16th century European contacts with Hinduism

[Steve Farmer]

I wrote, about an ancient story that circulated about "Socrates" being
put down by an Indian wiseman:

> In extant documents, this *particular* story first shows up in the 4th
> century CE -- nearly 800 years after the death of "Socrates"!

Nanda Chandran responded:

> That itself need not invalidate the story. Even the Buddhist canon that we
> have now was put down in writing centuries after the historic Buddha. Still
> we accept that as his teachings.

That does invalidate the story. Already by the mid 4th century BCE --
let alone 800 years later -- "Socrates" (who supposedly died in 399
BCE) was for all practical purposes a fictional character who existed
only in the covers of wannabe Platonic dialogues. Compare sometime
Xenophon's "Socrates" with the "Socrates" of different dialogues in
the Platonic corpus -- not all of which were probably written by same
members of the early Platonic school -- or with the stories told about
Socrates in Diogenes Laertes.

Same for a lot of other eponymous figures, I might add ("Thus I have heard...").

:^)