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[Footnote 5: Weber ascribes to Greek influence the Hindus first acquaintance with the planets. On a possible dramatic loan see above, p. 2, note. The Greeks were first to get into the heart of India (as far as Patna), and between the court of Antiochus the Great and the king S[=a]ubhagasena there was formal exchange of ambassadors in the third century B.C. The name of Demetrius appears as Datt(.a]mitra in the Hindu epic. He had "extended his rule over the Indus as far as the Hydaspes and perhaps over M[=ajlava and Gujarat" (about 200 B.C.; Weber, Skizzen). In the second century Menandros (the Buddhists' 'Milinda') got as far as the Jumna; but his successors retreated to the Punj[=a]b and eventually to Kabul (ib.) Compare also Weber, Sitz. d. könig. Preuss. Akad., 1890, p. 901 ff., Die Griechien in Indien. The period of Greek influence coincides with that of Buddhist supremacy in its first vigor, and it is for this reason that Brahmanic literature and religion were so untouched by it. There is to our mind no great probability that the Hindu epic owes anything to that of Greece, although Weber has put in a strong plea for this view in his essay Ueber das R[=a]m(=alya[n.Ja.]
[Footnote 6: The romance of a Russian traveller's late 'discovery,' which Sanskrit scholars estimate at its true value, but which may seem to others worthy of regard, is perhaps, in view of the interest taken in it, one that should be told correctly. Nicholas Notovitch asserts that he discovered seven years ago in the Tibetan monastery of Himis, a work which purports to give a life of Christ from birth to death, including sixteen years spent in India. This life of 'Issa' (Jesus) is declared to have been written in the first century of the Christian era. Unfortunately for the reputation of the finder, he made a mistake in exploiting his discovery, and stated that his manuscript had been translated for him by the monks of Himis 'out of the original P[=alli,' a dialect that these monks could not understand if they had specimens of it before them. This settled Notovitch's case, and since of course he did not transcribe a word of the MS. thus freely put at his
