Buddhism and the Roman world
[1] Roman historical accounts describe an embassy sent by the "Indian king Porus" (perhaps Pandion, Pandya, or Pandita[citation needed]) to Caesar Augustus sometime between 22 BC and 13 AD.
The event made a sensation and was described by Nicolaus of Damascus, who met the embassy at Antioch (near present day Antakya in Turkey) and related by Strabo (XV, 1,73[3]) and Dio Cassius (liv, 9).
Cassius Dio (Hist 54.9) and Plutarch cite the same story[4] Charles Eliot in his Hinduism and Buddhism: An Historical Sketch (1921) considers that the name Zarmanochegas "perhaps contains the two words Sramana and Acarya.
"[5] HL Jones' translation of the inscription as mentioned by Strabo reads it as "The Sramana master, an Indian, a native of Bargosa, having immortalized himself according to the custom of his country, lies here.
[7] Will Durant, noting that the Emperor Ashoka sent missionaries, not only to elsewhere in India and to Sri Lanka, but to Syria, Egypt and Greece, speculated in the 1930s that they may have helped prepare the ground for Christian teaching.
[citation needed] Ptolemy II Philadelphus, one of the monarchs Ashoka mentions in his edicts, is recorded by Pliny the Elder as having sent an ambassador named Dionysius to the Mauryan court at Pataliputra: "India has been treated of by several other Greek writers who resided at the courts of Indian kings, such, for instance, as Megasthenes, and by Dionysius, who was sent thither by Philadelphus, expressly for the purpose: all of whom have enlarged upon the power and vast resources of these nations.
In the 2nd century AD Clement of Alexandria wrote about the Buddha:[11] εἰσὶ δὲ τῶν Ἰνδῶν οἱ τοῖς Βούττα πειθόμενοι παραγγέλμασιν.
]He also recognized Bactrian Buddhists (Sramanas) and Indian Gymnosophists for their influence on Greek thought:[11] "Thus philosophy, a thing of the highest utility, flourished in antiquity among the barbarians, shedding its light over the nations.
First in its ranks were the prophets of the Egyptians; and the Chaldeans among the Assyrians;[12] and the Druids among the Gauls; and the Sramanas among the Bactrians ("Σαρμαναίοι Βάκτρων"); and the philosophers of the Celts; and the Magi of the Persians, who foretold the Saviour's birth, and came into the land of Judaea guided by a star.
