tales. But they only strengthen the inference, drawn from the Pythagorean school,' the man's work itself, that the mysticism and numbers with which he is surrounded are taken from that system of numbers and from that mysticism which are so astonishingly like his own. All subsequent philosophies borrowed from Pythagoreanism, and in so far has India helped to form the mind of Europe.[31]
But we cannot omit a yet more important religious influence exerted by India upon the West. As is well known, Neo-Platonism and Christian Gnosticism owe much to India. The Gnostic ideas in regard to a plurality of heavens and spiritual worlds go back directly to Hindu sources. Soul and light are one in the S[=a]nkhya system before they become so in Greece, and when they appear united in Greece it is by means of the thought which is borrowed from India. The famous 'three qualities' of the S[=a]nkhya reappear as the Gnostic 'three classes,' [Greek: pneumagikoi], [Greek: psuchikoi], [Greek: ulikoi].[32] In regard to Neo-Platonism, Garbe says: "The views of Plotinus are in perfect agreement with those of the S[=a]nkhya system."[33] Porphyry, the disciple of Plotinus, has the Yoga doctrine of immediate perception of truth leading to union with
