[5] Volume II: main body of the book

     Volume Two is entitled The Han-Hellenistic-Bactrian
Period (1979) and covers the philosophical developments from
the third century B.C.E. to the end of the third century
C.E.  Writers dealing with traditional East-West or
comparative philosophy too often are limited to the fields
included in Volume One.  Therefore, in Volume Two the author
has moved into almost virgin territory for the general reader
and sometimes for the specialist as well.
     The major comparisons in this volume involve significant
pairings:  Rome and India, Rome and China, the philosophers
Philo and Nagarjuna, and Plotinus and Vasubandhu, as well as
Han Confucianists and Neo-Taoists.  In addition, distinctive
Buddhist, Christian, and Jainist religio-philosophical
developments are treated under "Paths and Principles."
     In the Foreword, T.R.V. Murti says of the Nagarjuna-
Philo and Plotinus-Vasubandhu comparisons, "These constitute
some of the brilliant spots of the whole book. . . .  The
comparative study of Vasubandhu with Plotinus is apt,
fruitful and sustained."  Wallace Gray adds, "That study,
more than any other thing in the book, refutes East-West and
other stereotypes and dichotomies for this period and
prefigures later significant trans-Eurasian developments."
As Plott himself writes, "Perhaps the greatest comparison
between Plotinus and Vasubandhu is not between any of the
doctrines we have presented but in the spirit of philosophy
as found in them.  To follow one rather than the other may
mean a difference in method, but their views of the nature,
destiny and dignity of man are virtually the same" (p. 164).
     Although Plott is all too aware of the contrasts,
contradictions, and downright hostilities among the
worldviews he characterizes, he chooses to remind us
forcefully from time to time of their very real comple-
mentariness.  In a nutshell, he is advising us that skeptics
keep us from being too attached to our beliefs and opinions;
founders of religions save us from failure of nerve; mystics
combine the surgery of skepticism with the inner vision of
wisdom to keep us from building too small a house for our
souls.  Plott pays due respect to all of these, writing in a
way which Murti characterizes as free from prejudice.