Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/43

Rh sent some years afterwards, when Augustus was at Samos.

Besides these ambassadors from Porus, there came others from Pandeon, a king whose territories were situated in the southern part of the peninsula; and they had in their suite a Brahmin, who chose to remain in Rome, and attach himself to the court of Augustus as an augur or soothsayer. The Emperor Claudius also received an embassy from Ceylon; and when, in a.d. 103, Trajan marched against the Parthians, some Indian princes sent ambassadors to entreat his arbitration in some difference that had arisen between themselves and their neighbours.

Antoninus Pius, Diocletian, Maximin, Theodosius, Heraclius, and Justinian also received ambassadors from India in 274; and when Aurelian took Palmyra, and made Queen Zenobia prisoner, he found in that country a body of Hindoos, whom he brought to Rome to ornament his triumph.

In the early ages of Christianity, the Indians emigrated in great numbers to the countries of the West, and the inhabitants of Europe showed the same eagerness to visit places remote from the lands of their birth, and more especially India. At the period when the apostles traversed every region of the known world, in obedience to the command of their Divine Master, "Go, and teach all nations," there existed a lively intercourse and fusion between the East and the West. Numerous caravans, impelled by the spirit of commercial enterprise, or of curiosity, travelled continually between Europe and the Indies. The Chinese were less exclusive then than they have been since, and they allowed strangers to penetrate freely into their vast empire, whilst they themselves