The Kurma and Padma Puranas also
mention it as the shining abode of Vishnu and his saintly servants.]

[Footnote 1099: Garbe thinks that the Sea of Milk is Lake Balkash. For
the Pancaratra see book v. iii. 3.]

[Footnote 1100: See note 2 on last page.]

[Footnote 1101: _E.g._ several works of Lloyd and Saeki, _The
Nestorian Monument in China_.]

CHAPTER LVI

INDIAN INFLUENCE IN THE WESTERN WORLD

The influence of Indian religion on Christianity is part of the wider
question of its influence on the west generally. It is clear that from
200 B.C. until 300 A.D. oriental religion played a considerable part
in the countries round the Mediterranean. The worship of the Magna
Mater was known in Rome by 200 B.C. and that of Isis and Serapis in
the time of Sulla. In the early centuries of the Christian era the
cultus of Mithra prevailed not only in Rome but in most parts of
Europe where there were Roman legions, even in Britain. These
religions may be appropriately labelled with the vague word oriental,
for they are not so much the special creeds of Egypt and Persia
transplanted into Roman soil as fragments, combinations and
adaptations of the most various eastern beliefs. They differed from
the forms of worship indigenous to Greece and Italy in being personal,
not national: they were often emotional and professed to reveal the
nature and destinies of the soul. If we ask whether there are any
definitely Indian elements in all this orientalism, the answer must be
that there is no clear case of direct borrowing, nothing Indian
analogous to the migrations of Isis and Mithra. If Indian thought had
any influence on the Mediterranean it was not immediate, but through
Persia, Babylonia and Egypt. But it is possible that the doctrine of
metempsychosis and the ideal of the ascetic life are echoes of India.
Though the former is found in an incomplete shape among savages in
many parts of the world, there is no indication that it was indigenous
in Egypt, Syria, Babylonia, Asia Minor, Greece or Italy. It crops up
now and again as a tenet held by philosophers or communities of
cosmopolitan tastes such as the Orphic Societies, but usually in
circumstances which suggest a foreign origin. It is said, however, to
have formed part of the doctrines taught by the Druids in Gaul.
Similarly though occasional fasts and other mortifications may have
been usual in the worship of various deities and though the rigorous
Spartan discipline wa