Hindu book, 7000 BCE

[Klaus Karttunen]

>
>       French philosopher and Le Monde journalist, Jean-Paul
>       Droit, recently wrote in his book The Forgetfulness of India
>       that ``The Greeks loved so much Indian philosophy that
>       Demetrios Galianos had even translated the Bhagavad Gita''.
>
>       Many western and Christian historians have tried to nullify this
>       Indian influence on Christian and ancient Greece, by saying...

Demetrios Galanos (sic) did indeed translate the Gita into Greek, but
Galanos lived in 1760-1833 and has thus nothing to do with ancient Greece.
He came to India as a young man as tutor of the children of a Greek
merchant living in Calcutta. Later he settled down in Varanasi and lived
there studying and translating Sanskrit works until his death. His
translations, Gita included, were published in Athens in the 1840s and
1850s. See U. P. Arora (ed), Graeco-Indica. India's Cultural Contacts with
the Greek World. In Memory of D. G. (1760-1833), A Greek Sanskritist of
Benares. Heritage of Ancient India 26. New Delhi 1991. There is also a
French biography of Galanos published in the 1980s.

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