There's a woman I read about a while back who did here PhD thesis on the notion that David Hume's contribution to the Enlightenment was inspired by conversations with a Jesuit monk who had returned to France from a long engagement in a Buddhist area of India. DDG is telling me it might be Allison Gopnik but I've no recollection of the name, only the contents.

She proved that he made a trip to a town where the monk lived after his return, and the library contained a copy of his reports. She could not prove more than opportunity but she strongly suspects that Hume not only read the report but may have met with the monk as well.