Pythagoras mentioned in Vedas?

[Klaus Karttunen]

Philostratus wrote his Life of Apollonius in the third century, the
supposed Indian travels of Apollonius  took place in the middle of the
first century CE. In any case Lars Martin is right that a Greek visiting
India in the 3rd century BCE is much more likely than one in the 6th. There
are a number of apocryphical stories of Indian travels of early Greek
philosophers  (e.g. Solon, Democritus and Pythagoras), but they are all
centuries later and rather inconvincing. Some of these men were travellers
indeed, and learned a lot of things from Egyptians, Babylonians and
Iranians (Heraclitus), but first evidence of direct intellectual contact
with India comes only in the times of Alexander (who even had a few
philosophers among his followers). I have discussed all this in my India in
Early Greek Literature (Helsinki 1989), 108ff.

Regards

Klaus


Klaus Karttunen
Institute for Asian and African Studies
Box 59, 00014 Helsinki, Finland
tel. +358-9-191-22224, fax. +358-9-191-22094