The answer to this question, as it seems to us, is hidden in the obscurity of the religious communities. We cannot, however, go so far as to agree with those who would cut the gordian knot by asserting dogmatically that the ascetic communities in Syria and Egypt were founded by these Buddhist propagandists. Already even in Greece itself were not only Pythagorean but even prior to them Orphic communities, for even on this ground we believe that Pythagoras rather developed what he found already existing, than that he established something entirely new. And if they were found in Greece, much more then is it reasonable to suppose that such communities already existed in Syria, Arabia, and Egypt, whose populations were given far more to religious exercises than the sceptical and laughter-loving Greeks. It is, however, credible that in such communities, if anywhere, Buddhist propaganda would find an appreciative and attentive audience; but even so it is remarkable that they have left no distinctly direct trace of their influence. Nevertheless, both by the sea way and by the great caravan route there was an ever open line of communication between India and the Empire of the successors of Alexander; and it is even permissible to speculate, that if we could recover a catalogue of the great Alexandrian library, for instance, we should perchance find that in it Indian MSS. were to be found among the other rolls and parchments of the scriptures of the nations. Indeed, there are phrases in the oldest treatises of the Trismegistic Hermetic literature which can be so closely paralleled with phrases in the Upaniṣhads and in the Bhagavad Gītā, that one is almost tempted to believe that the writers had some acquaintance with the general contents of these Brāhmanical scriptures. The Trismegistic literature had its genesis in Egypt, and its earliest deposit must be dated at least in the first century A.D., if it cannot even be pushed back earlier. Even more striking is the similarity between the lofty mystic metaphysic of the Gnostic doctor Basilides, who lived at the end of the first and beginning of the second century A.D., and Vedāntic ideas. Moreover, both the Hermetic and the Basilidean schools and their immediate predecessors were devoted to a stern self-discipline and deep philosophical study which would make them welcome eagerly any philosopher or mystic student who might come from the far East.