When Jesus Met the Buddha!
Greek, Roman, and Christian Encounters with Buddhism in Antiquity
Buddhism was not a major religion in the Roman Empire, but it was not entirely unknown either. The evidence is scant but attests brief, isolated, and scattered encounters: Indian envoys, traveling ascetics, trade networks, and occasional remarks by Christian writers about Buddha and Buddhism.
Buddhism and Hellenism Meet Up in Afghanistan
The Greco-Bactrian kingdom was a Hellenistic Greek state in Central Asia, centered on Bactria, in what is now Afghanistan and adjacent regions. This kingdom emerged in the post-Alexander period, taking shape around the mid-3rd century BC after breaking away from the Seleucid Empire (NB: Kandahar is named after Alexander the Great!). At its height, the Greco-Bactrian kingdom controlled territory across Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and at times parts of Iran, Pakistan, and northern India.
The Greco-Bactrian relationship to Buddhism was initially one of tolerance, but soon after, it became one of active adoption. Buddhist influence reached Bactria through Mauryan missions and the broader exchange of ideas across the northwest Indian frontier, and some Greek communities appear to have adopted Buddhism. There is a reasonable chance that the Indo-Greek king Menander converted to Buddhism. When the Greco-Bactrians expanded into India in the 2nd century BCE - partly due to opportunity and partly because a nomadic group from the Steppe called the Parthians were cutting them off from the West - this interaction intensified, helping create the Indo-Greek Empire in which Buddhism was able to flourish.
The cultural result was Greco-Buddhism: Greek artistic forms and Buddhist themes blended together. A famous literary reflection of this exchange is the Milindapañha, which presents a dialogue between the Indo-Greek king Menander and the Buddhist sage Nāgasena.
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Buddhism Comes to Rome
Ancient authors preserve a striking episode from the age of Augustus: an Indian “gymnosophist” - a traveling ascetic - arrived in Rome as part of an Indian delegation and soon after publicly self-immolated in Athens as a show of his religious devotion and zeal. The event is reported by Strabo and Cassius Dio. It might even lie behind Paul’s remark in 1 Corinthians 13 when he says, “if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (v. 3).
Modern scholars usually treat this episode as one of the clearest signs that Roman elites knew at least something of Indian ascetic traditions, even if they did not always distinguish Buddhism from other Indian religious and philosophies. Some modern reconstructions also point to Ashokan missions in the third century BC and long-distance trade from India as the broader context for Buddhist westward contact, though direct evidence of organized Buddhist communities in Rome itself remains absent.
In any case, the few references to Buddhism that we have in Roman sources are less important for what they prove about direct contact with Buddhism than for showing that Buddhism had entered educated Mediterranean conversations and was now on their radar.
Christian statements about Buddhism
Early Christian writers do not treat Buddhism as a major religious rival, but they do mention it in apologetic and polemical contexts. Clement of Alexandria, writing in the late second century, is the earliest surviving Christian author to mention Buddha by name, referring to Indians “persuaded by the precepts of Boutta.”
Later, in the fourth century, Jerome could say that the “Gymnosophists of India” authoritatively held that Buddha was born “through the side of a virgin,” showing that some Christian writers had at least secondhand knowledge of Buddhist traditions.
Cyril of Jerusalem, however, places a figure called “Buddas” in a genealogy of heresy that eventually evolved into Manichaeism.
In other words, Christian authors preserve both curiosity and confusion about Buddhism: admiration for Indian ascetic discipline on the one hand, but suspicion and misidentification on the other hand.
Summary
The Roman world was more connected to the Indian subcontinent than we imagine. While there was no Roman “Richard Gere,” Buddhism was nonetheless present at the edges of the empire through diplomats, travelers, merchants, maybe missionaries, and isolated reports. Eventually, however, Buddhism did not become a major religion in Central and Eastern Asia, but with echoes and influences as far away as the Mediterranean.
If you want to know more, then check out:
William Dalrymple, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World.
Nathanael Andrade, The Journey of Christianity to India in Late Antiquity: Networks and the Movement of Culture.
Really fascinating.