The Greeks Meet the Yogis

I collect here most of the significant references to ancient Indian philosophers in Greek authors. Rather than proposing new ideas about these encounters, my goal is simply to bring these records together for the convenience of the general reader and to provide suggestions for further reading. I realize my title sounds flippant with its overgeneralized “yogis,” but I am little worse in this way than my Greek authorities.



     Knowledge of India in the West was, until the last few hundred years, fragmentary and often fabulous.  Even when a European writer did speak of the East, Asia, or the Orient it was most often with the Near East in mind.  The 1785 publication of the Bhagavad Gita by Charles Wilkins marked the first translation directly from a Sanskrit text into a European language. [1]  Still, as some find they have a wandering and a curious disposition, there have been contacts, including trade, between Europe and South Asia since ancient times.
     It is likely that Herodotus had heard something of Indian sadhus when he wrote “there are other Indians, again, who kill no living creature, nor sow, nor are wont to have houses; they eat grass, and they have a grain growing naturally from the earth in its calyx, about the size of a millet-seed, which they gather with the calyx and roast and eat.  When any one of them falls sick he goes into the desert and lies there, none regarding whether he be sick or die.” [2]
     More or less reliable accounts of meetings between ancient Greeks and Indians are recorded in historical and geographical treatises in both Greek and Sanskrit.  Some Greeks were actively curious about the new philosophies they encountered and sought out and questioned those considered wise men among the Indians.  More speculatively, Indian thought appears to have influenced some Greek philosophers, particularly Pythagoreans, Cynics, Skeptics, and Neo-Platonists.
     The practices of Indian ascetics impressed many outsiders, most of all those of a similar sensibility.   Philostratus quotes the Neopythagorean Apollonius of Tyana as saying “I saw Indian Brahmans living upon the earth and yet not on it, and fortified without fortifications, and possessing nothing, yet having the riches of all men.”  Apollonius indeed thought their wisdom surpassed that of the Greeks, saying somewhat gnomically, “I consider that your lore is profounder and much more divine than our own; and if I add nothing to my present stock of knowledge while I am with you, I shall at least have learned that I have nothing more to learn.” [3]
     Doubtless the most substantial report of India was the Indika of Megasthenes who had been an ambassador sent by Seleucus, one of Alexander’s Diadochi, to Chandragupta Maurya’s court in Pataliputra.  The book is lost, but portions are preserved by Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Pliny, and Arrian. Megasthenes accepts fantastic tales such as mouthless people, those with their feet backward, and others with great ears extending to the ground in which they wrap themselves to sleep.  He is, however, quite clear about the distinction between brahmins and sramaṇas, or ascetics. With the casual cosmopolitanism of the Greeks, who considered that divinity was universally the same, followers of Shiva are called Dionysians and those of Vishnu followers of Zeus. [4]  The Greeks themselves were probably ignorant of Indian sects, and the thinkers they encountered may have been Buddhists, Hindus, or Jains, and all three groups might have been called Brahmins or gymnosophists.
     In his life of Alexander Plutarch relates a story of the king’s own interaction with such sages. He had been wounded by an arrow while fighting the Malli in the Punjab. Blaming religious leaders for fomenting rebellion against him, he suppressed the resistance violently, including killing numerous holy men. Plutarch’s narration takes the form of a folktale.  Alexander summons ten gymnosophists and poses them difficult questions.  He threatens to kill them if they answer poorly but appoints one of their own number as judge. [5]
     They acquit themselves well, and the general import of the anecdote is simply to establish their credentials as wise men.  Some resemble riddles with a pleasantly unexpected answer, such as the question as to which animal is the most cunning, to which the response was “that which man has not discovered.”  The Greeks likely admired the forthrightness and attachment to virtue of the man who, when asked why he had supported Sabbas’ revolt, replied “Because I wished him either to live nobly or to die nobly.” Several of the answers seemed to be common sententiae such when declaring that the most loved man would be he that is most powerful, yet does not inspire fear.
     Perhaps the most subtle answers are those that to undermine dualities.  When asked whether the earth or the sea produced larger animals, the gymnosophist answered that earth did, since the sea was but a part of the earth.  Thus the apparent opposites are folded together harmonically. Similarly, the responses seem to harmonize life and death, day and night, god and man, while making no reference to the philosophic or theological underpinnings of their attitudes.
     The story ends with three turns of a fine dialectical wit.  “The judge declared that they had answered one worse than another."  Alexander says that, for delivering such an opinion, he must be the first to die, whereupon the sage responds, “That cannot be, O King,” said the judge, “unless thou falsely saidst that thou wouldst put to death first him who answered worst.”  Pleased, Alexander then pardons the lot and sends them off laden with gifts.  Thus the gymnosophist surprises the reader by, in effect, condemning his colleagues; Alexander turns the tables once more by saying that he must be executed; and finally, the gymnosophist uses the king’s own words to provide a happy ending.
     Arrian paraphrasing Megasthenes, tells that the Indians indicate no sign of respect but only stamped their feet when he appeared.  When asked the meaning of their action, they did not hesitate to chasten the conqueror’s ambition.  “King Alexander, every man can possess only so much of the earth’ surface as this we are standing on.  You are but human like the rest of us, save that you are always busy and up to no good, traveling so many miles from your home, a nuisance to yourself and to others.  Ah well! You will soon be dead, and then you will own just as much of this earth as will suffice to bury you.” [6]
     It was not the end, apparently, of Alexander’s inquiries.  Having heard that the very wisest remain in their hermitages, he sends Onesicritus, a Cynic and follower of Diogenes, [7] to interview these wisest if the wise. The one reputed wisest of all, Dandamis would have nothing to do with the Greeks, asking only “Why did Alexander make such a long journey hither?”  Onesicritus sought then to interview another of the gymnosophists, Calanus, only to find him unwilling to speak until the Greek removed his clothes to match the Indian’s state of undress.  Calanus did accompany the Greeks for some time, though he took ill and, realizing his death was approaching asked that a funeral pyre be built whereupon he calmly reclined to be burnt. [8]
     The Indian philosophers impressed not only pagans, but Jews and Christians as well.  Philo Judaeus, the Jewish neoplatonist, who sought to harmonize Jewish and Hellenistic thought by interpreting both symbolically, observes with admirable cosmopolitanism, “And among the Indians there is the class of the gymnosophists, who . . .make their whole existence a sort of lesson in virtue.” [9]
     According to Eusebius an Indian asked Socrates about his philosophy and when he answered that he studied human life, “the Indian laughed at him, and said that no one could comprehend things human, if he were ignorant of things divine.” He does not record Socrates’ response, but he does treat Socrates as a righteous if non-Christian theist, superior to the materialist Greek thinkers.  He approvingly notes that Plato sought to make “the divine” the basis for his thought.” [10]
     Clement of Alexandria, with more understanding than many an orthodox Christian divine since, said with regard to pagan philosophers “all [peoples], in my opinion, are illuminated by the dawn of Light.”  His ethnocentrism destabilized by attachment to Christianity, he argues that much of Greek philosophy was derived from “barbarians,” including Jews, Egyptians, and others. He mentions Buddhists as well. [11]
     Indians clearly had acquired a reputation for asceticism, non-materialism, and utter devotion to philosophy.  It is less evident that the specific tenets of Indian religio-philosophic thought influenced Greek writers, though Indian influence has been traced by some scholars as early as pre-Socratics. [12]   With evidence varying from the highly speculative to the highly likely, scholars have discerned South Asian concepts in a number of schools of later Greek thought.
     Pythagoreanism with its teaching of reincarnation and vegetarianism seems obviously reminiscent of similar Hindu and Buddhist doctrines.  Apollonius thought that the philosophers of the East has a Pythagorean air about them. [13]  According to Philostratus’ account the Indians specifically claimed to have influenced Pythagoreanism.
     Plotinus, according to Porphyry’s biography, wished to study with the Persian magi and the Indian gymnosophists.  The neoplatonic monad Nous has seemed to many to resemble the Atman of Advaita thought. [14] Plotinus had set out to study he teaching of the Persian and Indian sages, but the military expedition of Gordian III with whom he traveled, proved a failure and he did not reach India proper, though he may have met with Indian philosophers.
     Some see Indian influence in Diogenes whose ascetic practices were rare in pre-Christian Greece [15], though Pythagoreans and others had advocated simple, if not ascetic, life. Diogenes famously met Alexander – the encounter is one of the most well-known anecdotes of antiquity – and Diogenes’ disciple Onesicritus was selected to by the king to investigate the gymnosophists, perhaps due to a similarity of thought.
     Probably the best case for Indian influence is that of Pyrrho of Elis’s Skepticism.  Not only is Pyrrho known to have traveled to the East and conferred with philosophers there; he is also reported to have had a sort of conversion experience. “This led him to adopt a most noble philosophy, to quote Ascanius of Abdera, taking the form of agnosticism and suspension of judgement. He denied that anything was honourable or dishonourable, just or unjust. And so, universally, he held that there is nothing really existent, but custom and convention govern human action; for no single thing is in itself any more this than that.” Upon his return to Greece his radically skeptical teachings included a virtual duplication of the quadrilemma that had been used for centuries by Sanskrit thinkers. [16] The Buddhist concept of avyakrta or insoluble problems according to Buddha is comparable as well, though Pyrrho’s skepticism is more thorough.
     By the third century of the Christian era Hippolytus of Rome included the Brahmins in his Refutation of All Heresies. [17]  He says, oddly, perhaps referring to mantras, that “to them the Deity is Discourse.”  Yet he also more or less accurately describes the austerities of the “Brachmans.”  Though Westerners only gained access to reliable texts of the Sanskrit masterpieces in the nineteenth century, many hundreds of years earlier Europeans had caught sight of glints and shadows of philosophical and spiritual systems from the other side of the world. In spite of imperfect transmission such news from other cultures exercised an outsize influence even in ancient times, suggesting a broader sense of what it is to be human, opening the possibility of new directions and fertilizing European thought.




1. Translations into French and German followed, and the book proved an influence on Romanticism. Blake celebrated its publication with a picture The Bramins, unfortunately now lost, which showed Wilkins and his Indian collaborators.

2. III, 100.

3. Philostratus 3.13 and 3.16. An early example, perhaps, of a late antique trend that persists today, the Westerner infatuated with “the wisdom of the East.”

4. See the account in Strabo XV, I, 39 ff.. Chandragupta himself married a Greek, daughter of Suluva. Bhavisya Purana edited by P. 18 According to the Pratisarga Parva , he “mixed the Buddhists and Yavanas [Greeks].” Other Greek embassies to India were led by Deimachus, ambassador to Bindusara, and Dionysius, ambassador to Ashoka. Ctesias was also the author of an Indika, but he relied on second-hand information, having himself gone no further than Persia.

5. Plutarch 65 ff. Curiously, the story finds its way into the Mishnah transformed into Alexander questioning the elders of the Negev. See Luitpold Wallach, “Alexander the Great and the Indian Gymnosophists in Hebrew Tradition,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research Vol. 11 (1941), pp. 47-83. He notes as well that a number of ancient Greek sources claim that Jews were descended from Indian philosophers. Plutarch had earlier noted (59) that Alexander did have many gymnosophists killed for their part in fomenting rebellion.

6. Arrian, Anabasis, VII.1.5 ff.

7. Though Onesicritus’ volume How Alexander was Educated (Πῶς Ἀλέξανδρος Ἤχθη) is lost, it was known to many ancient authors and seems to have combined much factual information with a measure of myth, legend, and good story.

8. Plutarch reports (69) that the same self-sacrifice was performed by “another Indian who was in the following of Caesar at Athens; and the ‘Indian's Tomb’ is shown there to this day.”

9. Quod omnis probus liber sit (Every Good Man is Free), 74. Philo specifically praises the judgement of Calanus in sections 92-93.

10. Praeparatio evangelico 11.8. The story in Aristocles is thought an attack on a materialist or at any rate humanistic Socrates perhaps from Pythagorean critics. Many early Christian regarded Socrates as something of a proto-Christian, for instance, Justin Martyr’s First Apology 46. Augustine says he was taught by the Platonists to seek spiritual truth. Confessions 7. 20.

11. Stromata 1.15 and 1.13. Eusebius likewise Preparatio evangelico 10.5 says that the Greeks owed their philosophy to barbarians.

12. See George P. Conger’s “Did India Influence Early Greek Philosophies?” in Philosophy East and West Vol. 2, No. 2 (Jul., 1952), pp. 102-12 and Thomas C. McEvilley’s The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies. General treatments include K. Karttunen, India in Early Greek Literature.

13. Philostratus 3.13 and 3.19.

14. See Ananda Coomaraswamy Vedanta and Western Tradition, Bréhier’ La Philosophie de Plotin (1928), P.M. Gregorios (ed.), Neoplatonism and Indian Philosophy, R.B. Harris (ed.), Neoplatonism and Indian Philosophy. For an up-to-date survey, see Joachim Lacrosse’s “Plotinus, Porphyry, and India: A Re-Examination,” Le philosophoire 2014/1, No 41, and J.F. Staal, Advaita and Neoplatonism: a Critical Study in Comparative Philosophy. Coomaraswamy (see, for instance,) and others have noted the similarities between Plotinus' teachings to the Hindu school of Advaita Vedanta,. Though some have denied or downplayed Indian influence. See A. H. Armstrong’s The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus: An Analytical and Historical Study.

15. See J. Romm, Dog Heads and Noble Savages: Cynicism before the Cynics.

16. Diogenes Laertius IX.61. See Christopher I. Beckwith Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia and E. Flintoff, “Pyrrho and India,” Phronesis 25 (1980), 88-108. The story of the gymnosophists’ answers to riddle-like questions was thought to be Skeptic by Philip R. Bosman in “The Gymnosophist Riddle Context (Berol. P. 13044): A Cynic Text?” in Richard Kalmin Migrating Tales: The Talmud's Narratives and Their Historical Context which also discusses various retellings of the story.

17. Ch. 21. Jean Filliozat with Jean Renou in L’Inde Classique argues that Hippolytus was familiar with the teachings of the Maitreya Upanishad. See "La doctrine brahmanique à Rome au IIIè siècle" in Les relations extérieures de l’Inde, vol. 2.