I recently heard information being thrown around by a spiritual guru - that the Baalbek temple had ancient Indian influence, without providing any solid evidence. The only evidence that is given is that of the presence of lotus carvings which apparently were never found in the region so they came from India, and the fact that huge pillars could not have been erected by humans, so elephants were brought in from India. The guru goes on to say that students in Lebanon learn this in school. I have tried to find read up on some of this to see there are any references to any such influence but couldn't find any. Even the Wikipedia article on the Baalbek temple has zero reference to any sort of Indian influence. Is there any shred of truth to this, or is it just peddling misinformation?
I'll say a few things as caveats, but I would like to reply based on the suspicion that I may be the only person on this sub who has actually been to Baalbek:
However:
There aren't actually that many ceilings at Baalbek:
Here's the interior of the Temple of Bacchus.
I, for one, didn't notice any overwhelming abundance of lotus carvings. While the Lotus may be associated with India, it also does, in fact, exist in Europe (which is how you end up with Homer's 'Lotus Eaters.'" What I did notice a lot of were corinthian columns: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Baalbek-Bacchus-Details.jpg which as far as I'm aware don't appear in antique Hindu-Indian construction whatsoever.
In other words, I'm not seeing much evidence for this hindu theory, and I'm instead seeing a lot of evidence for the standard theory that Baalbek is Roman.
