In fact, might there not in this be a remote influence of the _mounis_ of India?
Perhaps some of those wandering Buddhist monks who overran the world, as the first Franciscans did in later times, preaching by their actions and converting people who knew not their language, might have turned their steps toward Judea, as they certainly did toward Syria and Babylon ?[5] On this point we have no certainty.

Babylon had become for some time a true focus of Buddhism.

Boudasp (Bodhisattva) was reputed a wise Chaldean, and the founder of Sabeism.

_Sabeism_ was, as its etymology indicates,[6] _baptism_--that is to say, the religion of many baptisms--the origin of the sect still existing called "Christians of St.John," or Mendaites, which the Arabs call _el-Mogtasila_, "the Baptists."[7] It is difficult to unravel these vague analogies.

The sects floating between Judaism, Christianity, Baptism, and Sabeism, which we find in the region beyond the Jordan during the first centuries of our era,[8] present to criticism the most singular problem, in consequence of the confused accounts of them which have come down to us.