The Buddhists head West - far West

The other night, SBS showed the Buddhist action/comedy movie Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back.  (I didn't stay up for all of it, but it's a sequel to what I think was the much better Stephen Chow movie Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons.)

The journey the movies (and novel, and TV series Monkey) references is from China to India.  But I didn't realise that Buddhists from India had been heading quite far West, even before the time of Christ.

Indian emperor Ashoka apparently sent Buddhist missionaries West in the 3rd century BC, and it appears possible that there were some in Alexandria in Egypt.   This Ashoka guy sounds pretty interesting, and he is the subject of a lengthy Wikipedia entry.  I've heard the name before, probably, but us Westerners don't pay much heed to anything that was going on in India if it didn't involve Europeans there, do we?

He apparently had a reputation for violence, but converted to Buddhism after getting the guilts over a particularly big war of conquest.  From his Wikipedia entry:

Ashoka waged a destructive war against the state of Kalinga (modern Odisha),^[7] which he conquered in about 260 BCE.^[8] He converted to Buddhism^[7] after witnessing the mass deaths of the Kalinga War, which he had waged out of a desire for conquest and which reportedly directly resulted in more than 100,000 deaths and 150,000 deportations.^[9] He is remembered for the Ashoka pillars and edicts, for sending Buddhist monks to Sri Lanka and Central Asia, and for establishing monuments marking several significant sites in the life of Gautama Buddha.^[10] 

Now, it would seem that the idea that Ashoka's monks set up shop near Alexandria in Egypt has some pretty slender evidence.   I haven't read all of this paper, but it's an interesting one about the identity of a particular religious community.  It all seems very up in the air, even though everyone agrees that the occasional Indian is likely to have been in Alexandria at the time, and it wouldn't be completely surprising if at least the odd monk was amongst them.

Anyway, getting closer to the time of Christ, there was the "Pandion embassy"incident which is well attested:

Roman historical accounts describe an embassy sent by the "Indian king Porus (Pandion (?) Pandya (?) or Pandita (?)^{[citation needed]}) to Caesar Augustus sometime between 22 BC and 13 AD. The embassy was travelling with a diplomatic letter on a skin in Greek, and one of its members was a sramana who burned himself alive in Athens to demonstrate his faith. The event made a sensation and was described by Nicolaus of Damascus, who met the embassy at Antioch (near present day Antakya in Turkey) and related by Strabo (XV,1,73 ^[2]) and Dio Cassius (liv, 9).

The problem is, it seems no one is 100% sure if this guy was like your average Indian, Hindu holy man, or a Buddhist.

I find it blackly amusing that it seems Indians had a habit of travelling to the West and burning themselves alive to impress the locals:

Plutarch (died 120 AD) in his Life of Alexander, after discussing the self-immolation of Calanus of India (Kalanos) writes:

The same thing was done long after by another Indian who came with Caesar to Athens, where they still show you "the Indian's Monument."^[16]

We all know of modern cases of Buddhist self immolation as a form of protest.   These ancient cases seem to be more about how impressing people with how seriously they take their religion.   On this topic, I see there is a 2015 paper in the Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies about the matter:

The Self-immolation of Kalanos and other Luminous Encounters Among Greeks and Indian Buddhists in the Hellenistic World

Is he trying to be a bit witty by use of the word "luminous" like that.  (I haven't read it yet.)

Anyway, I'll end by noting that it's been an improbable (probably Theosophical?) idea for a century or so that Jesus headed East before his public ministry and got some ideas from Indian religions.

As it turns out, though, it was the other way around:  the East really came to him, or his region, before his time. 

Update:

I see that in the Wikipedia entry on the self immolating Kalanos, he is said to be Hindu, rather than Buddhist:

Kalanos, also spelled Calanus (Ancient Greek: Καλανὸς)^[1] (c. 398 – 323 BCE), was a gymnosophist, a Hindu Brahmin^[2][3][4][5] and philosopher from Taxila^[6] who accompanied Alexander the Great to Persis and later self-immolated himself by entering into a Holy Pyre, in front of Alexander and his army. Diodorus Siculus called him Caranus (Ancient Greek: Κάρανος).^[7] He did not flinch while his body was burning. He bode goodbye to the soldiers but not to Alexander. He communicated to Alexander that he would meet him in Babylon. Alexander died exactly a year later in Babylon. ^[8] It was from Kalanos that Alexander came to know of Dandamis, the leader of their group, whom Alexander later went to meet in the forest.^[9]

 And the reason for his suicide?  Just old and tired, it seems:

He was seventy-three years of age at time of his death.^[18] When the Persian weather and travel had weakened him, he informed Alexander that he would prefer to die rather than live as an invalid. He decided to take his life by self-immolation.^[19] Although Alexander tried to dissuade him from this course of action, upon Kalanos' insistence the job of building a pyre was entrusted to Ptolemy.^[18] Kalanos is mentioned also by Alexander's admirals, Nearchus and Chares of Mytilene.^[20] The city where this immolation took place was Susa in the year 323 BC.^[13] Kalanos distributed all the costly gifts he got from the king to the people and wore just a garland of flowers and chanted vedic hymns.^[21][22][3] He presented his horse to one of his Greek pupils named Lysimachus.^[23] He did not flinch as he burnt to the astonishment of those who watched.^[14][24][25]

 Couldn't he just sneak off and drink some hemlock or something?   Seems a bit of an attention seeker.