avoidance of theology and
philosophy, his insistence on ethical principles such as truth, and
his frank argument that men should do good in order that they may fare
happily in the next world, suggest that he may have become familiar
with the simple and practical Zoroastrian outlook,[1149] perhaps when
he was viceroy of Taxila in his youth. But still he shows no trace of
theism or dualism: morality is his one concern, but it means for him
doing good rather than suppressing evil.

After the death of Asoka his Empire broke up and races who were
Iranian in culture, if not always in blood, advanced at its expense.
Dependencies of the Persian or Parthian empire extended into India or
like the Satrapies of Mathura and Saurashtra lay wholly within it.
The mixed civilization which the Kushans brought with them included
Zoroastrianism, as is shown by the coins of Kanishka, and late Kushan
coins indicate that Sassanian influence had become very strong in
northern India when the dynasty collapsed in the third century A.D.

I see no reason to suppose that Gotama himself was influenced by
Iranian thought. His fundamental ideas, his view of life and his
scheme of salvation are truly Hindu and not Iranian. But if the
childhood of Buddhism was Indian, it grew to adolescence in a motley
bazaar where Persians and their ways were familiar. Though the
Buddhism exported to Ceylon escaped this phase, not merely Mahayanism
but schools like the Sarvastivadins must have passed through it. The
share of Zoroastrianism must not be exaggerated. The metaphysical and
ritualistic tendencies of Indian Buddhism are purely Hindu, and if its
free use of images was due to any foreign stimulus, that stimulus was
perhaps Hellenistic. But the altruistic morality of Mahayanism, though
not borrowed from Zoroastrianism, marks a change and this change may
well have occurred among races accustomed to the preaching of active
charity and dissatisfied with the ideals of self-training and lonely
perfection. And Zoroastrian influence is I think indubitable in the
figures of the great Bodhisattvas, even Maitreya,[1150] and above all
in Amitabha and his paradise. These personalities have been adroitly
fitted into Indian theology but they have no Indian lineage and, in
spite of all explanations, Amitabha and the salvation which he offers
remain in strange contradiction with the teaching of Gotama. I have
shown elsewhere[1151] what close parallels may be found in the Avest