xistence of the soul and some doctrine of Karma, it
was not specially impregnated with Indian ideas. This, however, may be
said without exaggeration of Carpocrates and Basilides who both taught
at Alexandria about 120-130 A.D. Unfortunately we know the views of
these interesting men only from the accounts of their opponents.
Carpocrates[1134] is said to have claimed the power of coercing by
magic the spirits who rule the world and to have taught metempsychosis
in the form that the soul is imprisoned in the body again and again
until it has performed all possible actions, good and evil. Therefore
the only way to escape reincarnation (which is the object of religion)
and to rise to a superior sphere of peace is to perform as much action
as possible, good and evil, for the distinction between the two
depends on intention, not on the nature of deeds. It is only through
faith and love that a man can obtain blessedness. Much of the
above sounds like a caricature, but it may be a misrepresentation of
something analogous to the Indian doctrine that the acts of a Yogi are
neither black nor white and that a Yogi in order to get rid of his
Karma creates and animates many bodies to work it off for him.

In Basilides we find the doctrines not only of reincarnation, which
seems to have been common in Gnostic schools,[1135] but of Karma, of
the suffering inherent in existence and perhaps the composite nature
of the soul. He is said to have taught that the martyrs suffered for
their sins, that is to say that souls came into the world tainted with
the guilt of evil deeds done in another existence. This guilt must be
expiated by commonplace misfortune or, for the nobler sort, by
martyrdom. He considered the world process to consist in sorting out
confused things and the gradual establishment of order. This is to
some extent true of the soul as well: it is not an entity but a
compound (compare the Buddhist doctrine of the Skandhas) and the
passions are appendages. He called God [Greek: oyk hon theos] which
seems an attempt to express the same idea as Brahman devoid of all
qualities and attributes (nirguna). It is significant that the
system of Basilides died out.[1136]

A more important sect of decidedly oriental affinities was Manichaeism,
or rather it was a truly oriental religion which succeeded in
penetrating to Europe and there took on considerably more Christianity
than it had possessed in its original form. Mani himself (215-276)