Dr. JV Hebbar retweetledi
Much of the West’s religious heritage was shaped, directly or indirectly, by Indian thought transmitted through ancient trade networks.
From the 10th century BC, ships sailing from the Red Sea to India under the Hiram–Solomon maritime venture facilitated commercial exchange and intellectual and theological transmission. The Bhagavad Gita idea of the unity of the divine influenced the rise of Yahweh from minor deity to the main and eventually only Hebrew god.
Furthermore, Jain rejection of animal sacrifice influenced the decline of sacrificial practices across the Levant and eastern Mediterranean. Later, Buddhist ideas also traveled west. Under Chandragupta Maurya (c. 321–297 BC) and Ashoka (c. 268–233 BC), thousands of missionaries travelled the same trade routes. The doctrines they carried, asceticism, vegetarianism, the soul’s transmigration, reincarnation and pacifism, influenced far further.
These ideas resonated among Gnostics, Essenes, Manichaeans, Orphics, Pythagoreans, Druze and Neo-Platonists. The non-canonical Gospel of the Ebionites presents John the Baptist as a vegetarian, while parts in Genesis endorse plant-based sustenance.
Traditions surrounding Krishna and Indra include motifs later associated with Jesus: miraculous birth, celestial signs and wise men bearing gifts. Both Buddha and Jesus undergo wilderness fasts marked by temptation. Both advocate celibacy and renunciation of worldly wealth. In a Jataka, a Buddhist disciple walks on water. In another Buddha feeds 500 people with a piece of bread. Another resembles the prodigal son story.
Trinities within Vedic and later Hindu thought, Varuna–Mitra–Agni or Vaishnava–Shaiva–Krishna invite comparison with Christianity. Brahmanical substitution of rice cakes for human sacrifice parallels the Eucharist, where bread becomes Christ’s flesh. Brahmanical prohibitions against contact with raw flesh echoes in ritual restrictions imposed on Roman priests or flamens, probably derived from Brahmin. Krishna, Buddha and Christ were the result of virgin births. The word Christ is from Krishna or Krista. Indian ablution rituals spawned the idea of baptism, the idea of reincarnation became resurrection.
The Vedic “Om” became ‘Amen’. Devotion to Mary, mother of god, the Madonna is from Mata Nah, Our Mother, or the mother goddess. In Buddhist monasteries material gifts were linked to spiritual merit, copied by Christians. The idea of many divine manifestations emanating from a single ultimate reality resembles the hierarchical Christian God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, Mary, angels, saints, and martyrs. John1.1’s ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God’ was a Vedic mantra.
Accelerating Indian maritime trade unintentionally brought Indian ideas, albeit re-moulded in transmission, which in Christian form eventually replaced European pagan religions, which themselves were originally Indian-influenced from thousands of years earlier.
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