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 BUDDHIST 
 
 TEXTS 
 IN JOHN 
 
 EDMUNDS 
 
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tmimr^],r) mumh. 
 
 -^•^^^:*. 
 
 J. — uvninh. 
 
 Toa lu t\«. ion t^jju fi^-jn flTja'rtj imn 
 cmhn ** omj xJmwu'JiK 2wu ilwifiunltsil. 
 
 Specimen page of the King of Siam's edition 
 of the Buddhist Scriptures in Pali. (Bangkok, 
 1894, 39 vols., octavo.) Photographed by Julius 
 F. Sachse, 1899, and reduced from octavo size. 
 
Buddhist Texts Quoted 
 as Scripture 
 
 BY THE 
 
 GOSPEL OF JOHN : 
 a discovery in the lower criticism. 
 
 {^John r/y. 38 ; Xll. 34.) 
 
 By ALBERT J. tEpMUNDS, 
 Author of Buddhist and Christian Gospels, 
 
 Philadelphia : 
 
 Maurice Brix, 129 South Fifteenth Street, and A. J. Edmunds, 
 
 241 West Duval Street. 
 
 1906. 
 
9An 
 
 Copyright 
 
 1906 
 
 by Albert J. Edmunds. 
 
/«^ ^ V ' '^ • 
 
 ^^€^>^ 
 
 Dedicated to my friend MAURICE BRIX. 
 
 mRORSSS 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Since the manuscript of Buddhist and Christian 
 Gospels was despatched to Japan in September, 
 1904, I have continued to find parallels between 
 the two great religions. A remarkable one, dis- 
 covered this spring in a Buddhist book newly 
 published by the London Pali Text Society, has 
 called forth the present essay. For fuller informa- 
 tion my readers must refer to the Toky5 book. 
 
 Our somewhat provincial education has not yet 
 made us realize that, at the time of Christ, India 
 was one of the four great Powers of the earth. 
 The other three were China, Rome and Parthia. 
 But India was the greatest intellectually, and her 
 then most popular religion. Buddhism, was the 
 dominant spiritual force upon the continent of 
 Asia. 
 
 It is to be regretted that so few theologians and 
 even Orientalists are acquainted with Pali literature 
 Our culture has too long been bounded by the 
 River Euphrates, and the central fact of the world's 
 religious history has not yet taken its place in the 
 historical imagination of Europe and America. 
 That central fact is this : — The two greatest mission- 
 ary religions, each emanating from a wonderful per- 
 sonality, started from the Holy Land of antiquity,* 
 and proceeded in opposite directions around the 
 
 *The region between the Ganges and the Nile. See 
 Buddhist and Christian Gospels, Historical Introduction. 
 
world. Each went as far as it could go until it 
 reached the Pacific Ocean ; and now, in Japan and 
 the United States, these two great world- faiths are 
 facing each other. Henceforth the Pacific Ocean, 
 instead of the Mediterranean Sea, must be the 
 centre of our culture ; and the two religions, instead 
 of being enemies, must be friends. 
 
 241 West Duval Street, 
 Germantown : 
 
 May 30 — July 4, 1906. 
 
BUDDHIST TEXTS QUOTED AS 
 
 SCRIPTURE 
 
 BY THE GOSPEL OF JOHN. 
 
 / It is well known, that there are, in the New 
 
 Testament, quotations from other literatures than 
 the Hebrew and the books of its Canon, as when 
 
 \ Paul quotes the Greek poet Aratus (i) and Jude the 
 
 \ apocryphal book of Enoch. (2) 
 
 In the Gospel of Mark there is a quotation, as if 
 / from Scripture, which does not occur in the Old 
 
 / Testament, but which Ren del Harris discovered in 
 a midrash on Genesis ascribed to Philo. (3) It 
 evidently emanates from some early commentary 
 
 \ or apocryphal work known to the Evangelist. 
 
 MARK IX. 13. 
 I say unto you, that Elijah is come, and they 
 have also done unto him whatsoever they 
 listed, even as it is written of him. 
 
 Nowhere does the Old Testament foretell that 
 the second Elijah will be persecuted. The quota- 
 tion is therefore apocryphal or extra-Judaic. 
 
 (i) Acts XVII. 28. 
 
 (2) Jude 14 and 15. 
 
 (3) Philonis Judaei Alexandrini libri Antiquitatum, Quaes- 
 tionum et Solutionum in Genesin. Basileae, 1527, folio. 
 
Scholars have long been accustomed to such 
 quotations, and are not astonished thereat when 
 they spring from the literature that surrounded the 
 Judseans. But modern research has made it clear 
 that a wider range of influence aflected the com- 
 position of the New Testament than the books of 
 the Hebrews, the Greeks and the Romans. Here- 
 tofore, these have been our three classic nations, 
 and their common lake, the Mediterranean, has 
 been our central sea ; but since the acquisition of 
 India by the English in 1757, and especially since 
 that of the Philippines by ourselves, the sacred 
 books of Asia have widened our horizon. The 
 Pacific Ocean is now our central sea, and to our 
 classical peoples we have added several more, with 
 India first and foremost. We have found that 
 ndia was the home of the ancient fable, the mother 
 of i^sop and of the Arabian Nights. A folk-lorist 
 has traced Indian fables in the Jewish Talmud, one 
 of which can be dated at A. D. 118. (4) 
 
 Three stories in the Christian Apocryphal Gospels 
 are also found in that great Buddhist apocryphal 
 gospel, the Lalita Vistara^ (5) which contains a 
 
 (4) See ^sop's Fables. Edited by Joseph Jacobs. 
 London, 1889. 
 
 (5) These stories are: the obeisance of idols to the 
 Divine Child in a temple ; his supernatural knowledge of the 
 alphabet ; and his being lost by his parents and found engaged 
 in religious activity. These parallels will all be fully treated 
 in my next edition of Buddhist and Christian Gospels. My 
 attention has been directed to them by the works of Pfleiderer 
 and Van Eysinga. 
 
 t 
 
poetical account of Buddha's early life, and was 
 translated into Chinese in the seventh century, 
 while a legendary life of Buddha, closely akin, was 
 translated in the sixties of the first century. 
 
 It has also been discovered that the life of 
 Buddha was translated into the language of Persia 
 quite early in our era, and worked up into a Chris- 
 
 I tian romance called Barlaam and Joasaph. This 
 ancient church novel was popular all over Europe 
 throughout the middle ages, from Greece to Ice- 
 land, while so late as the eighteenth century a 
 Jesuit bearing the historic name of Borgia translated 
 it into the Tagalog of the Philippine Islands ! The 
 
 f name Joasaph or Josaphat (for it is written both 
 ways) has been proven to be a corruption of the 
 
 1 Sanskrit Bodhisattva, a title of the youthful Buddha ; 
 and the Indian saint, under this disguise, was 
 canonized by both Greek and Roman Churches. 
 , On the twenty-sixth of August in the Eastern com- 
 munion and on the twenty-seventh of November 
 in the Western, we have the singular spectacle of 
 Catholic priests commemorating the Hindu thinker 
 , as a Christian saint. 
 
 t Now it has been cogently argued by a European 
 I scholar (6) that if Christendom could thus borrow 
 V from Buddhism in the sixth century, it could do 
 the same in the first, for the same channels of inter- 
 course were open. Indeed at the time of Christ 
 this intercourse was at its height, for the geographer 
 
 (6) Van Eysinga, in his work on Hindu Influence upon 
 the Gospels. 1901 and 1904. 
 
Strabo, who was writing in the twenties of the first 
 century, when the youthful Jesus was a carpenter 
 in Galilee, saw one hundred and twenty ships pre- 
 pared to sail from a Red Sea port to India. 
 
 If this be the case, we need not be astonished at 
 the following Buddhist text embedded in the Gospel 
 of John, that most mystic and recondite of the four, 
 charged, as it is, with the philosophy of Ephesus 
 and Alexandria, where the thought of all nations 
 found a home. 
 
 MIRACULOUS WATER PROCEEDS 
 FROM THE SAINT. 
 
 John VII. 38. He that believeth on me, as 
 the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall 
 flow rivers of living water. 
 
 THE WAY TO SUPERNAL KNOWLEDGE 
 
 {Patisamhhida-maggo) I. 53. 
 
 What is the Tathagato's knowledge of the 
 twin miracle ? In this case, the Tathagato 
 works a twin miracle unrivalled by disciples : 
 from his upper body proceeds a flame of fire, 
 and from his lower body proceeds a torrent of water. 
 Again, from his lower body proceeds a flame 
 of fire, and from his upper body a torrent of 
 water. 
 
 Here the words of John, -rtorafiot 'ex ny? xoiXia^ auTou 
 
 peuffouffiv udarog equate the Pali he\Xhimakayato udaka- 
 
dhar^ pavattati, except for the tense and number, 
 and the word " proceed " or " roll forth," instead of 
 "flow," and ^Mower body" instead of "belly." 
 (7) The addition of w^ro^ in the Greek is the only 
 word which can be ascribed to the Old Testament : 
 '* living water " occurs in several of the prophets. 
 But the quotation as a whole is not there. Dean 
 Alford, in his commentary, voices the despair of all 
 the exegetes from the beginning, when he says : 
 " We look in vain for such a text in the Old Testa- 
 ment, and an apocryphal or lost canonical book is 
 out of the question." The learned dean interprets 
 by making the body refer to the under part of the 
 temple in an oracle of Ezekiel, wherein that mystic 
 beholds rivers of living water preceeding from be- 
 neath the holy place. But no such far-fetched 
 theory is needful any longer, now that we have 
 found a Buddhist oracle almost verbally coincident. 
 In a book of Buddhist legends called Avadanas 
 is one entitled sutra instead of avadana, thus aim- 
 ing at canonical rank. (8) This is the Pratiharya 
 Sutra, i. e. Sacred Book about Miracles. It is 
 also embedded in the canonical Book of Discipline 
 of a sect whose recension of the scriptures of Bud- 
 dhism has been lost in the original Pali or Sanskrit, 
 but preserved in Chinese and Tibetan. This Book 
 of Miracles relates that Buddha sent forth fire and 
 water from his person, and produced other startling 
 phenomena to confound unbelievers. All sects did 
 not admit the story into the Canon, for in the Pali 
 Book of Discipline, transmitted by the school of 
 
 (7) See Appendix B. 
 
 (8) " - 
 
the Elders, at the very point in the text where the 
 legend occurs in the Tibetan version, there is re- 
 ported a miracle by a disciple which Buddha sternly 
 forbade. However, albeit uncanonical according 
 to the conservative Elders, the story is ancient and 
 appears in A9vaghosha's first-century poem, (9) 
 while it is evidently understood in the text above 
 quoted from the Way to Supernal Knowledge. 
 Moreover, it is ranked with the Canonical life-scenes 
 in a Ceylon temple-sculpture of the second century 
 before Christ. According to the Great Chronicle, 
 
 " The miracle under the mango-tree " (10) 
 was graven upon the Great Tope at Anuradhapura, 
 together with the incidents that follow it in the 
 Miracle Sutra. These sculptures are buried or de- 
 stroyed, but the extant remains at Bharahat and 
 Sanci prove that the whole legend of Buddha's early 
 life was already highly developed at the time of 
 Christ. (See Appendix.) 
 
 The Fourth Evangelist transfigures the passage, 
 and converts the miraculous torrent of the magus 
 into a spiritual river. The single adjective "living," 
 with its prophetic associations, is enough to exalt 
 the whole conception into a loftier sphere. At the 
 same time we must remember that the Buddhists 
 also found mystical meanings in their Scriptures, 
 and produced their Philos and their Origens, as we 
 shall some day realize more fully, when the vast 
 literature preserved in Chinese is made known to 
 Europe and America. Living water or immortal 
 drink is also a Buddhist phrase, and in the Realist 
 
 (9) See Appendix B. 
 (10) 
 
Book of Discipline (Tibetan) it is applied to Nir 
 va«a. The conception that lies behind the legend 
 of the Twin Miracle is that of the microcosm : the 
 saint is conceived as uniting in himself all nature, 
 and hence in the water-meditation he is assimilated 
 to water, and in the flame-meditation he passes 
 away in fire. 
 
 Be it observed that, in the Pali text, this miracle 
 is " unrivalled by disciples," and indeed the sum- 
 ming up expressly says that Buddhas alone can 
 perform it. But in the Book of Avadanas, which 
 has Realist affinities, the Buddhist Daniel performs 
 the Twin Miracle : 
 
 From half of his body the water did rain ; 
 From half did the fire of a sacrifice blaze. 
 
 Moreover, in the Pali texts themselves, Dabbo the 
 Mallian emits fire from his fingers to light the monks 
 to bed, and finally passes away in the flame-medi- 
 tation, a veritable Buddhist Elijah. 
 
 Similarly in the Gospel, the believer can accom- 
 plish the water-miracle, though of course in a 
 mystical sense, in accordance with the higher plane 
 of the Fourth Evangelist. Moreover, the latter is 
 probably^^quoting some Buddhist collection belong- 
 ing to the Realist school, which predominated in 
 Northwestern India, where the Greek empire ad- 
 joined. It is almost certain that such a collection 
 had found its way westward in the Yonaloko, per- 
 haps in Greek, perhaps in Syriac. The recent 
 discovery of Manichaean Scriptures in Chinese 
 
Turkestan has prepared us for anything in the way 
 of ancient distribution of sacred literature. 
 
 Now, while one case of the mysterious Fourth 
 Evangelist quoting a Buddhist text as Scripture 
 would be remarkable, two such cases are significant, 
 and almost certainly imply historical connection, 
 especially when taken Wgether with the fact that 
 other parts of the Gospels present verbal agreements 
 with Pali texts. And there is one other case where 
 the Gospel of John quotes a Buddhist oracle a^ 
 Scripture. It was first pointed out in the Chicago \ 
 Open Court for February, 1900. Indeed it was J 
 placed at the very outset of my first series of Gospel 
 Parallels from Pali texts. It has been reprinted in 
 subsequent editions of that collection, and last ap- 
 peared in the third edition of Buddhist and Chris- 
 tian Gospels (T5kyo, 1905, p. 146.) It is here 
 reprinted and amplified : — 
 
 THE CHRIST REMAINS [on earth] FOR 
 THE iEON. 
 
 John XII. 34. The multitude therefore an- 
 swered him, W^e have heard out of the law, 
 that the Christ abideth forever [e^v ro^> aiwva, for 
 the 8son^ 
 
 Enunciations VI. I, and Long Collection, Dia- 
 logue t6 {Book of the Great Decease, Translated 
 in Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XI, p. 40.) 
 
 Anando, any one who has practised the four 
 principles of psychical power, — developed 
 them, made them active and practical, pursued 
 
 13 
 
them, accumulated and striven to the height 
 thereof, — can, if he so should wish, remain 
 [on earth] for the aeon or the rest of the aeon. 
 Now, Anando, the Tathagato has practised 
 and perfected these ; and if he so should wish, 
 the Tathagato could remain [on earth] for the oson 
 or the rest of the aeon. 
 
 The words in italics agree with those in the 
 Greek of John, except the mood and tense of the 
 verb. Rendel Harris has pointed out to me that 
 the tense of fitvtt is ambiguous, being either present 
 or future. This is because the oldest manuscripts 
 are without accents. Tathagato is a religious title 
 equivalent to Christ. Its exact meaning is still de- 
 bated, but its analogy to Sugato is obvious, and 
 Rhys Davids' translation of it as Truth-winner is 
 probably as near the mark as we shall ever %^\,. 
 
 As our text occurs also in the Sanskrit of the 
 Book of Avadanas (which has an independent 
 transmission) its antiquity is certain. Moreover, 
 the Book of the Great Decease and that of Enuncia- 
 tions are two of the oldest in the Pali, Enunciations 
 being also one of the Nine Divisions of a lost 
 arrangement of the Canon. 
 
 The ascription of the saying in John to "the mul- 
 titude" shows it to have been a current belief at 
 the time of Christ. It is not a New Testament doc- 
 trine, though the physical Second Coming has 
 been assimilated to it. Commentators have been 
 at a loss to identify the Old Testament passage 
 
 14 
 
(" out of the Law ") which is supposed to be quoted. 
 The Twentieth Century New Testament proposes 
 the Aramaic version of Isaiah IX. 7 as the source. 
 The learned August Wiinsche, in his work on the 
 Gospels and the Talmud, says that the source is 
 unknown. Be that as it may,^we have here a verbal 
 Pali parallel : — 
 
 6 XptffTo^ [x£V£i di ro'^ aiiom = Tathagato kappav[\. 
 tittheyya, 
 
 A kindred sentiment appears at the conclusion 
 of Matthew : 
 
 Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end 
 of the aeon. 
 
 If we could be sure that the Evangelist was copy- 
 ing this from the lost Mark-ending or from the 
 Logia, we could pronounce it a first-century docu- 
 ment and an utterance of the Lord ; but we cannot, 
 and most Matthaean additions to the Synoptical 
 record are suspect. It is quite likely that these 
 words were added to the First Gospel after the ap- 
 pearance of the Fourth, with its doctrine of the 
 Paraclete. On the other hand, we can date the 
 first translation of the corresponding Buddhist 
 doctrine into Chinese at about A. D. 68, and this 
 in a popular manual which presupposes the vast 
 body of the Sutras. (See note 18.) 
 
 Another verbal agreement between John and the 
 Pali texts (though not expressly quoted) is given in 
 Buddhist and Christian Gospels, p. 138 : — 
 
 I have overcome the world. 
 
 «5 
 
In the Johannine spirit is : — 
 
 He who sees the truth sees me. 
 
 (Op. cit. p. 150.) 
 
 The following Parallels are also Johannine : — 
 
 No. 29. Disciples repelled by deep doctrine. 
 
 " 42. The Saviour is unique. 
 
 " 44. The Light of the World. 
 
 *' 45. I am a King. 
 
 " 47. The Master remembers a pre-exist- 
 ent state. 
 
 " 48. Knowing God and his Kingdom. 
 
 ** 51. The Master can Renounce or pro- 
 long his Life. 
 
 *^ 58. In the World, but not of the World 
 
 Another noteworthy parallel, with some verbal 
 agreements, is found in certain phrases of Luke's 
 angelic Birth-Hymn, as was pointed out in my 
 pamphlet of 1905. (11) 
 
 Luke II. 8-14. 
 
 And there were shepherds in the same coun- 
 try abiding in the field, and keeping watch by 
 night over their flock. And an angel of the 
 Lord stood by them, and the glory of the Lord 
 shone round about them : and they were sore 
 afraid. And the angel said unto them, Be not 
 afraid ; for behold, I bring you good tidings of 
 
 (11) Can the Pali Pitakas aid us infixing the Text of the 
 Gospels f Philadelphia, 1905, 8 vo. pp. 8. 
 
 16 
 
great joy which shall be to all the people : for 
 there is born to you this day in the city o/JDavid a 
 Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this is 
 the sign unto you : Ye shall find a babe 
 wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a 
 manger. And suddenly there was with the 
 angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising 
 God, and saying, 
 
 Glory to God in the highest, 
 
 And on earth peace, divine favor among men. 
 
 Sutta Nipato, Mahavaggo, Nalaka-Suttam. 
 
 The heavenly hosts, rejoicing, delighted. 
 
 And Sakko the leader and angels white- 
 
 stoled. 
 Seizing their robes, and praising exceedingly, 
 Did Asito the hermit see in noonday rest. 
 
 [He asks the angels why they rejoice, and they 
 answer :] 
 
 The Buddha-to-be, the best and matchless 
 
 Jewel, 
 Is born for weal and welfare in the world of men. 
 In the town of the S"akyas, in the region of 
 
 Lumbini : 
 Therefore are we joyful and exceeding glad. 
 
 The parallel is further carried out in the narra- 
 tive : the hermit, like the shepherds, goes to pay 
 his reverence to the newborn Saviour. 
 
 >7 
 
Here the Greek ire t:^? ^t^? eipTjvr), iv dvOptoKoi^ eudoxta 
 
 appears to be a reminiscence of the Pali manussa- 
 loke hitasukhataya, "for weal and welfare in the 
 world of men," an oft-repeated phrase in the Pali 
 texts. 
 
 Another verbal parallel will be found in my 
 Japanese book, at p. 213. I here reprint it, with 
 slight changes, from the Open Court, where it first 
 appeared, in April, 1900 : — 
 
 AN iEON-LASTING SIN. 
 
 Mark III. 29. Whosoever shall blaspheme 
 against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, 
 but is guilty of an aeon-lasting sin. 
 
 Cullavaggo VII. 3. (Translated in S. B. E. XX. 
 
 p. 254.) 
 
 Is it true, Devadatto, as they say, that thou 
 goest about to stir up schism in the Order and 
 schism in our society ? — It is true. Lord. — 
 Enough, Devadatto. Let not schism in the 
 Order be pleasing unto thee : serious, O 
 Devadatto, is a schism in the Order. Whoso- 
 ever, Devadatto, divides the Order when it is 
 at peace gives birth to an cson-lasting fault, and 
 for an aeon he is tormented in hell. But who- 
 soever, Devadatto, makes peace in the Order 
 when it has been divided gives birth to the 
 highest merit (literally, Brahma-merit), and 
 for an aeon he is happy in paradise. 
 
^ 
 
 The words anojw^ diiao-nifia in Mark III. 29, are the 4 
 exact verbal equivalent of the Pali kappatihtkam \ 
 ktbbtsavciy or, as the Siam edition has it, kappatt- 
 hittkava. Schism is the deadly sin of Buddhism, 
 the other four of its deadly sins being rare deeds of 
 violence — matricide, parricide, saint-murder and 
 wounding a Buddha. The deadly sin of the New 
 Testament is resistance to the Divine operation, 
 while that of the Mazdeans is self-defilement. 
 (S. B. E. IV., p. loi.) The Christian and Buddhist 
 ones are of long retribution, but terminable, for an 
 everlasting hell was not held by the Jews at the 
 time of Christ, and is not implied in the Master's 
 terms. Only the Mazdean uses the language of 
 absolute despair ; but if the universalism of the 
 Bundahish be a true tradition from the lost Damdad 
 Nosk, then even this sin is finally forgiven. 
 
 Let it not be imagined that the writer has hastily 
 formed the conclusion of a dependence of Chris- 
 tianity upon Buddhism, still less that he regards 
 such dependence as more than occasional. At the 
 very outset of my Indian studies (which began in 
 1880) I read Rhys Davids' introduction to the Book 
 of the Great Decease (1881) wherein he denounces 
 attempts to trace connection between the two re- 
 ligions. This made a lasting impression on me ; 
 and it was not until 1899, when Rendel Harris 
 directed my attention to the Buddhist element in 
 the Acts of Thomas, that the early deterrent of 
 Rhys Davids began to weaken. 
 
 Deeper research has since convinced me, not 
 
 19 
 
only of the possibility, but of the probability, of 
 such a connection, albeit in a limited degree. It 
 was during 1899 that I discovered the verbal parallel 
 in John XII. 34. This excited my curiosity and, 
 together with the phrase in Mark, discovered earlier, 
 caused a more systematic search. The search was 
 mostly original, for I made very little use of my 
 predecessors. Indeed the Enunciations and the 
 Logia Book, wherein the chief of my first discoveries 
 were made, had not been translated, and the latter 
 not even now. 
 
 In Buddhist and Christian Gospels, p. 49, are 
 these words : — 
 
 *' I would not, with Seydel, extend the Buddhist 
 influence to the entire Christian Epic, but limit it to 
 the Gospel of Luke, and perhaps John. Even in 
 doing this much, I submit it only as an hypothesis." 
 
 In the next edition the last sentence will be can- 
 celled, and the order of Luke and John reversed. 
 The case for John is now stronger than that for Luke. 
 
 The Gospels of Luke and John are those which 
 present the most literary finish and betray the 
 widest acquaintance with ancient learning. The 
 German theory of the Lucan authorship is this : — 
 Luke was a follower of Paul, and kept a diary of 
 their travels. This diary was used by the author 
 of the Acts of the Apostles. The Acts is avowedly 
 the second part of the Gospel by the same writer. 
 (Acts I. I, compared with Luke I. 1-4.) As Luke's 
 diary was largely embedded in the Acts (the " WE 
 Sections") his great name was ascribed to the two 
 
books. This was a regular literary practice in 
 those times. Tertullian, a Roman lawyer and one 
 of the most learned of the early Christians, says 
 that the works of disciples are accounted those of 
 their masters. In other words, a book must be 
 heralded by a great name. This principle is not 
 unknown among ourselves. A few years ago a 
 well-known Quaker antiquary wrote a History of 
 Philadelphia, and the publishers ascribed it, on the 
 title-page, to the then librarian of Congress. 
 
 It was the aim of the early Church to make each 
 Gospel rest upon apostolic testimony. Mark was 
 called the Gospel of Peter, because Mark was 
 Peter's secretary ; and there is no doubt that some 
 scenes in that terse incomparable book are derived 
 from the recollections of the great disciple. Mat- 
 thew was the penman among the little band, and 
 he, says Papias, compiled the Lord's Oracles or 
 Utterances. True, his original collection has been 
 interwoven, by a later editor, with the biography of 
 Mark, plus certain later legends and minus much 
 of the rugged humanity of the second Evangelist ; 
 but Matthew's name is given to the present highly 
 composite production. John died at Ephesus, says 
 a second-century tradition, and the Fourth Gospel 
 emanated from the same metropolis. Doubtless 
 the genius who wrote that divine drama was sup- 
 plied with certain matter from the son of Zebedee. 
 This would be enough to fasten the latter's name 
 upon the book. Yet the book itself ends with an 
 editorial postscript, as if by several hands : 
 
 We know that his testimony is true. 
 
Grotius long ago pointed out that the postscript 
 chapter (John XXI.) must be by a later hand, be- 
 cause it implies the death of the beloved disciple. 
 But the literary principles of antiquity permitted 
 the whole work to pass under the name of the last 
 surviving apostle, whose aged recollections had 
 been the staf! of the Evangelist. I am sometimes 
 tempted to regard the Beloved Disciple (so con- 
 spicuously absent in the Synoptists) as a Christian 
 imitation of Buddha's Anando. Indeed it is re- 
 markable that both these beloveds were assured by 
 the Masters of attaining heaven here : — 
 
 JOHN APPENDIX (John XXI. 22.) 
 
 If I will that he tarry till I come, what is 
 that to thee ? (Cf. Mark IX. i.) 
 
 NUMERICAL COLLECTION III. 80. 
 
 Even in this life will Anando enter Nir- 
 vana. (12) 
 
 Moreover, in the very Buddhist book. The Way 
 to Supernal Knowledge, where the first parallel 
 herein discussed occurs, is a chapter which is quite 
 Johannine. It follows the chapter about the Twin 
 Miracle, and is followed in turn by one about the 
 Lord's omniscience. Mrs. Caroline Rhys Davids 
 has already pointed out the Christian parallelism 
 
 (12) Buddhist and Christian Gospels, p. 211. 
 
in this book, I. 54, (13) and I will here translate its 
 most significant features : — 
 
 What is the Tathagato's knowledge of the 
 attainment of the Great Compassion ? (14) 
 
 Great compassion for creatuifes descends 
 into the Blessed Buddhas when they see, by 
 many tokens, that the abodes of the world are 
 on fire ; that they are on the march, departed, 
 fallen into an evil way. The unstable world 
 is carried along; the world is defenceless, 
 companionless, without goods, when all that is 
 transient is forsaken. Incomplete, unsated is 
 the world, the slave of Thirst ; defenceless are 
 the abodes of the world ; without shelter, with- 
 out refuge, without a right path ; inflated, un- 
 soothed is the world. The abodes of the world 
 
 (13) Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, January, 1906. 
 
 (14) The Great Compassion means the Buddha's com- 
 passion as distinguished from a disciple's ; for every good 
 Buddhist practises the pity-meditation, wherein he projects 
 his mind compassionately toward all creatures. The Great 
 Compassion is a later development of Buddhism, and the Way 
 to Supernal Knowledge is itself a book of the third stage of 
 growth, and really belongs to Abhidhammo. The Island 
 Chronicle says that its canonicity was disputed at the Second 
 Council of the Order, in the fourth century B. C. It is, how- 
 ever, probably later than that. The famous document in the 
 Island Chronicle appears to refer to a quarrel that occurred at 
 the Council of Agnimitra (about 150 B. C. ) It is out of place 
 at the Council of Vesali. (See Sacred Books of the East, 
 Vol. XIX. p. XV.) 
 
 23 
 
have thorns, a7'e pierced with many thorns^ a7id 
 none can draw them out but I ; flung into a cage 
 of corruption, wrapt in the gloom of ignorance, 
 and there is none can show it light but I. 
 The abodes of the world, given over to ignor- 
 ance, darkened, enveloped, become as tangled 
 threads, covered with blotches, become as 
 sedge and bulrushes, escape not from doom, 
 
 perdition, destruction and transmigration 
 
 W^hen the Blessed Buddhas see all these 
 things, the Great Compassion for creatures 
 enters into them, and they say : I have crossed 
 over, but the world has not ; I am emancipated, 
 but the world is not ; I am subdued, but the 
 world is unsubdued ; I am at peace, but the world 
 is not at peace ; comforted^ but the world is not 
 comforted ; extinguished, (15) while the world 
 is not. And I who have crossed over, can help 
 others to cross ; emancipated, I can set them 
 free ; subdued, I can make them self-con- 
 trolled ; at peacCy I can give them peace ; comforted, 
 I can console them ; arrived at Nirvana, I can 
 take them thereunto. 
 
 The Way to Supernal Knowledge, though not 
 an early book of the Canon, is decidedly pre-Chris- 
 tian. The Abhidharma, wherewith it is a connect- 
 ing link, was developed between the time of Asoko 
 (and even earlier) and the Christian era. Taka- 
 
 (15) Ox, arrived at Nirvana. Several noble texts in the 
 Sutras teach us that extinction of egoism is not extinction of 
 the higher personality. 
 
kusu's masterly article in the Journal of the Pali 
 Text Society for 1905 has made this clear. Some 
 treatise on the Supernal Knowledges was part of 
 the Canon of the Realists, (16) a different sect from 
 that of the Elders who have transmitted to us the 
 Pali. According to the Realists this treatise existed 
 at the First Council, while the Elders imply the 
 same. We shall know the dates of these books a 
 great deal more precisely when the voluminous 
 Buddhist literature of China is translated. The 
 scholars of Japan are already aroused to the import- 
 ance of this work, and the names of Nanjio, 
 Takakusu, Minakata, Anesaki and Suzuki will be 
 held in grateful remembrance by students of Bud- 
 dhism as pioneers in this great undertaking. 
 
 The Statement of Knowledges, in the Way to 
 Supernal Knowledge, is the section which contains 
 the passages on the miraculous water and the Great 
 Compassion, and it places immediately after them 
 a concluding chapter on the Omniscience of 
 Buddha. This whole section is supported by an 
 ancient table of contents, while succeeding sections 
 are not. It is a curious coincidence that the very 
 sutra said by the fifth-century commentator to have 
 converted the Greek empire was one on the 
 Buddha's omniscience. (17) Though the Greek 
 
 (16) See Suzuki's translation, from the Chinese, of the 
 contents of their Canon. (Monist, January, 1904, p. 275.) 
 The Sanskrit term is Pratisa?;2vid. 
 
 (17) The discourse in the Squirrel Park at Sdketa : Numer- 
 ical Collection IV. 24. This appears to be the only sermon 
 in the Ka/akaramo in the Canon. 
 
 25 
 
empire ( Yonaloko) of the chroniclers meant Bactria, 
 yet literature there current was liable to permeate 
 the Hellenic world. According to the same chron- 
 iclers, the Way to Supernal Knowledge was in the 
 Canon committed to writing in Ceylon in the first 
 century B. C. It is not surprising, therefore, that 
 it or a kindred document should be quoted by the 
 Evangelist as writing or Scripture {yoaipr). 
 
 In the sixties of the first century, when Paul was 
 standing before Nero, Buddhism was being officially 
 welcomed into China. During that memorable 
 decade a Buddhist book (i8) was compiled in 
 Chinese and a temple built in its honor. This book 
 was a popular manual long posterior to the sacred 
 texts, which it presupposes. A legendary life of 
 Buddha, akin to the Lalita Vistara, was also 
 translated ; and this too betrays an advanced stage 
 of the Buddhist Holy Writ. The official com- 
 mentaries of the Indo-Scythian Kanishka, which 
 date from this age or very little later, also pre- 
 suppose the Pitakas, including the Abhidharma. 
 
 The greatest gap in the history of Buddhism is 
 the record of its westward career. Readers of 
 
 (i8) The Sutra of 42 Sections. Near the beginning we 
 Iread: ** Buddha said : The Arahat is able to fly through 
 the air, change his appearance, ^^ the years of his life, shake 
 heaven and earth." Here we have proof that the doctrine of 
 John XII. 34 was brought into China from India in 67 A. D. 
 Since the printing of p. 15, my learned friend, Frank 
 Normart, has told me that, in John XII. 34, the Armenian 
 version (fourth century) reads: "The Christ has existed 
 from eternity. ' ' 
 
 a6 '\ 
 
Darwin will remember that in the Origin of Species 
 there is a remarkable chapter on the Imperfection 
 of the Geological Record. Indeed it marks an 
 epoch in the science of geology. In like manner 
 the historian of Buddhism (when another century 
 of translations and critiques makes possible his 
 task) will have to write a chapter on the Imperfec- 
 tion of the Record. Two Buddhist countries — 
 Cashmere and Ceylon — were the homes of two 
 ancient sects, the Realists and the Elders ; and 
 these have left us recensions of the Canon and ex- 
 tensive commentaries. But from the greater part 
 of India all traces of Buddhism, except ruins, have 
 been swept away. Indeed the Canon and com- 
 mentaries of Cashmere are preserved only in 
 Chinese and Tibetan translations, with a mere frac- 
 tion in Sanskrit. Still greater havoc has been 
 wrought in Bactria and Persia, those buffer lands 
 between Buddhadom and Christendom, where both 
 religions contended for the mastery with Mazdeism, 
 until the ruthless hand of Islam buried all. Some 
 literary relics of these realms are preserved in China 
 and Tibet, and will one day be made known ; but 
 it is doubtful whether any connected chronicles, 
 such as those of Ceylon, will be recovered. All 
 records therefore of Greek or Syriac translations 
 have disappeared. There went out a fire from the 
 Koran which consumed them. 
 
 Even when translations themselves perish, we 
 sometimes find the fact recorded that they were. 
 This is true of the Greek version of the Avesta, of 
 the Singhalese commentaries on the Pali texts, and 
 
 27 
 
of certain extinct Chinese translations of the life 
 and words of Buddha. But if the Ceylon Chron- 
 icles had been lost, we should never have known 
 the existence of the ancient Singhalese commenta- 
 ries ; and if Pliny had been lost, we should not 
 have known that there ever was a Greek Avesta. 
 
 Thus we have to thank the Moslem for oblitera- 
 ting the traces of that lost version of the Sutras 
 which travelled westward. There is no need to 
 postulate a complete version ; but it is incredible 
 that Greek Kings like Menander, (19) who in- 
 quired into Buddhism, should have been content to 
 let the profound philosophy of Gotamo repose in 
 an unknown tongue when curious Athenians were 
 hungry for news of the celebrated thinkers. What 
 happened when Barlaam and Joasaph was carried 
 westward had happened before. Thus, we know 
 from Epiphanius, that Mani, in the third century, 
 had access to Hindu books of magic. Man! 
 despatched his disciple Adda to the lands beyond 
 the Euphrates, and in Chinese Turkestan we have 
 now found the fruits of his mission. Moreover, 
 about the year 100, a semi-Mazdean Buddhist book, 
 composed in Parthia, was carried to Rome, and be- 
 came the scripture of a Christian heresy. 
 
 If the apostle Thomas did actually visit Parthia, 
 as Eusebius says, why should he not have brought 
 back with him, on one of his journeys, an Indian 
 book ? It is significant that the Gospel of John, 
 
 (19) Menander' s discussion with a Buddhist monk has 
 been translated by Rhys Davids (S. B. E. xxxv, xxxvi.) 
 
 28 
 
wherein our Buddhist passages occur, is the only 
 one of the four that tells anything about Thomas 
 beyond his name in a list. John represents him as 
 a sceptic, and he must therefore have had an intel- 
 lectual nature which would permit of an interest in 
 Gentile philosophy. But, mere conjecture apart, 
 the fact remains that, since the hymns of Ephrem 
 of Edessa in the fourth century, the name of Thomas 
 has been demonstrably associated, not only with 
 Parthia but with India ; and the Gospel and Acts 
 ascribed to him are full of Indian influences. (20) 
 
 According to Eusebius, the Gospels were pub- 
 lished by the Church in the reign of Trajan (A. D. 
 98 — 117.) Of course, they had existed in some 
 form before this, but this was the date of their 
 authoritative redaction, when the Mark Appendix 
 was added, and (I have given reasons elsewhere for 
 saying) the Matthsean Infancy Section also. (21) 
 
 None of these things are stated lightly, but as 
 the result of a lifetime of research. Since 1875, 
 and especially since 1889, I have been a student of 
 the Gospels ; for around them my youthful mem- 
 ories are most deeply entwined, and most of my 
 Buddhist studies have been to explain and eluci- 
 date them. (22) Had it been in my power to pub- 
 lish my Documentary Introduction to the Four 
 
 (20) See Buddhist and Christian Gospels, Historical In- 
 troduction, and Bishop Medlycott's India and the Apostle 
 Thomas. (London, 1905.) 
 
 (21) Buddhist and Christian Gospels, p. 15. 
 
 (22) The Gospels conquered the Sutras (i) because they 
 
 29 
 
Gospels, written between 1891 and 1898, my present 
 words would have had more weight. (23) The 
 earliest quotations from the Gospels which are there 
 collected, together with the analysis of the books 
 themselves which I made by the aid of Abbott and 
 Rushbrooke, have convinced me that the German 
 theory of their origin is by no means far-fetched. 
 Individual scholars may carry it too far, but on the 
 whole it is true to the facts. 
 / In the main the Gospels are original documents, 
 
 ^^^y deriving their inspiration from the life and words 
 of Jesus. But every writer quotes his predecessors 
 and contemporaries, consciously or unconsciously ; 
 
 /v and these, the most exalted literary works of any 
 age or clime, are no exception. 
 
 travelled on the larger arc of the missionary circle around the 
 world ; (2) because they fell into the hands of the strongest 
 nations ; (3) because they were less metaphysical and pre- 
 sented a personal Creator ; (4) because the genius of the 
 Hebrews, the Greeks and the Romans made them master- 
 pieces of condensation. The Gospels were written and re- 
 written within a single century ; the Sutras were elaborated 
 and re-elaborated through half a millennium. But to him 
 who can glean therefrom the pithy oracles of Gotamo, and 
 picture in his mind the sublime life-scenes of the Indian 
 Messiah, the Gospels themselves have a rival. The battle is 
 not over yet, but with the growth of wisdom we shall cease to 
 destroy, and shall preserve the best in both, relegating the 
 Infancy Sections and their like to a juvenile Basket of Jatakas 
 and Antilegomena. 
 
 (23) The MS. may be consulted at the Historical Society 
 of Pennsylvania. An abstract of it will be found in Buddhist 
 and Christian Gospels, p. iv. 
 
 30 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 The Buddhist Gospel Scenes 
 
 on the Great Tope at 
 
 Anuradhapura, in the second ceiitury, B. C. 
 
 Translated from the metrical Great Chronicle of 
 Ceylon (Mahavawso) Chapter 30. 
 
 The two lines in red ink are the context of the quotations 
 in John VII. 38 and XII. 34. Those in italics are the subjects 
 of the Miracle Sutra, uncanonical according to the present 
 Pali Canon (which owes its final arrangement to Dhatuseno in 
 the fifth century) but evidently considered authentic enough 
 to be pictured in the second century B. C. 
 
 Unto the scenes of the Seven Weeks, 
 Here and there, as he worthy thought, 
 Due inscriptions the builder made. 
 
 1 Brahma's prayer he depicted eke, 
 
 2 Founding the Spiritual Empire too, 
 
 3 Also Yasa's discipleship, 
 
 4 Conversion of Bhadra's company, 
 
 5 Likewise taming the hermits wild, 
 
 6 Bimbisara's reception eke, 
 
 7 Entry into the capital, 
 
 8 Taking the Bamboo Forest Park, 
 
 9 Also eighty disciples there, 
 10 Return to Kapilavastu town, 
 
 31 
 
1 1 Also the jewel cloister there, 
 
 12 Nando and Rahulo converts made, 
 
 13 Also taking the Victor's Grove, 
 
 14 Miracle under the mango-tree, 
 
 15 Preaching in IndrcCs paradise, 
 
 16 Miracle of the descent from heaven, 
 
 17 Crowd that the Elder's question made, 
 
 18 Text of the Great Concourse divine, 
 
 19 Also sermon to Rahulo, 
 
 20 Text of Greatest Beatitudes, 
 
 21 Crowd around Wealth-guard the elephant, 
 22, 23 A/avo, Aijgulimalo eke, 
 
 24 Taming of Apalalo too, 
 
 25 Parayanaka brahmin-throng ; 
 
 26 Rejecting the residue of life, 
 
 27 Taking the dried-boar offering, 
 
 28 Also the gold-cloth pair of robes, 
 
 29 Draught of the clarified water eke, 
 
 30 Likewise Parinirva/^a too, 
 
 31 Lamentation of gods and men, 
 
 32 Elder saluting the dead Lord's feet, 
 
 33 Kindling and quenching the funeral pyre, 
 
 34 Likewise rites that accompanied, 
 
 35 Do^o dividing the relics eke. 
 
 Birth-tales told by the Well-born One 
 Round about did the architect 
 Picture to preach to the multitude : 
 
36 Birth Vessantara wrought in full, 
 38 And all the acts from the Tusita City 
 Unto the Bo-tree's mystic throne. 
 
 The last two lines imply the Nativity legends, 
 such as the Angelic Heralds, the prediction of 
 Asito, etc. They are evidently classed with the 
 Jatakas, which were scattered around everywhere 
 {yebhuyyend) to edify the common folk. The bulk 
 of the scenes are from the Major Section on Dis- 
 cipline and the Book of the Great Decease. Bishop 
 Copleston has doubted the genuineness of the 
 Chronicle's account of the sculptures, and thinks it 
 may be fiction. But the following scenes are found 
 at Bharahat and Sanci, in Central India, two ruins 
 dating from very early times and, roughly speak- 
 ing, coeval with the Ceylon tope. (24) At Bhar- 
 ahat are Nos. 11 (perhaps), 13, 16, 24, and parts of 
 37 ; at Sanci are Nos. 2, 4, 5, 6, 16, and parts of 
 37. No. 16, which is both at Bharahat and Sanci, 
 is the Sa;;/kissa Ladder, i. e. the ladder whereby 
 Buddha descended from heaven at Sa;«kissa (or 
 Sa;;^ka9ya), after preaching the Gospel to his mother 
 in the other world — another proof of the antiquity 
 of the contents of the Miracle Sutra. The scene 
 from the Infancy legends common to Bharahat and 
 
 (24) Griinwedel, in his Buddhist Art in India (EngHsh 
 translation, London, 1905, pp. 5 and 23) places both Bharahat 
 and Sanci gateways in the second century B. C. The gate- 
 ways are the latest portions of the shrine. 
 
 33 
 
Sanci is the dream of Buddha's mother about his 
 descent from heaven into her womb. This inci- 
 dent is not in the Pali Texts on the Marvellous 
 Birth (Long Collection, No. 14 ; Middling Collec- 
 tion, No. 123) but in the commentaries and other 
 extra-canonical treatises. As I have argued, in 
 Buddhist and Christian Gospels, if the comme^itary 
 be older than the Christia^i ^r«, a fortiori the 
 text is. Though the Ceylon Chronicles contain 
 many absurdities, yet Indian archaeology has con- 
 firmed their trustworthiness in main matters. 
 Bishop Copleston admits this, and, applying his 
 principles, I contend for the historicity of the sculp- 
 tures in question on the ground of their like being 
 found at Bharahat and Sanci ; and these remains 
 are but accidental fractions of the multitude of 
 shrines. They owe their partial preservation to 
 being in out-of-the way places, afar from the de- 
 structive Moslem. What care we if the Chronicler 
 says that Asoko built eighty-four thousand topes, 
 when we find half India covered with his ruins? 
 As to Kern's objection about the suspicious dupli- 
 cation of names, how many Christian monks and 
 bishops are named Gregory and Jerome ! 
 
 In the cases of Nos. 18 and 20, it is probable 
 that the actual texts were graven on the tope. In 
 each case the word Suttanto or Suttam is used. No. 
 18 is the twentieth Sutra in the Pali Long Collec- 
 tion (Chinese No. 12, according to Takakusu). 
 This text was evidently talismanic, for the Chinese 
 transliterated it, so as to preserve the exact Hindu 
 
 34 
 
sounds. Moreover, both this Sutra, and Nos. 2, 
 20 and 22 of our list are in the Paritta, an ancient 
 anthology recited in Ceylon to this day to ward off 
 evil. No. 19 was a favorite text of Asoko's, and it 
 is found in his rock-written list of selections. 
 
 In translating the Chronicle's list, Phave imitated 
 the rugged metre of the original without any sacri- 
 fice of the sense. It is poor poetry from a literary 
 standpoint, the lines being filled out by such easy 
 phrases as eva ca (" and also") ; but to a student of 
 the Sutras, to whom every line calls up a vivid pic- 
 ture, this artless catalogue is sublime. (25) 
 
 The Great Chronicle relates that delegates 
 from all parts of Buddhadom came to celebrate the 
 Tope's completion, and among them were repre- 
 sentatives *' from Alexandria, the city of the 
 Greeks." Even if one of the less known Alexan 
 drias be meant, we yet gather from the record that 
 spectators of these sculptured scenes returned to 
 the Greek empire to tell what they had beheld. 
 But Sylvain Levi of Paris has pointed out that the 
 expression, *^ Alexandria the city of the Greeks," 
 is regularly used by the Hindu astronomers to 
 mean the Egyptian capital. And from this capital 
 the King of Ceylon had doubtless secured some 
 sculptors, so that nothing would be more natural 
 
 (25) Some years ago I copied the Pali into a pocketbook, 
 and carried it about with me until I knew it by heart. The 
 following note is found beneath it: — ''The sublime sim- 
 plicity of this list of the great Life-Scenes moves me as do the 
 Obsecrations in the Litany, October, 1900 " 
 
 35 
 
than for their Alexandrian friends to be represented 
 at the opening. We cannot therefore be surprised 
 if the Evangelists were acquainted with all these 
 scenes and their Scriptural incidents, which would 
 naturally be explained to the pilgrims. Thus, No. 
 21 is the conspiracy of Devadatto (the Buddhist 
 Judas) against his Master's life, by means of the 
 drunken elephant, upon which occasion the Lord 
 uttered the terrible oracle about the cson-lasting sin. 
 (Buddhist and Christian Gospels, Parallel 84). No. 
 23 is the Penitent Robber (Parallel 28) ; No. 24 is 
 the taming of a kind of demon ; while Nos. 14 and 
 26 (as we have said above) are the context of the 
 passages in John which are explicitly quoted as 
 Scripture. Neither in the Law, the Prophets nor 
 the Hagiographa of the Jewish Canon do these 
 oracles occur ; but both have stood for ages in the 
 Law, or Dharma, of the Buddha. 
 
 It is a matter of little moment to our use of the 
 Chronicle's list whether these sculptures were seen 
 by the Chronicler or only imagined. If he imag- 
 ined them, it was because he knew that these very 
 Gospel scenes were graven upon other monuments 
 of those palmy days ; and thousands more besides 
 the Alexandrine delegates to Ceylon had returned 
 to the Roman Empire to tell the story of the 
 Buddha. A profound modern student of Buddhist 
 sculptures has stated his final impression in the 
 following words : — 
 
 " Few who are familiar with the arts of Rome in 
 Constantine's time, and who will take the trouble 
 to master these Amaravati sculptures, can fail to 
 
perceive many points of affinity between them. 
 The circular medallions of the arch of Constantine 
 — such as belong to his time — and the general tone 
 of the art of his age so closely resemble what we 
 find here that the coincidence can hardly be acci- 
 dental. The conviction that the ^udy of these 
 sculptures has forced on my mind is that there was 
 much more inter comm^unication between the East 
 and the West during the period from Alexander to 
 Justinian than is generally supposed ; and that the 
 intercourse was especially frequent and influential 
 in the middle period^ between Augustus and Con- 
 stantine ^ [Italics mine]. 
 
 Thus wrote James Fergusson in 1867, in a note 
 in his Description of the Amaravati Tope — a note 
 which reappeared in his great work, Tree and 
 Serpent Worship, Though many of his conjectures 
 have been invalidated, yet this one, founded upon 
 first-hand study, has been abundantly confirmed. 
 We now know that there is a chain of Greek art 
 reaching all the way from the Adriatic to the 
 Ganges ; and the same sculptors who wrought a 
 Buddhist Gospel scene in India could be working 
 later on the arch of Titus. Coins of all the Roman 
 emperors from Augustus to Hadrian are in the 
 museum at Madras, and those of King Gondophares 
 of the Acts of Thomas are also found. The royal 
 agent Abbanes (a good Pali name, which means 
 Unwounded) who came to Jerusalem seeking an 
 artificer, is not all fiction, for both Christian and 
 Buddhist romances are founded on the facts of 
 ancient life. 
 
 37 
 
APPENDIX B. (NOTES. 7, 8, 9, 10.) 
 
 (7) But the Sanskrit Divyvadana, which preserves a reminis- 
 cence of the text, has * ' flow' ' : — adhah. kdyam prajvdlayaty, 
 uparimdt kdydc chitald vdridhdrdh sy andante: * ' Below his body 
 it blazes ; from his upper body cold torrents flow." These 
 later legends, which took shape in the North of India, after 
 the main body of the Elders had settled in Ceylon (/. e. be- 
 tween the third century B. C. and the Christian era) do not 
 present the verbal agreements of the older pericopes. For 
 these verbal agreements, see Burnouf, Lotus de la Bonne 
 Loi, p. 859. The great Buddhist scholar was in the midst of 
 copying passages common to the texts discovered in Nepal 
 and Ceylon, when his hand was arrested by death (March, 
 1852). Our science was then put back for half a century. 
 
 (8) The Avadanas are semi-canonical. They were only 
 admitted into the Pali Canon by one school of reciters ; but 
 their presence in later recensions of that Canon and in those 
 of other sects entitles them to be called semi-canonical. The 
 Realists and the Docetists evidently placed them in the Vinaya 
 Pitaka, while the Elders and the Dharmaguptas placed them 
 in a fifth Agama or Nikayo, called Short Collection and Mis- 
 cellaneous Pitaka. The Great Council Canon, which boasted 
 that it was free from ' ' the false additions' ' of the others, had 
 no Avadanas, but only the germ thereof ; for in its Miscella- 
 neous Pitaka was a book called Nidana, which is described as 
 " circumstantial notes on Pratyeka-buddhas and Arhats, in 
 gatha." (Suzuki). The same book also appears in. the 
 Miscellaneous Pitaka of the Dharmaguptas, an early branch 
 of the Elders. This carries the book back behind the final 
 schism at the Council of Agnimitra in the second century B. C. 
 
 (9) Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XIX. p. 240. This 
 is the fifth-century Chinese translation, which omits the water- 
 miracle. It is desirable to secure the Tibetan version of this 
 
part of the poem (for the original Sanskrit covering this 
 point is lost) and also the Chinese and Tibetan of the Miracle 
 Stltra in the Realist Vinaya Pitaka. 
 
 (lo) The Ceylon tradition makes a mango- tree near 
 Savatthi the scene of the miracle. (Spence Hardy, Manual, 
 p. 295.) The water-miracle, however, is omitted in Hardy's 
 account. In view of the fact that the Digha reciters rejected 
 the Avadanas, it is quite probable that these were developed 
 among rival sects ; and the Way to Supernal Knowledge has 
 borrowed the text about the Twin Miracle from a source out- 
 side the Elders' Pali Canon. In like manner, the Pali com- 
 mentaries, at a later date, were amplified by Buddhaghoso, 
 who came from continental India. Many of the Avadana 
 legends which had grown up there after the main body of the 
 Elders had developed a local individuality in the Dekhan and 
 Ceylon are included in these commentaries ; and the Way to 
 Supernal Knowledge is a late treatise, standing midway be- 
 tween the Sutras and the commentaries. Its canonicity was 
 denied by the Great Council school, probably at the Council 
 of Agnimitra, about 150 B. C. (The Island Chronicle docu- 
 ment is evidently misplaced, for there were no "six books ot 
 the Abhidhammo" at the Council of Vesali.) 
 
 39 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 Already in the eighteenth century Michaelis dis- 
 cerned a Zoroastrian and a Sabian influence in 
 John ; so that our present thesis is no radically 
 new departure. 
 
 Had the Evangelist used without ascription the 
 phrases and doctrines herein set forth, we might 
 consider them due to a community of Oriental 
 ideas ; but his express quotations of two of them as 
 Law and Scripture compel the inference that they 
 existed in some sacred literature of the Apostolic 
 age. The only known source of the two quoted 
 texts is the Buddhist Canon, which in the first 
 Christian century was the most widespread of all 
 sacred codes — covering even a vaster field than its 
 great rivals, the Septuagint and the Zend Avesta 
 (26) and being the dominant religious force upon 
 the continent of Asia. 
 
 (26) The extent of Mazdeism (including the Mithra cult) 
 at the end of the first century is roughly indicated by the 
 cities of York, Cabul and Cadiz ; that of Buddhism, by Cabul, 
 Honan and Anuradhapura ; that of Judaism and rising Christi- 
 anity by Marseilles, Cadiz, and Ecbatana. But the diffusion 
 and active copying of the sacred canons puts Mazdeism out of 
 the race, for the Avesta was already crippled and little known. 
 (The Greek version of Hermippus was probably confined to 
 Alexandria). Of those purely national codes, the Vedas and 
 the Confucian Classics, we are not speaking, though Bud- 
 dhism carried a partial knowledge of the former, and the 
 Chinese arms had probably spread a knowledge of the latter. 
 As to Buddhism and Christianity, while the impetus of the 
 one was eastward and the other westward from the lands of 
 their birth, yet there was a retrograde movement in each case, 
 comparable to the rebound of a gun. These rebounds were 
 felt in the Parthian empire, the home of Mazdeism, which was 
 therefore the theatre of the most complex religious forces. 
 
 40 
 
BUDDHIST AND CHRISTIAN GOSPELS 
 
 now first compared from the originals : 
 
 being '* Gospel Parallels from Pali Texts," 
 
 reprinted with additions. 
 
 By Albert J. Edmunds, 
 
 Honorary Member of the International jBuddhist Society of 
 
 Rangun, translator of the Dhammapada, the Buddhist 
 
 Genesis, &c., member of the Oriental Club of 
 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 Third and Complete Edition. 
 
 Edited, with Parallels and Notes 
 from the Chinese Buddhist Tripitaka, 
 
 by M. Anesaki, 
 
 Professor of Religious Science in the Imperial University 
 of Tokyo. 
 
 Toky© : 
 
 The Yiahokwan Publishing House 
 
 1905. 
 
 Note. — This book appeared on May 27, 1905. Opinions 
 of scholars will be found in the Appendix to Fairmount Park 
 and other Poems (Fhi\a.de\ph\3., 1906.) The whole edition is 
 really proof-copy, which the author never corrected, on 
 account of distance. Even the title is misprinted, but the 
 above is its correct form. Corrected copies were presented to 
 the National Library at Washington, in hopes that the card 
 catalogue slips, which are distributed throughout the States, 
 would show the true title. But the rules of bibliography 
 require that the blunder of an Asiatic printer should be 
 perpetuated rather than the writing of the author. This 
 comes of our superstitious regard for print. 
 
 41 
 
ERRATA et Corrigenda. 
 
 Frontispiece. For Pcili read Pali. 
 
 P. ID, line 15. ¥ ox preceeding rtdid proceeding. 
 
 P. 17, line II. For Mahavaggo read Mahdvaggo. 
 
 " " *' '' For 7V«/«/^« read iVa/a^«. 
 
 P. 31, line 8. For Those in italics, read Nos. 14, 75- and 16. 
 
 P. 38, line 2. For Divyvaddna read Divydvaddna. 
 
 Owing to the contingencies of Philadelphia type-foundries, 
 the bar and the circumflex have been used indiscriminately to 
 mark long vowels. 
 
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