This is interesting, but I don't believe it's all that surprising. Medieval Europe was very well connected. Alfred himself went to Rome when he was a child and had an extensive cultural exchange with mainland Europe. It is also well known, as the article points out, that interactions with Asia was much more widespread than what is perhaps understood by most people today (who still sees it as a dark age).

This can also be seen by the fact that Christian communities existed, not only in India, but also in China as early as the 7th Century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_China#Earliest...