Professor Kuenen[29] have most exhaustively and decisively exposed the vanity of such speculations, which, on the whole, may be regarded as a good confirmation of a saying uttered by Professor H. H. Wilson some thirty years ago, in reference to those who would derive Christianity from Indian sources, that “the disposition to draw impossible analogies is not yet wholly extinct.” As far as the history of Buddhism can be traced it presents no actual point of contact with either Syria or Egypt or Europe. Even after it became a missionary religion its progress was never westwards, and at no period did it reach further in this direction than the region now known as Afghanistan. The civilisation of the West offered no opportunity for its enthusiasm, and none of the great Western cities appear in its records. In the few scattered extracts which survive of the writings of those Greeks who visited India during or subsequent to the period of Alexander’s invasion, there is no indication of a knowledge of Buddhism, nor any allusion to Buddha by name. We have to come down to the times of Clement of Alexandria[30] and of Bardesanes the Syrian before we have any tangible evidence of the slightest acquaintance on the part of the West with Buddhism. The first writer mentions Buddha by name, the second distinguishes his monks from the Brahmans, and gives some details as to their customs, but it is impossible from their statements to conjecture how much they knew of the faith to which they alluded, and most absurd to infer from them that they were affected with the slightest admiration for it.[31]