Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/141

 122 one wears the woollen surcoat, and that when it divests itself of the hody with which it is en- wrapped it becomes manifest to the eye. There is war, the Brachhmans bold, in the body where- with they are clothed, and they regard the body as being the fruitful source of wars, and, as we have already shown, fight against it like soldiers in battle contending against the enemy. They maintain, moreover, that all men are held in bond- age, like prisoners of war,^ to their own innate enemies, the sensual appetites, gluttony, anger, joy, grief, longing desire, and such like, while it is only the man who has triumphed over these enemies who goes to God. D a n d a m i s accord- higlyi to whom Alexander the Makedonian paid a visit, is spoken of by the Brachhmans as a god be- cause he conquered in the warfare against the body, and on the other hand they condemn K a 1 a- n o s as one who had impiously apostatized from their philosophy. The Brachhmans, therefore, when they have shuffled off the body, see the pure sunlight as fish see it when they spring up out of the water into the air. T Compare Plato, Phmdo, cap. 32, where Sokratf a speaks of the soul as at present confined in the body as in a species o£ prison. This was a doctrine of the Pythagoreans, whose philosophy, even in its most striking peculiarities, bears such a close resemblance to the Indian as greatly to favour the supposition that it was directly borrowed from it. There was even a tradition that Pythagoras had yisited India.