ABSTRACT
THE .History of India receives a ne\v light in the Rationalistic Period, as it was in this period that the Greeks visited India and also compiled accounts of it from report. Greek civilisation and national life had not commenced during the long centuries of the Vedic Age in India. Again, the rude heroes of the Trojan War knew little of their civilised but distant contemporaries, the Hindus of the Epic Age. The first two epochs of Hindu history receive no light therefore frcm Greek literature. The first Greek who is supposed to have borrowed his learning-from the Hindus is the philosopher Pythagoras. He lived in the sixth century before Christ, i.e., in the Rationalistic Period of Hindu history, and his theories and ideas throw some light on the prevailing ideas of the Hindus of that age He learnt the Doctrine of Transmigration of Souls and the Doctrine of Final Beatitude from the Upanishads and the current faith of the Hindus, and his ascetic observances and prohibition to eat flesh and beans were also borrowed from India. He learnt his elementary geometry from the Sulva Sutras ; his notion of the virtues of nun.hers was borrowed from Sankhya Philosophy; and lastly, his idea of the five elements was essentially an Indii..n idea.
