The great saga of the Greek buddhists?

Originally posted by malizai_ I doubt that they would charged their armies through the desert towards Barigaza as depicted in the map above. That arrow should probably point right and then down. I think the Indians were aware of the Ionians before Alexander and vice versa.

I doubt that they would charged their armies through the desert towards Barigaza as depicted in the map above. That arrow should probably point right and then down.

The ironic thing is Buddhism did not penetrate regions of East Asia until the 1st century AD (Eastern Han Dynasty in China), while there were thousands of Greek Buddhists hundreds of years before this point (not that there's much of a trace of it anymore, while East Asia in general maintains its Buddhist legacy).

Originally posted by chimera This adds to the posssibility that Preak Khan temple at Angkor Wat which is described as having a Greek-style shrine, does in fact have Greek background.

Edited by ijimon - 11-Feb-2007 at 20:08

Bulgarians of Balikh:

Originally posted by chimera The Balkh are evidently the Bulgarians of Balkans. It seems that some Greeks were known very early to IndoEuropean Sanskrit Brahmins. chimera

"According to Klaus K. Klostermaier, in his book A Survey of Hinduism pg 18-19: "The kings of Magadha and Malwa exchanged ambassadors with Greece. A Maurya ruler invited one of the Greek Sophists to join his court, and one of the greatest of the Indo-Greek kings became famous as the dialogue partner of the great Buddhist sage Nagasena, while in the opposite direction, Buddhist missionaries are known to have settled in Alexandria, and other cities in the Ancient West. It is evident then, that Indian thought was present in the fashionable intellectual circuit of ancient Athens, and there is every reason to suppose that Indian religious and philosophical ideas exercised some influence on early and classical Greek philosophy. Both Greeks and Romans habitually tried to understand the religions of India by trying to fit them as far as possible into Greco-Roman categories. Deities in particular were spoken of, not in Indian but in Greek terms and called by Greek names. Thus Shiva, was identified as "Dionysos," Krsna (or perhaps Indra) as "Heracles." The great Indian epics were compared to those of Homer. Doctrinally, the Indian concept of transmigration had its counterpart in the metempsychosis taught by Pythagoras and Plato; nor was Indian asceticism altogether foreign to a people who remembered Diogenes and his followers."

Buddhism didn't spread to Greece, Greeks spread to the majority buddhist Afghanistan and Pakistan

Reference.com/encyclopedia:

Original Home of Kambojas

Main article: Kamboja Location

Analysis of ancient Sanskrit texts and inscriptions place the Kambojas, Gandharas, Yavanas (Greeks), Madras, and the Sakas in the Uttarapatha - the northern division of Jambudvipa (the innermost concentric island continent in Hindu scripture). Geographically, this area sat along, and was named for, the main trade route from the mouth the Ganges to Balkh, now a small town in Northern Afghanistan. Some writers hold that Uttarapatha included the whole of Northern India and comprised very area of Central Asia, as far as the Urals and the Caspian Sea to the Yenisei and from Turkistan and Tien Shan ranges to as far as the Arctic (Dr S. M. Ali)."(end quote).

Well, I heared before that Greeks have a very important impact in Budism. There is even a style called Greek-Buddist that spread across Asia.