What is foreign? Why is something foreign to someone? How does one deal with the foreign? These are the main questions that shape the first, theoretical part of the work. The aim is to find models that can describe and capture the cognitive processes of perceiving foreignness in the Middle Ages. The second, practical part applies the results obtained to a special case of medieval perception of foreignness: the accounts of the Indian sages, the Brahmins, and Gymnosophists, whom Alexander the Great is said to have encountered on his journey to India, and who found a rich literary afterlife, especially - though not exclusively - in the Alexander romances, extending into the early modern period. The focus is less on tracing the true, authentic image of the Indian sages; even the oldest ancient accounts are largely based on literary schemas for depicting foreign, distant wonder peoples. Rather, the question is how the lives and actions of the sages - particularly in contrast to Alexander's deeds - are imagined by the texts, what processes were at work in the formation of a literary tradition, and what functionalizations and valuations the tradition was open to at different times.