Alexander the Great and the Brahmins. The Customs of the Brahmins of India (Palladios of Helenopolis) and Correspondence of Alexander and Dindimus (Anonymous).
Beautiful Letters| N° d'inventaire | 20535 |
| Format | 13.5 x 21 |
| Détails | 122 p., paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2016 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | |
The first historians of Alexander the Great briefly mention that when his conquest expedition reached India (between 327 and 324 BC), he encountered Brahmins there and sent one of his companions to inquire about them. These data inspired the author of a story in the first century AD that relates the conversation that the conqueror is said to have had with one of the Brahmins, Dandamis. In the 4th century, Bishop Palladios, author of a work on monks, took up and Christianized this text, in which the ascetic lifestyle of the Brahmins is implicitly presented as a prefiguration, even a model, of that of the monks; he added data borrowed from the historians of Alexander and others brought to him by a lawyer who had visited India. In the same vein, a few decades after Palladios, an anonymous author imagined an exchange of letters between Alexander and the Brahmin Dindimus. The purpose of this work is not the same as that of Palladios, because he intends to denounce the excessive nature of this asceticism, and especially the constraint that imposes it. It is the echo of circles, pagan or even Christian, which disapproved of the asceticism of the monks, in particular their rejection of marriage. He opposes to it an Aristotelian concept of virtue made of moderation and the good use of pleasures.
The first historians of Alexander the Great briefly mention that when his conquest expedition reached India (between 327 and 324 BC), he encountered Brahmins there and sent one of his companions to inquire about them. These data inspired the author of a story in the first century AD that relates the conversation that the conqueror is said to have had with one of the Brahmins, Dandamis. In the 4th century, Bishop Palladios, author of a work on monks, took up and Christianized this text, in which the ascetic lifestyle of the Brahmins is implicitly presented as a prefiguration, even a model, of that of the monks; he added data borrowed from the historians of Alexander and others brought to him by a lawyer who had visited India. In the same vein, a few decades after Palladios, an anonymous author imagined an exchange of letters between Alexander and the Brahmin Dindimus. The purpose of this work is not the same as that of Palladios, because he intends to denounce the excessive nature of this asceticism, and especially the constraint that imposes it. It is the echo of circles, pagan or even Christian, which disapproved of the asceticism of the monks, in particular their rejection of marriage. He opposes to it an Aristotelian concept of virtue made of moderation and the good use of pleasures.