The first recorded contact between yoga and western thought occurred during the times of Plato (428–348 BCE) and his disciple Aristotle (384–322 BCE). The Greeks had heard much about the Indian yogis, whom they called gymnosophists (“naked philosophers”) and greatly admired their depth of wisdom.

In 327 BCE Alexander the Great invaded a small portion of India, only to abandon it, exhausted, after two years and move on to Persia. Alexander the Great had been instilled with a deep appreciation of philosophy by his master Aristotle as well as by the unorthodox teacher Diogenes, and was eager to learn from yogis. The Greek historian Plutarch recounts two interesting episodes in the life of Alexander in this respect.

Once Alexander sent one of his messengers, Onesikritos (a student of Diogenes) to summon a great forest-dwelling sage called Dandini (known as Dandamis in Greek) to come to Alexander’s camp and engage in some philosophical discourse with him. The sage, absorbed in blissful contemplation, gave no answer. Onesikritos warned the yogi that Alexander did not take kindly to not being obeyed, and that he would have the sage put to death if he did not comply with his request. To which Dandini calmly remarked that the tyrant may well cut off his head, but could never disturb the peace of his soul… something that Alexander had apparently never found in all his wanderings and conquests. When Alexander received the message, he was seized by the greatest desire to meet such a fearless sage, and came to him willingly. The great yogi taught him that the body belongs to man, but that man does not belong to the body, so even beheading does not bring any suffering to one established in soul consciousness.

Another time, Alexander’s army had captured a large group of prisoners in a fierce battle, amongst which were ten brahmin yogis. Alexander decided to test their wisdom with some trick questions, specifying that whoever gave the worst answer would be the first to die. Having appointed the oldest brahmin to be the judge of the competition, he began the interrogation.

To the first yogi he asked, “Which be the more numerous, the living or the dead?” “The living,” said the yogi, “because the dead no longer count.”
“Which breeds more creatures, the sea or the land?” Alexander asked the second. “The land,” was his answer, “because the sea is only a part of it.”
Turning to the third brahmin, he asked “Which is the cleverest of beasts?”
“The one we have not found yet” he replied.
Alexander asked the fourth what argument he had used to stir up the Indians to fight against him, and he answered: “Only that one should either live nobly or die nobly.”
“Which existed first, the day or the night?” he asked the fifth yogi. “The day was first… by one day” he answered. As Alexander looked dissatisfied with this answer, the sage added: “Strange questions deserve strange answers.”
“What should a man do to make himself loved?” asked Alexander. The sixth yogi replied: “Be powerful without making yourself be feared.”
Alexander then asked a question very dear to his heart “What does a man have to do to become a god?” The seventh yogi responded: “Do what is impossible for a man to do.”
“Which is stronger, life or death?” he questioned the eighth yogi, who responded: “Life, because it bears so many miseries.”
To the ninth yogi he asked “How long is it proper for a man to live?”, and he said: “Until it seems better to die.”
Finally, Alexander turned to the last yogi officiating as the judge, and asked him for his verdict. The old sage said that each one had answered worse than the other. “You will die first, then, for delivering such a judgment,” said Alexander. “Not so, mighty king” said the yogi, “as you said that you would kill first the one who made the worst answer.”
Alexander was so impressed with each of the ten yogis’ sagacity that he set them all free and rewarded them richly. He further requested the oldest one, Swami Sphines, to stay on as his personal guide and instructor, to which the sage agreed.
Swami Sphines became known as Kalanos in Greek—due to the old saint’s custom of always uttering the name of his chosen deity, Kali.
Kalanos accompanied Alexander to Persia, where he left his body in extraordinary circumstances. Sensing the time of his death coming near, he embraced all his intimate friends, but he only looked at Alexander and addressed him with the words “I shall meet you shortly in Babylon”. He then calmly entered his own funeral pyre and let himself be consumed to ashes in front of the whole Macedonian army. A year later, on June 13, 323 BCE, Alexander died outside the walls of Babylon. Kalanos’ words had proved true, and guru and disciple were reunited beyond life and death.

Richard Stoneman, Legends of Alexander the Great. London and Rutland, Vermont: J. M. Dent and Charles E. Tuttle, 1994. Pp. 112. $8.50. ISBN 0-460-87514-0.

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Reviewed by Thomas M. Banchich, Canisius College (banchict@ccmac.canisius.edu).
Some readers of this review will know Richard Stoneman as the energetic classics and philosophy editor for Routledge & Kegan Paul; others will recognize him through Daphne into Laurel: English Translations of Classical Poetry From Chaucer to the Present (London: Duckworth, 1982), his first book, or through his 1991 Penguin, The Greek Alexander Romance; some, too, will have noted his recent articles on Alexander and the East¹; and finally, a few, better acquainted, will have heard him mention, or have even met, his son, Alexander. Neatly within parameters suggested by the above -- an interest in books; in the relationship between classical and English literature; in the Alexander Romance, particularly its portrayal of the inhabitants of the East; and in Alexander[s] -- falls Legends of Alexander the Great.
A paperback, handsomely produced and carefully edited in the tradition of the Everyman Library of which it is a part, Legends of Alexander contains a selection of fourteen texts illustrative of the medieval view of Alexander in general and, in particular, of Medieval England's reception and adaptation of the Alexander tradition. Of these fourteen, Stoneman emphasizes six: (i) Alexander's Letter to Aristotle about India; (ii) On the Wonders of the East; (iii) a translation of I.19 of the 9th-century Greek Chronicle of George the Monk; (iv) On the Life of the Brahmans, attributed to a certain Palladius; (v) The Correspondence of Alexander and Dindimus; and (vi) Alexander the Great's Journey to Paradise. Two appendices treat the remainder: Appendix I) a translation of the Greek Berlin Papyrus 13044, which describes Alexander's interrogation of the Gymnosophists; Appendix II i and ii) Stoneman's "modernised" excerpts from the so-called Thornton "Life of Alexander" and from King Alisaundre; and II iii-vii) selections from The Book of Sir John Mandeville; from the so-called Alliterative "Alexander B"; from the Confessio Amantis of Chaucer's friend John Gower; from a chapbook of 1683 entitled The Upright Lives of the Heathens Briefly Noted; and from Gilbert Hay's The Buik of Alexander, this last in "modernised" form.
In an admirably clear Introduction (pp. ix-xlii), Stoneman justifies these selections and their organization on the basis of the role each played in the formation of the medieval portrayal of Alexander. This picture, as is well known, derives from four principal sources: Curtius Rufus' account of Alexander; the Alexander Romance read in the now-lost Latin translation of the 10th-century Archpriest of Naples, Leo, the Nativitas et Victoria Alexandri Magni; a nexus of Latin, Spanish, and Hebrew works connected to the Arabic texts of Hunayn ibn Ishaq (9th c.) and Yahya ibn Batrik (10th c.), both of whom expanded on Syriac texts which may reflect Greek originals; and various brief accounts of Alexander's more singular exploits. Five of Stoneman's six primary texts belong to this last group, and all offer "accounts of [Alexander's] adventures in India and beyond, which contributed to the non-military aspect of the medieval Alexander, the sage and seeker after wisdom" (Stoneman, p. xi). Stoneman justifies the remaining primary selection -- that of George the Monk -- because it appears to reflect a later Greek development of the common tradition represented by his other five texts.
Each major text is interesting in its own right. Stoneman's translation of Alexander's Letter to Aristotle about India is based on a 10th-century Italian-Latin version of a 7th-century Latin manuscript of the same work. The 10th century also saw an Old English translation of the Letter, which, Stoneman observes (p. xix), makes it "the first Alexander text to be translated into a medieval language." At the other end of the temporal scale, by the early 4th century a Greek version of the Letter to Aristotle was in circulation, as demonstrated by its interpolation into recension A of the Alexander Romance.² The content of the Letter to Aristotle depends heavily, but hardly totally, on the now-lost Indica of Ctesias (5th c. B.C., FgrH no. 688, frs. 45-52) and exerted a determinant influence on subsequent treatments of the East.

One of the most frequently copied and widely disseminated books in Europe from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries was the Secret of Secrets.  Formally it contains advice from the great philosopher Aristotle to the world-conqueror Alexander the Great.  Aristotle’s advice covers everything from Alexander’s diet and personal hygiene to how to conduct war.  Enmeshed with this technical advice are elite political interests responding to changing political circumstances across more than a millennium.
The Secret of Secrets includes a purported exchange of letters between Aristotle and Alexander.  According to Arabic manuscripts probably conveying text written before 987, Alexander wrote to Aristotle:

O my excellent preceptor and just minister, I inform you that I have found in the land of Persia men possessing sound judgement and powerful understanding, who are ambitious of bearing rule.  Hence I have decided to put them all to death.  What is your opinion in this matter? [1]

Aristotle responded:

It is no use putting to death the men you have conquered; for their land will, by the laws of nature, breed another generation which will be similar.  The character of these men is determined by the nature of the air of their country and the waters they habitually drink.  The best course for you is to accept them as they are, and to seek to accommodate them to your concepts by winning them over through kindness. [2]

According to the Secret of Secrets, Alexander followed Aristotle’s advice.  The Persians hence became Alexander’s most loyal subjects.   The Secret of Secrets credits Aristotle for Alexander’s famous conquests:

By following his {Aristotle’s} good advice and obeying his commands, Alexander achieved his famous conquests of cities and countries, and ruled supreme in the regions of the earth far and wide, Arabs as well as Persians coming under his sway; nor did he {Alexander} ever oppose him {Aristotle} in word or deed. [3]

This account of Aristotle’s advice to Alexander bolsters the value of counselors, secretaries, and administrative elites.  Such persons undoubtedly played an important role in ensuring that the Secret of Secrets was frequently copied and widely disseminated.
The political context of Aristotle’s advice to Alexander in the Secret of Secrets can plausibly be specified more precisely.  The Arab conquerors of the Persian Sassanian Empire needed skilled administrators.  Politically ambitious Persian men such as ibn al-Muqaffa sought from the Arab conquerors recognition as persons “possessing sound judgment and powerful understanding.”[4]  The Arabs were naturally suspicious of the Persians’ political loyalty.  The political question for the Arab rulers was whether to wipe out the Persian elite or co-opt them into Arab-ruled government.  Aristotle’s advice favored Arab accommodation of the Persian elite.
Aristotle’s specific reason for Alexander accommodating the Persian elite draws upon Galenic-Hippocratic technical knowledge.  In his treatise On Airs, Waters, and Places, Hippocrates described the importance of a place’s airs and waters in shaping the characters of persons.  In the mid-ninth century, Hunayn ibn Ishaq translated Hippocrates’ treatise into Arabic.  Hunayn also wrote a commentary on it.  Hunayn’s nephew Hubaysh translated into Arabic Galen’s commentary on Hippocrates’ treatise.[5]  Aristotle’s advice on the Persian elites was based upon Greek knowledge known in Arabic by the mid-ninth century.
In the Secret of Secrets, a story of a Zoroastrian and a Jew supports Aristotle’s advice by teaching Islamic confidence in God’s justice in dealing with treacherous others.  The Zoroastrian was riding on a mule and carrying ample provisions.  The Jew was walking and bereft of provisions.  The Zoroastrian asked the Jew about his faith.  The Jew described his faith and declared that it was lawful for him to shed the blood and take the possessions of non-Jews.  The Jew in turn asked the Zoroastrian about his faith.  The Zoroastrian declared that he wished well to all persons.  The Jew questioned the Zoroastrian further:

Said the Jew: “But if you are treated with cruelty and oppression, what will you do?”  The Zoroastrian replied, “I know that in Heaven there is a God who is all-knowing, just and wise.  Nothing is hidden from Him of what His creatures do.  He rewards those who do good for their good deeds and punishes the evil-doers for their evil actions.” [6]