Greek philosophers interacted with Buddhists and Hindus, back in the day

I have already done a blog post on Hellenistic Philosophy by John Sellars.  As I mentioned earlier, it focuses on three main philosophical schools of the period: Skepticism (which sheds light on RAW, himself a philosophical skeptic), Stoicism (currently having a moment) and Epicureanism (a philosophy I am very interested in).

RAW had many interests and a complex philosophy which can't be summed up in a few words, but it is also fair to observe that he was simultaneously interested in currents of Western philosophy but also knew a lot about Eastern philosophies and religions, including Buddhism. As I finished Hellenistic Philosophy, I noticed a nice bonus: A brief but fascinating appendix,  "Looking East," which explores contacts between Greek philosophers and their counterparts in India.

I had  known that the Greek skeptic philosopher Pyrrho had traveled with Alexander the Great's army and reached India (there's a book about this, Greek Buddha by Christopher Beckwith, that I've been meaning to read, as I'm a Beckwith fan), and Sellars mentions the book, and many others that also sound very interesting.

Sellars is careful and cautious, and he isn't convinced that Indian philosophy influenced Greek philosophy in a substantive way, but he also shows there were more contacts between the two groups than one might think.

He mentions, for example, that Ashoka, the famous  Indian Buddhist ruler, "send Buddhist envoys to the land of the 'Yonas' (from 'Ionians,' i.e. Greeks), and it goes on to name the Mediterranean rulers to whom they were sent. Some of these envoys were themselves Greeks who had embraced Buddhism. Indeed, the inscription not only says  that these envoys were sent, but also claims that these areas were successfully conquered by Dharma, Buddhist teaching. In exchange, some of these Hellenistic kings, notably Ptolemy II of Egypt, sent envoys to India. Some have claimed that Buddhist communities developed in the Mediterranean world, with a text by Philo describing an unusual and otherwise unknown monastic community cited as evidence. Others have claimed to have found  Buddhist gravestones in Alexandria." There are other possible encounters cited.

All of this seems fascinating to me, and Sellars names plenty of other books to explore. 

Circling back to RAW, Sellars' book toward the end has this quote from Sextus Empiricus, a famous Skeptic philosopher: "Skeptics are philanthropic and wish to cure by argument, as far as they can, the conceit and rashness of the Dogmatists."