Art. X.—On the Indian Embassies to Rome, from the Reign of Claudius to the Death of Justinian—continued from p. 298 of the XlXth Vol., Journ. R.A.S

Abstract

After the fall of Palmyra and the many disasters which about this time overwhelmed Alexandria, the far East ceased to occupy the Roman mind or much place in Roman literature. India and the name of Buddha are however to be met with in Christian controversial writings of the third and fourth centuries directed against the Manichæan heresy. They occur, in Archelaus' account of his disputation with the hæresiarch Manes held at Charra in Mesopotamia (A.D. 275–9), in the Catacheses of Cyril of Jerusalem (A.D. 361), and in the Heresies of Epiphanius (A.D. 375), which all trace back the Manichæan doctrine to one Scythianus and his disciple Terebinthus, whom they connect with India in this wise. Scythianus, of Scythian descent, though by birth a Saracen of the Saracens of Palestine and thus familiar with the Greek language and literature, was a contemporary of the Apostles, and a merchant engaged in the India trade. In the course of his business he had several times visited India; and while there, being a man of an inquiring mind and great natural parts, had made himself acquainted with the Indian philosophy. In his maturer years, having now amassed great wealth, while returning homeward through the Thebais, he fell in, at Hypsele, with an Egyptian slave girl, whom he bought and married, and who persuaded him to settle in Alexandria. Here he applied himself to the study of and mastered the Egyptian learning, and here formed those peculiar opinions which, with the assistance of his one disciple and slave Terebinthus, he embodied in four books, the source of all Manichæan doctrine.