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Advaita and Neoplatonism (1961)

Advaita and Neoplatonism

(1961)–Frits Staal–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

A Critical Study in Comparative Philosophy


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Appendix
The problem of Indian Influence on Neoplatonism

According to Porphyry, Plotinus once ‘sought to learn directly the philosophy practised among the Persians and that which is held in esteem among the people of India’.1 The theory that some aspect of Neoplatonism was infruenced by ‘Indian thought’, has repeatedly been discussed and has found many learned advocates and opponents. As it seems that research on the subject has been done while scholars were unaware of the fact that the same subject was dealt with by others, we propose to contribute to a possible solution of the problem by giving a critical review of the existing literature in chronological order. In this way one can easily see what are the main arguments which can be brought forward, and which of these have been refuted. Of the work done before Bréhier's book of 1938 mention is made only of the article by Müller of 1914; after 1938, we hope that our enumeration is complete as far as articles which deal principally with the subject are concerned. Casual references in monographs touching upon the subject have not been discussed.

 

Critical remarks are based upon the methodological considerations mentioned in the first part2 and the method which has been formulated by Koster in dealing with the problem of Oriental influence on Plato; we need only read Plotinus where he says Plato: ‘There is only one method which leads to an adequate understanding of the doctrine of Plato. This is the method requiring the commentator when interpreting a passage first to ask whether this passage can be explained by what Plato teaches elsewhere or by what he taught previously; next whether the same can be done with the help of what is left of nis Greek predecessors; and lastly whether the interpreter has not forgotten to take the creative imagination and the personal logic of his author into account; this last consideration is not the least important. In short,

he has to deal with Plato as with Homer: explain him by himself. The person who studies Plato has to be led by one rule: first of all tòn Plátōna ed toû Plátōnos saphēnízein.3

 

H.K. Müller, Orientalisches bei Plotinos? Hermes 49 (1914) 70-80.

 

The author has convincingly shown that Plotinus is not influenced by the Oriental cults and creeds which were current in the Roman empire during the third century, Plotinus disagrees with the idea of salvation through an intermediary and objects to widespread forms of ordinary devotion.

 

With this article the thesis of Iranian influence seems refuted, but the possibility of Indian influence remains. One more article has been written since then arguing an influence from Iran: M. Techert, Iranische religiöse Elemente in dem Begriff der Psuche bei Plotin, Egyetemes Philologiai Közlöny 53 (1929) 65-160. The author says that the idea of the fall of the soul is typically Iranian. For a discussion of this topic refer to the review of the article by Szabó, below p. 354.

 

E. Bréhier, La phitosophie de Plotin, Paris 1938, chapitre VII: L'orientalisme de Plotin, 107-133.

 

A.N. Armstrong, Plotinus and India, Classical Quarterly 30 (1936) 22-28.

 

Almost none of the (mainly French) scholars who based their investigations upon the famous thesis of Bréhier seem to know that the main points made by Bréhier were convincingly refuted by Armstrong. We have therefore grouped the two together.

 

Armstrong correctly summarized the main arguments for Bréhier's thesis that Plotinus must have undergone influence from Indian thought and particularly from the Upaniṣads, as follows. There are two elements in Plotinus which cannot be explained against the Greek background: (1) the infinity of the One and of the intelligible world, which contradicts the traditional Greek, rationalistic idea of the world as a closed and well defined cosmos;

(2) the absence of a clear distinction and separation of the individual ego from the divine principle, connected with the identification of subject and object in the level of the nous. Both doctrines occur in the Upaniṣads. Influence, which is on historical grounds possible, is therefore likely.

 

Armstrong has criticised these arguments as follows:

(1)
(a)Anaximander's principle of everything was already called ápeiron, ‘the in(de)finite’.
 
(b)Heraclitus deals with this topic in the following fragment: ‘You will not be able to find the boundaries (peírata) of the soul, whatever way you go; such a deep lógos she has’, - ‘Here we have something remarkably like the infinite self of Plotinus’.
 
(c)In V.7. 3 the infinity of the intelligible world is connected with the doctrine that there are also forms of individuals. This is related to the individualism of the Stoa.
(2)
(a)The Pre-Socratics did not attribute clear-cut boundaries to the soul.
 
(b)In the noûs khōristós of Aristotle (De Anima III 5) and in the daímōn ektòs ōn of Plutarch (De genio Socratis 591 e) the idea is expressed that the highest part of the human soul is independent, supra-personal and identical for all human beings.

Armstrong's arguments may be accepted and can be supplemented by the following.

Ad (1)Also the Eleatic philosopher Melissos calls being ápeiron (Diels 20 A 14.2.3) and Anaxagoras calls his principle, the noûs, ápeiron (Diels 46 B 12). Moreover while the idea of cosmos is a traditionally Greek idea, this applies also to the idea of chaos (e.g. Hesiodus, Theogonia 116 and 123). Since the cosmos develops out of chaos, the latter concept, could very well lead to the philosophical idea of a primordial infinite, which may not have been evaluated highly, but nevertheless regarded as divine. Lastly, we may note that the Upaniṣadic infinite is actual
while the Neoplatonic is potential4 as is foreshadowed in the fragment of Heraclitus quoted by Armstrong.
Ad (2)Pure reasoning, in Advaita as well as in Neoplatonism, leads from the assumption of non-dual reality and from the rejection of the reality of change to the thesis, that our own self cannot transform into the Absolute, but is identical with it.

The same two authors expressed a number of years later again their opinion with regard to the same subject. Bréhier is less definite, but Armstrong has retained his view. Armstrong adds that the doctrine of divine infinity is alien to Plato, but this does not affect his former arguments. The statements are as follows:

 

During a meeting in Paris in 1948 Jean Baruzi asked Bréhier whether he retained his opinion of 1938. The latter answered: ‘I put forward the question. I could not answer it. I thought at the time that it might interest those who deal with India. I have found a number of very definite relations between the Neoplatonists and India. But I have found nobody who is interested and the problem remains to be studied’.5

 

Armstrong wrote in 1958: ‘Plotinus ....never in fact established any sort of contact with Eastern thinkers; and there is no good evidence, internal or external, to show that he ever acquired any knowledge of Indian philosophy.’6 And concerning the relation with Plato: ‘But the placing of the ideas in the Divine mind, the emphasis on life and the organic view of reality, the doctrine that there are ideas of individuals, and the doctrine of the Divine Infinity, all seem to belong to ways of thinking quite different from Plato's... ’7 The forms were first conceived as divine thoughts by Philo of Alexandria and this innovation, which was fruitful for medieval thought, occurs again in Albinus. The empha-

sis on life and the organic view of reality may be related to the Stoa and does at any rate not remind us of India. The doctrine that there are ideas of individuals is related to Stoic individualism, as Armstrong has pointed out himself. The above arguments remain valid with regard to divine infinity.

 

J. Przyluski, Les trois hypostases dans l'Inde et à Alexandria Mélanges Cumont II, Bruxelles 1936, 925-933.

 

The author argues that there is an analogy between; (1) the three hypostases of Plotinus; (2) the three bodies of the Buddha; (3) trinitary Christologies in Gnosticism; (4) the Christian trinity. As there are possibilities of historical contact, several influences have to be assumed.

 

The article proves little and is very unconvincing. Not even the similarities, which are referred to, exist. In the Gnosis and in Buddhism the middle entity is an intermediary between human and divine. But it is characteristic for Plotinus that he rejects any such intermediaries.8 Moreover with regard to Buddhism there is a chronological difficulty: though, according to de la Vallée Poussin, the germs of a doctrine of three bodies exist already in Theravāda, a definite trinity is, according to Suzuki, available only since Asaṅga (i.e., according to Jacobi,9 during the middle of the IVth century A.D.)10 The analogy between the three hypostases and the Christian trinity is superficial, though it was noticed amongst some early Christians11 (even the Cambridge Platonist Cudworth spoke about ‘The Trinity of Plato’)12 and though it was again defended by Pistorius.13 We have refuted this thesis elsewhere.14

 

J. Przyluski, Indian influence on Western thought before and during the third century A.D., Journal of the Greater Indian Society I.

A.B. Keith, Plotinus and Indian thought, Indian Culture 2 (1935-1936), 125-130.

 

These two articles are again grouped together, as the first is refuted by the second. Przyluski presents two new arguments: (1) the influence must have taken place through the examples of Indians, e.g., the impassibility of Indian ascetics or their suicide by voluntarily ascending the funeral pile; (2) Indian influence must have been transmitted through Mani, who was in India, and Manicheism.

 

Keith has convincingly refuted these arguments as follows; (1) the Greek contemporary explanations of these phenomena do not at all entitle us to think that they were philosophically interpreted in a Neoplatonic sense; (2) (a) the doctrines of Mani are dualistic and Przyluski would have to assume that in order to reject them the ‘luminous spirit (of Plotinus) was able to separate the dualistic tenets and to retain only the mysticism, peculiarly Indian’. This assumption is very improbable and it is difficult to believe that a monistic tradition influences through a dualistic tradition another philosophy which has very strong monistic tenets. (b) Moreover, there are chronological difficulties. Instead of summarizing Keith's calculations, we may refer to the opinion of one of the foremost scholars on Manicheism: ‘It seems impossible that Manicheism could have reached Egypt before 244, at the earliest’.15 But Plotinus left Alexandria for Rome in the same year, 244 (and not in 248 as Keith says), and we may ask with Keith why he did not remain in the East ‘in order to be in touch with the new religion of which he is supposed to have learnt while in Egypt’. (c) Mani went to India in order to preach, not in order to study Indian thought.

 

A. Szabó, Indische Elemente in Plotinischen Neuplatonismus, Scholastik 13 (1938), 57-96.

 

This article has no connection with any of the others and is based on an independent train of thought. It is interesting in so far as it takes up another aspect of Plotinus' metaphysics and relates it to another system of Indian thought. This may show that

the Western mind anyhow associates Neoplatonism with Oriental thought.

 

According to the author, there is no fall of the soul in Plotinus, but the soul sends an image (eídōlon) of itself into the material world and its ‘return’ is the disappearance of this image. ‘Thus the qualitative change of the soul is replaced by an appearance and its fall by an illusion about its essence’ (cf. I 1.12). This contradicts the traditional Greek concepts of the fall of the soul (Pythagoreans; Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato; mysteries). The same idea occurs in the Sāṁkhya system, in which there is an essential difference between matter and soul and where there is no change of the soul but a mixture (saṁyoga; míxis) of soul and matter.

 

This thesis will be discussed under three headings: (1) the interpretation of Plotinus; (2) the traditional Greek view; (3) the chronology of the Sāṁkhya system.

 

(1) It is true that the soul does not ‘fall’ according to Plotinus. But the reason is that the soul is a divine entity and therefore not subject to change. It is also true that it can be called a mixture between the nous and the húlē, between being and non-being. But the latter two entities are not mutally independent, and Plotinus was certainly not a dualist.16 Lastly, the occurrence of ideas like an image, appearance or illusion result from the character of the húlē, which is non-being and privation. This results in turn from the desire to avoid dualism. Thus Plotinus can be easily explained by Plotinus. We will nevertheless consider the other points.

 

(2) The doctrine of the fall of the soul is, for instance in Plato, not a philosophical doctrine but a mythological way of expression and a popular image17 - unlike, for example the Christian metaphysical doctrine of the fall of man. The philosophical doctrine of Plato concerning the soul, on the other hand, deals with the different parts of the soul, as introduced in the Republic.18 In the Timaeus, ‘the intellect’, which is of divine origin, is opposed to the body as well as to the lower parts of the soul. The body, in which it penetrates, is for the soul a prison, a place of exile, or a

‘vehicle, which transports the soul but is separate from it.’19 Moreover, the Pythagoreans already spoke of a rational (logikón) and an irrational (álogon) part of the soul.20 Analogous views occur in Aristotle. Thus traditional Greek doctrines are closely related to Plotinus' ideas.

 

(3) For Sāṁkhya, Szabó refers to two texts; ‘Vacaspati Misra Karika’ and ‘Sūtra’. But these texts are both later than Plotinus: the first the Sāṁkhyatattvakaumudī of Vācaspati Miśra is a commentary of the IXth century upon the Sāṁkhyakārikā of the IVth century. The second, the Sāṁkhyasūtra, cannot be older than the Xth century and was even attributed to the XVth century by Garbe.21 We would therefore have to assume that the doctrines which are expressed in these works, are much older- which is of course possible as Sāṁkhya is a very old system. But we do not know how Plotinus could have known these earlier doctrines.

 

Thus Szabó's thesis is unconvincing for three independent reasons.

 

J. Filliozat, Book-review of: A.J. Festugière, La révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste I, Paris 1944. Journal Asiatique 234 (1943-1945), 349-354.

 

With Filliozat we enter a new phase of research on the early relations between India and Greece, where standards of scholarship are higher, statements more definite and precise and where the need for proof is more recognized. Filliozat and several other contemporary scholars in France provide a refutation for Bréhier's surprising statement of 1948, that he could not find anybody who was interested in the relations between Neoplatonism and Indian thought.

 

The present book-review, especially of the second chapter of Festugière's book, entitled ‘Les prophètes de l'orient’, is not especially concerned with Neoplatonism but is interesting in as far as it gives a survey of several detailed similarities between Greek and Indian phenomena which were recently discovered. In

several cases familiarity of the Greeks with Indian culture is apparent.

Firstly elements of Vedic origin seems traceable in Philostratus' Life of Appolonius of Tyana: there is a reference to the aśvamedha22 and reference to Vedic rites and to yogic powers.23 The duration of Heraclitus ‘great year’ according to Consorimus, 10.8 years, is a decimal fraction of the result of Indian calculations. The Hippocratical treatise ‘On winds’ resembles the more ancient Indian doctrine of prāṇa. A medical theory in Plato's Timaeus resembles Indian medical theories. It should be observed, that these last cases have to be studied much more closely before they can be called decisive.

 

Concerning the probability of actual communications, the author rightly points to the fact that the Persian empire comprised, during the Achaemenids (a period during which many Greek as well as Indian doctrines originated), the Panjab and the Indus Valley, whereas many Greeks lived in the empire, which was governed, from the Nile to the Indus, by one class of Aramaic speaking administrators. Moreover actual meetings have been recorded between Greeks and Indians.24

 

We may conclude from this survey that there were actual contacts between Greece and India, before and during the third century. This need not imply that Plotinus was influenced by Indian thought. We come much nearer to this problem, however, with the help of the following very important and interesting article of the same author.

 

J. Filliozat, La doctrine des brahmanes d'apres saint Hippolyte, Revue de l'Histoire des Religions 130 (1945) 59-91 (announced in: Journal Asiatique 234 (1943-1945) 451).

 

Shortly before 324 A.D., i.e. at least ten years before Plotinus came to Rome, the Christian saint Hippolytus wrote his Refutation

of all heresies in which some passages are devoted to the ‘Brahmanas’ amongst the Indians. Filliozat has shown that these passages presuppose a quite detailed knowledge of Upaniṣadic doctrines as expounded in the Maitri Upaniṣad. This knowledge cannot result from records of companions or historians of Alexander the Great, as there is an unambiguous reference to South India: the Brahmanas are said to drink the water of the river ‘Tagabena’ which must be identified with the river Tuṅgaveṇā mentioned in the Mahābhārata and which is no other than the Tunga. Since Śṛṅgeri is the only well known holy spot on the banks of this river, it may have been a place of importance long before Śaṅkara, who according to tradition founded his first maṭha there.

 

The argument of Filliozat is rich in information and suggestions and cannot be easily summarized. We will therefore discuss only those passages of Hippolytus' work referring to philosophical ideas which occur in Plotinus as well as in the Upaniṣads, or which seem to occur in both traditions. We should not suppose, however, that Plotinus could have known about Upaniṣadic thought only from Hippolytus' notice: for it is too short and lacunary. But it is certainly possible that he knew the source from which Hippolytus collected his information. Since this source is lost, we have to confine ourselves to Hippolytus' record.

 

According to Hippolytus, the God of the Brahmanas is ‘not the articulated, but the one of the knowledge (gnōsis)’ and ’the Brahmanas say, that only they know it, because only they have rejected the vain opinion (kenodoxía) which is the last garment (khiton) of the soul’. Filliozat has convincingly argued that the reference to the ‘God’ of the Brahmanas, can only refer to Brahman, which is the metaphysical counterpart of the Christian God. That Brahman is knowledge is a widespread doctrine in the Upaniṣads. But we have to note that the term gnosis, characteristic for the Gnostics and probably for the Corpus Areopagiticum, is not preponderant in Plotinus. More specific in the reference to ‘vain opinion’ and Filliozat reminds. us of Upaniṣadic passages, where the view that the Self is the body, is rejected; the body is only a sheath (kośa) of the Self. This points in two directions:

 

(1) Kenodoxía is the same as abhimāna ‘delusion’. Filliozat has defended the view that the Greek term actually goes back to

this Indian term. It is interesting to observe that the Greek dóxa, e.g. in Parmenides and since in Plato and Plotinus, has almost the same philosophical significance as the Sanskrit avidyā which is again the same as abhimāna. (2) The several sheaths (kośas) which cover the Self form a well-known topic of the Upaniṣads, especially of the Taittirīya. The Maitri Upaniṣad stresses that we have to destroy our abhimāna and get rid of the sheaths hiding the Self. Though the latter idea does not occur in Plotinus, it is interesting to note that it is connected with the doctrine of abhimāna, which does exist in Plotinus as dóxa. The fact that it plays in Parmenides a more important roie than in Plotinus shows that it is superflous to assume Upaniṣadic influence on Plotinus in this respect. But there can have been a concordance of influences and it is possible that Plotinus discovered Indian confirmation of the ancient Greek legacy. He may also have come to a somewhat Indianizing interpretation of the lacunary expression of Parmenides.

 

There are other examples, e.g. that according to Hippolytus the Brahmanas described the divine as the sun. We need not argue that Plotinus might have taken this from the same source, since this comparison is familiar to all readers of Plato.

 

Filliozat is right in stressing that a Roman of the third century interested in India, e.g., Plotinus, could have a quite detailed and not inadequate knowledge of Upaniṣadic doctrines. However before we can speak of a definite influence of Upaniṣadic doctrines upon Plotinus, we must first show that certain features cannot be traced back to Greek sources. This does not seem to be so.

 

This leads again to a consideration of the Greek background of Plotinus' thought. Moreover the susceptibility to undergo influence has to be explained with the help of the Greek background. In this context Festugière has shown, as Filliozat mentions (in the above book-review), that the interest in the Orient since the second century has to be explained against the background of the decline of Greek rationalism, which is an internal development of the Greek tradition. But Filliozat is right in stressing that any Oriental influence would be impossible without adequate information.

 

O. Lacombe, A note on Plotinus and Indian thought, Silver Jubilee Commemoration volume of the Indian Philosophical Con-

gress, II, Calcutta 1950, 45-54 (a French version was published during the same year in Paris).

 

The starting point of this study is the research of Filliozat. The author remarks rightly that, if knowledge of Indian thought was as accurate in Rome as Filliozat has shown, it must have been at least as good in Alexandria. But he unfortunately follows Bréhier in making the wrong assumption that ‘the section of Plotinus’ thought which suggests a relationship with Vedāntic Brahmanism is the very section which cannot be easily explained on the basis of the pure philosophical tradition of Hellenism’. Accordingly, Lacombe exaggerates the importance of the Advaitic trend in Plotinus' thought, which we have characterised as a contrary tendency. Similarly, he regards the infinite of Plotinus as an actual infinite like the Upaniṣadic plenitude. Combining those ‘intrinsic similarities’ with the results of Filliozat's studies, he comes to the following conclusion: ‘Plotinus stands at the junction of two currents of influence-Greek and Indian’. That this is an exaggeration is clear in the light of the above.

 

But the author himself also does not interpret this conclusion literally: he describes later the Indian influence as ‘only slight’ and as a ‘stimulus, leading to independent development and the active assimilation of a new contribution in accord with the fundamental assumptions of the thinker subject to the “influence”.’ Such a kind of influence cannot be excluded, even if it cannot be proved.

 

Lastly the author makes an important remark, which is not correct but which points to a fact which future research on the question of Indian influence on Plotinus will have to consider: ‘Lastly, it should be remembered that, to a very large extent, the history of Hellenistic philosophy in the period immediately before Plotinus has still to be written, and our ignorance of that matter may account for the difficulty we find in bridging the spiritual gap between the Enneads and classical Hellenism’.

 

In fact we are not so ignorant about the history of Greek philosophy, and especially of the Platonic schools, immediately before Plotinus, as Lacombe thinks. For this we should not look at the Work of Orientalists, but at that of Greek scholars. We shall com-

plete this critical review with a reference to two important recent contributions in this field. These two contributions refer to other literature on the subject.

 

C.J. de Vogel, On the Neoplatonic character of Platonism and the Platonic character of Neoplatonism, Mind 62 (1953), 43-64,

 

The author discusses her thesis, which is programmatically announced in the title, under three headings: (1) the direct predecessors of Plotinus; (2) the interpretation of later Platonism; (3) the intermediate stages. As a wealth of important information is given, we will record under each heading only a few points connected with topics discussed in this thesis.

 

(1) There are many precursors of the Plotinian doctrine of an ineffable divine principle below which there is a divine craftsman - the parallel of the Advaitic nirguṇabrahman and Īśvara. In the middle-Platonism of the first century there is a highest transcendent Deity and a Logos or mediator which occupies the intermediate place between this Deity and man, and which is called ‘second God’. Philo of Alexandria called the highest divine entity ‘the God’ and called the Logos ‘god’. Numenius called the first God an ‘inactive king’ and the second ‘craftsman (demiurge)’. In the Corpus Hermeticum the first place is occupied by a spirit (nous) which is God and Father; but there is a ‘second spirit’ which is ‘demiurge’. Apart from these different manifestations of the same idea, it can be said that Platonism was since the first century interpreted as teaching a hierarchy of being.

 

(2) If we pay attention to Aristotle's accounts of the doctrines of the last years of Plato's life, as has been done by L. Robin, W.D. Ross, and others, we have to conclude that Plato in his later years taught a system of philosophy which was marked by the doctrine of a hierarchy of being. The later dialogues also contain indications pointing in this direction. Especially the difficult dialogue Parmenides seems easily to give rise to a Neoplatonic interpretation.

 

(3) Between Plato and the Platonism of the first centuries Antiochus of Ascalon introduced the idea of a ‘philosophy of synthesis’ and at the same time a kind of traditionalism, which did not wish to break the authority of the ‘ancients’ but on the contrary to restore the ‘old doctrine’ by a synthesis of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoa.

Even in the Aristotelian Porch Posidonius of Apamea admitted Platonic elements into his doctrine. Lastly, in the early Academy itself, Speusippus and Xenocrates, adopting the Master's doctrine of first principles, taught a certain hierarchy of being.

 

In the light of these results it is clear, that anyone who claims that there are elements in Plotinus which are of Indian origin because they cannot be ‘easily explained on the basis of the pure philosophical tradition of Hellenism’, will have to investigate carefully and in great detail whether the so called ‘empty’ six centuries between Plato and Plotinus do not provide material showing how history bridged the gap between Platonism and Neoplatonism.

 

The same results follow from the materials dealt with in the following work.

 

P. Merlan, From Platonism to Neoplatonism, The Hague 1953.

 

This stimulating book does not only provide much, partly new, material (the interpretation of which is partly discussed in a book review by A.H. Armstrong)25 but constitutes itself an interesting philosophical study. The author shows in his introduction as also de Vogel does how history has almost always looked upon Platonism and Neoplatonism as having a very close connection or as being virtually identical. The differences were stressed since the XIXth century, but during the last decades there is again a tendency among scholars to bridge the gap.

 

We will mention three points dealt with in this book which are of special interest in the present context.

 

(1) The Neoplatonic idea of deriving the entire universe from the One is a natural development of the systems of Plato's pupils Speusippus and Xenocrates as well as (according to Aristotle), of Plato himself. ‘The most striking feature of this derivative system was the derivation of physicals, i.e. sensibles, from the anterior, non-sensible, unextended, timeless spheres’. An example is the way in which physical properties and even the atoms themselves were derived from mathematical entities.26

(2) One of the two main principles of Speusippus, as known from a newly discovered fragment, is above being and thus ‘strictly comparable to the One of Plotinus and other Neoplatonists’. ‘The particular originality of Speusippus seems to consist in his having described the second principle as above nonbeing’.27

 

(3) The meaning of the notion of ‘being as such’, ‘being qua being’ (ón ḕi ón) in Aristotle's Metaphysics has to be reinterpreted. In this interpretation, the subject matter of Aristotle's Metaphysics becomes indeterminate being, ‘which, because it is indeterminate, is unrestricted and therefore first and fully being’. It is therefore justified to speak about an Aristoteles Neoplatonicus, This indeterminate being leads again to the Neoplatonic One.28

 

Our general conclusion is that it will be the task of future research on the question of Indian influence on Neoplatonism to find aspects of Neoplatonism which cannot be understood against the background of the Greek tradition. In the light of recent research, however, where the six centuries between Plato and Plotinus are no longer neglected, it seems unlikely that such aspects can be found. If they will be nevertheless found and if they are derivable from ideas occurring in the Upaniṣads, it will, in the light of the research of Filliozat, be very likely that the Upaniṣads influenced Plotinus. Apart from this it remains very well possible that Plotinus knew something of Upaniṣadic doctrines and was aware of their similarity to his own ideas.

 

Another question, with which we have not occupied ourselves, is, whether Plotinus' Greek predecessors, and thus he himself indirectly, were influenced by any aspects of Indian thought. In the case of Plato this is at any rate very unlikely.29 But in the case of the Pre-Socratics it is possible, though we can at present not say anything more definite about it.30


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