The origins and the genesis of Greco-Buddhism in India and Bactria

The art. is dedicated to the origins and the genesis of so-called Greco-Buddhism, syncretic phenomenon in the Eurasian culture during the Hellenistic epoch (IV–I centuries BC) and the subsequent periods. The cultural-historical premises of the appearance of this phenomenon is examined in this work: the history of the contact of Hellenes with the culture of Eastern Iran and Hindustan, the retrospective review of development of the Greeks and Indians religious-philosophical attitude the day before Macedonian king Alexander’s army invasion, the political and social reality, when the two cultural poles of the Old World came into contact. The main point of the art. is the analysis of the direct contact of the two ideological platforms – the Greek and Indian religious-philosophical ideas – in the period of Alexander’s Indian campaign and Onesicritus’ literary heritage, who described the meeting between the king and himself with gymnosophists. In future exactly these co-operations have carried to appearance and spreading of Greco-Buddhism on the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms territories. When the Greek kings power was ended, Greco-Buddhism got its further development during the Kushan period and began its procession to the Far East through the Chinese Empire lands.