Hinduism in the Roman Empire： A Quick Overview

Let's talk about Hinduism in the Roman Empire. Or at least, the little bit that we can. Anyway, so this statue is called the Pompeii Lakshmi and it was discovered in 1938 in Pompeii, hence the name. So, who is Lakshmi? She is one of the principal Hindu goddesses and one of the oldest, but this probably is not what is being depicted. Instead, this is probably a Yakshi, which is a type of nature spirit in Hinduism. It stands about 25 centimeters or about 10 inches in height and it is made of ivory. So, where did this come from? Well, it was discovered in a house in Pompeii, which archaeologists call the House of Four Styles. And it probably belonged to, if not a trader or a businessman, then certainly someone who had enough money to either collect items from India or who had enough money and time to travel to India because the house in question was just stuffed full of objects from that region, including this statue. Now, on the one hand, this thing is simply amazing because it speaks to the presence of Indo-Roman relations and it was actually used as a focus point for a recent conference between the Indian and the Italian governments. But on the other hand, this probably should not come as much of a surprise. We know Roman merchants did go to India, often by way of the Red Sea. And we know Indians came back to Rome as well. A king of one of the states located there dispatched a diplomatic mission in the first century and a Gymnosophist, the Greco-Roman term for Indian philosophers and ascetics, set himself on fire in the presence of Augustus. Buddhism made a minor presence in the Roman Empire, especially in Egypt, so we should not necessarily be entirely surprised that Hindu statues show up in Roman territory. Now, the interesting thing about the Pompeii Lakshmi is that not only does the statue have writing on it, which appears to reference Shiva, but this actually appears to be a syncretistic statue because art historians have looked at this thing and they've identified elements of Venus, in particular, the cherubs on either side of the statue. Now, outside of this, we do not have direct evidence for much Hindu presence in the Roman Empire, but given that both statues of the Buddha and Sanskrit writing have recently been discovered at ports in Roman Egypt, and given that Greeks encountered both Buddhism and Hinduism in the wake of Alexander's campaign in India, we probably should not be surprised if we find more evidence of some sort of Hindu presence in Rome. Although if we do, it likely would be extremely small. We recently found a whole Roman town in southern France, and there have been instances of Chinese swords being found in Roman territory, and one of the Roman emperors actually had a little statue of the Buddha, so much, much more remains to be discovered, and who knows, the Pompeii Lakshmi may very well not be the only one of its kind.