Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines

...compensated by a regression on other points.

If we consider the intellectual order—which is the only essential element of Eastern civilizations—there are at least two reasons why the Greeks, in this respect, borrowed everything from them. By this, we mean everything that is truly valid in their concepts. One of these reasons, the one we have emphasized most so far, is derived from the relative ineptitude of the Greek mentality in this regard; the other is that Hellenic Hellenic: relating to the language, culture, and history of ancient Greece. civilization is of a much more recent date than the main Eastern civilizations. This is particularly true for India, although, where there are some connections between the two civilizations, some push the "classical prejudice" classical prejudice: the academic bias that assumes Western (Greek and Roman) culture is the primary source of all significant civilization and knowledge. to the point of asserting a priori original: "a priori"; Latin for "from the earlier," referring to knowledge or conclusions reached before looking at the actual evidence. that it is proof of a Greek influence. Yet, if such an influence truly did occur within Hindu civilization, it could only have been very late, and it necessarily must have remained entirely superficial.

We might admit that there was, for example, an artistic influence, although even from this specific point of view, the concepts of the Hindus always remained, in all eras, extremely different from those of the Greeks. Moreover, certain traces of such an influence are only found in a specific portion—very limited in both space and time—of Buddhist civilization, which should not be confused with Hindu civilization proper. But this obliges us to say at least a few words about what the relations between different and more or less distant peoples might have been in antiquity, and then about the difficulties raised, in a general way, by questions of chronology chronology: the arrangement of events in order of their occurrence in time; here, it refers to the academic obsession with dating texts and events to prove who influenced whom., which are so important in the eyes of the more or less exclusive proponents of the all-too-famous "historical method" historical method: a critique of the 19th-century Western scholarly approach that treats all knowledge as a product of historical evolution rather than timeless truth..