The Project Gutenberg eBook of Buddhism and Christianity, by Archibald Scott

105. It is significant that in the beginning of the Bible Nature-worship seems stamped as accursed in its symbol, the serpent, and that the whole Bible from beginning to end is a Divine protest against that worship in all its forms. Mankind in all ages is tempted to become as the gods, and in a low condition he has almost everywhere succumbed to the temptation. He feasts his gods, compels them to serve him, is really higher than they, and thus he degrades himself or falls from the ideal of one made in the image and after the likeness of God.

106. Ewald, History of Israel, vol. i. pp. 320-322.

107. Some ascribe it to the Deuteronomist, ch. vi. 4.

108. Professor Müller finds the first traces of a Maker or Creator in the Vedic deity Tvashtar, the carpenter—the clever workman, even smith, forging bolts for Indra therein, Rig-Ved. iii. 55. 19. “Tvashtar, the enlivener, endowed with many forms, has nourished the creatures and produced them in many ways; all these worlds are his.” Of another god, latterly called Pragâpati, he quotes Rig-Ved. x. 81. 2, as one who, “creating the earth, disclosed the sky by his power.” Very significantly, however, he reminds us that the same poet loses the idea, and speaks of the secret of creation as undiscoverable.—Müller’s Natural Religion, p. 245. Also Introd. to Upanishads, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xv. p. xxiv.

109. Fairbairn, Religion in History and in the Life of To-day, pp. 39-51.

110. It was only by their very highest and greatest souls that the Godhead was conceived in anything of its spiritual glory. To Abraham God was the Creator, distinct from and greater than the earth and heavens which He had made; to Moses He was a righteous Lawgiver, training upon eagle-wings a peculiar people; to David He was a tender and wise Shepherd of a foolish and helpless flock; to Isaiah and the later prophets a Father dealing with rebellious people, whom He pities, knowing whereof they were made. These conceptions, however, cannot be said to have been those of the mass of the people.

111. Kuenen, National Religions and Universal Religion, Hibbert Lectures, 1882, p. 187.

112. Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol. i. p. 275.

113. Jos. Contra Ap. ii. 30. 32; Antiq. xviii. 1. 1; Jewish Wars, ii. 8.

114. Uhlhorn, Conflict of Christianity, chaps. i. ii.; Jos. Antiq. xiii. 9. 1, and 11. 3, and Contra Ap. ii. 10. 39; Kuenen, Religion of Israel, iii. 273 seq.; Renan, Les Apôtres, pp. 253, 260.

115. The truth on which the Sabbath is founded is the majestic truth of a completed creation, and one conform to the latest discoveries of science. During the whole course of human observation no new creative effort has been displayed in the production of a new type. The animal and vegetable worlds stand to-day as man first beheld them. The creative spirit has passed into the soul of man, in whose world is the progress which nature has long ceased to manifest, and under whose handling nature itself improves. But God, though resting from His works of creation, is not in Scripture said to be resting from His works of mercy: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”

116. “The words of Agur the son of Jakeh,” Proverbs xxxi. 1.

117. Hüber, Der Pessimismus, 1876, p. 8; Holdheim, Preface to vol. iii. of Predigten, quoted by Cheyne, Job and Solomon, pp. 250-253.

118. Eccles. xii. 12.

119. Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol. i. p. 276; Keim, Jesus of Nazara, vol. i. pp. 316-325; Kuenen, Religion of Israel, vol. iii. p. 177.

120. E.g. Sinai = Hagar (Gal. iv. 24-31); also Claudius = ὁ κατέχων (2 Thess. ii. 6, 7); Hausrath, Life and Times of Jesus, vol. i. p. 77.

121. Derenbourg, Hist. de la Palestine d’après les Talmuds, pp. 159, 202.

122. Wellhausen, The Pharisees and Sadducees, pp. 8, 26-43; Greifswald, 1874.

123. Jos. Antiq. xiii. 5. 9, xv. 10. 4, 5; Bell. Jud. ii. 8. 2, 14.

124. Keim, Jesus of Nazara, vol. i. p. 392.

125. Delitzsch, Jesus and Hillel, pp. 31 seq.; Pirké Abôth, Cambridge, 1877, passim.

126. Jos. Antiq. xvii. 4.

127. Philo, Quod omnis Probus Liber, p. 12.

128. Bühler, Ind. Ant. vol. vii. p. 143; Jacobi, “Mahâvira and his Predecessors,” Ind. Ant. vol. viii. pp. 311-314; Kern, History of Buddhism in India, vol. i. p. 143; Colebrooke’s Essays, vol. i. p. 380.

129. See “Jainism,” by Dr. Shoolbred—Report of the Missionary Conference, 1888, vol. i. p. 41; Wilson’s Essays, vol. i. p. 427 seq.

130. “Sramana,” in Brahman speech, was a man who performed hard penances, from sram, to work hard. There is another Sanscrit root, sam, to quiet, and from it afterwards the popular etymology derived the word. See Professor Max Müller’s translation of the Dhammapada in Sacred Books of the East, vol. x. p. 65 note.

131. There seems to have been four great divisions of Sramanas, with as many as sixty-three philosophical systems represented by them. The Brahmanas were also similarly divided. See Sutta Nipâta, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi. Part ii. pp. 15, 16, 88, 93.

132. Oldenberg, Buddha, etc., p. 71.

133. See Year-Book of Protestant Theology for 1883 for an account of the views of Professor Loman of Amsterdam.

134. M. Senart, Legend of Buddha, Paris, 1875; Kern, History of Buddhism in India: Schoebel. Buddh. Actes de la Soc. Philol.; Paris, 1874, vol iv. pp. 160 seq.

135. Annual Report of the Asiatic Society; Paris, July 1875.

136. Cunningham, Ancient Geog. of India, vol. i. p. 147; Oldenberg, Buddha, etc., p. 95; Beal, Chinese Buddhism, p. 67.

137. “Mâra eat le démon de l’amour, du péché et de la mort,” says Burnouf in his Introduction to the Study of Indian Buddism, p. 76; see also Sutta Nipâta, Sacred Books of the East, vol. x. Part ii. p. 159, for the popular conception of Buddha’s temptation; the arrows of Mâra are “flower-pointed,” like Kama’s, the Hindu god of love. See Dhammapada, Sacred Books of the East, vol. x. Part i. p. 17.

138. Geikie, Life of Christ, vol. i. p. 449.

139. Mahavagga, i. 5. 2; Sacred Books of the East, vol. xvii.

140. This is not the place to discuss the substance of their respective teachings. Their aims seemed to be similar, for both proclaimed freedom to be gained by the Truth, or saving knowledge, but their conceptions of the knowledge that saves are as widely contrasted as are their ideas of salvation. If we put the Sermon on the Mount side by side with Buddha’s first sermon (translated in vol. xi. p. 146 of Sacred Books of the East) we find contradiction in almost every sentence. “Blessed are the poor in spirit” is an utterance not only foreign to but in direct antithesis to the preaching of Buddha. He has no sympathy with the “poor in spirit,” if we take the phrase in the light of the old Hebrew concept of it. His benediction is reserved for the self-conscious and self-reliant, who are bent upon self-culture and self-development. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, etc., and thy neighbour as thyself.” Buddha found no higher to adore, and no other than self to consider. The moral precepts in his law are based on no appeal to conscience, and are inspired by no sense of duty. Others were regarded as the occasion for winning merit, and kindness done to them was not done for their sake, but with the view of securing the safety of the doer.

141. Dr. Oldenberg (Buddha, etc., p. 148) very properly remarks that Ambapali the courtesan was no Mary Magdalene, and that she was not regarded by Buddha as the woman that was a sinner was regarded by Christ. Buddha had not Christ’s horror of sin, and therefore felt none of His boundless pity for the frailty of its victims; of hatred of sin in the Christian sense Buddhism knows nothing. Its highest virtue is imperturbability, a serenity that is apathetic in regard to the most outrageous wrong or the most heinous wickedness. Cariya Pitaka, iii. 15; also Sacred Books of the East, vol. x. Part ii. p. 151.

142. Bishop Bigandet, Life of Gaudama, p. 287; Professor H. Wilson, Essays, vol. ii. p. 243; Wheeler, History of India, vol. iii. p. 139; Oldenberg, Buddha, etc., p. 148; Mahâparanibhâna Sutta, in Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi. pp. 71, 72.

143. Mahâparanibhâna Sutta, vi. 10, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi. p. 114. Dr. Edkins, in Chinese Buddhism, p. 57, gives a version of an appearance of Buddha after cremation to his mother, Máya, who came down from heaven to see his coffin. Professor Childers finds no trace in any Pali earliest literature of any belief in Buddha’s existence after death (Dictionary of Pali Language, p. 472, note 1).

144. Oldenberg, Buddha, etc., pp. 322, 323; Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures, p. 264.

145. In the Bhagavadgitá loving devotion for Krishna is demanded as the only means of salvation; but Krishna-worship began very considerably later than the origin of Christianity. Professor Müller admits (Gifford Lectures, p. 99) that Christian influences were possible then, but says that there is no necessity for admitting them. He cites the passage from Bhagavad. ix. 29 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. viii. p. 34), “They who worship me with devotion or love, they are in me, and I in them,” as an interesting parallel to John vi. 7 and xvii. 23, but we must remember that St. John’s words were circulating all over the world for generations before these were penned.

146. Mahavagga, v. 1. 18.

147. The Lalita Vistara, of which there are many versions, is the chief authority for the legends. In the Buddhist Birth-Stories, translated by T. W. Rhys Davids, in Bigandet’s Life of Gaudama, and Spence Hardy’s Manual (Legends of the Buddhists), in the Romantic Legend of Sakya Buddha, translated by Professor S. Beal, will be found a large and interesting miscellany of the prodigies connected with the coming of Buddha.

148. A wife, not a virgin; Romantic Legend, pp. 32, 36, 37, 41.

149. Lalita Vistara, p. 63, Calcutta edition; Buddhist Birth-Stories, pp. 62, 68.

150. Nalaka Sutta, Sutta Nipâta, xi. 1. 20, 21; Sacred Books of the East, vol. x. Asita, the aged ascetic, is said to have ascended to heaven after his daily repast, and upon finding the gods in joyful commotion he at length returned to see the new-born wonder (Birth-Stories, p. 69).

151. Title given by the translator of the Dhanima-Kakka-ppavatana Sutta, in vol. xi. of Sacred Books of the East.

152. Spence Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 187, quoting the Pujáwaliya, said to be later than the thirteenth century A.D.

153. Sutta Nipâta, Sacred Books of the East, vol. x. Part ii. p. 17.

154. Ibid. vol. x. Part ii. pp. 31, 45.

155. Mahâparanibhâna Sutta, iv. 49, 50, ibid. vol. xi. p. 81.

156. Bigandet, op. cit. p. 323; Spence Hardy, Manual, p. 347; Mahâparinibhâna Sutta, vi. 11-16.

157. Das Evangelium von Jesu in seinen Verhältnissen zur Buddha-Sage und Buddha-Lehre; Leipzig, 1882.

158. Let any one compare the prediction of the so-called Indian Simeon, the Nalaka Sutta, in vol. x. p. 125 of Sacred Books of the East, with Luke ii. 25; the account of the Temptation by Mara, in the Romantic Legend, pp. 204, 224, or in Hardy’s Manual of Buddhism, p. 183, with Matt. iv. 1; the so-called Transfiguration in Mahâparinibhâna, iv. 49, vol. xi. Sacred Books of the East, p. 81, with Matt. xvii. 1-8; the feast of the courtesan Ambopali, in Mahâparinibhâna Sutta, ii. 16. 25, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi. p. 30, with Christ’s treatment of the Magdalene in Luke vii. 36, and he will see at once how improbable and even absurd is the theory that the Evangelists borrowed from the Buddhist compilers. That we are dealing with quite an inferior order of facts is apparent when we compare one of the most touching coincidences, Buddha’s last discourse to the Beloved Ananda in Mahâparinibhâna Sutta, v. 34. 35, “Let not yourself be troubled,” with John xiv. 1-6. In some of the miracles accompanying the birth and temptations of Buddha, there are not only gross absurdities but positive indecencies, which by the simplicity and modesty and reticence of the Gospel narratives are powerfully condemned. See Lalita Vistara, chaps. vi. and vii., and Buddhist Birth-Stories, vol. i. pp. 58, 68.

159. This is a very great assumption indeed. Foucaux, its translator, assigns it to the first century B.C., but T. W. Rhys Davids assigns it to some Nepaulese poet “who lived between six hundred and a thousand years after Buddha’s death” (Hibbert Lectures, pp. 197, 204). A Chinese version is said to have been in existence about 70 A.D. Rajendralal Mitra, its English translator, admits this in his Introduction, p. 48, but whether that was a version, or another book altogether, or how far it corresponded with the Lalita Vistara, no scholar has been confident to say. Dr. Beal also mentions a life of Buddha by Asvaghosha as probably in circulation about the middle of the Christian era (Chinese Buddhism, p. 73).

160. Mahâparinibhâna Sutta, translated by T. W. Rhys Davids, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi.

161. The blessed Buddha rebuked Pindola Bhâradvâga (for having won a bowl of sandalwood by performing a miracle), saying, “This is improper, not according to rule, unsuitable, unworthy of a Samana, unbecoming, and ought not to be done. How can you for the sake of a miserable wooden pot display before the laity the superhuman quality of your miraculous power of Iddhi?... This will not conduce either to the conversion of the unconverted or to the increase of the converted” (Kullavagga, v. 8. 2). The danger of performing a miracle by power of Iddhi, for self-glorification, is exemplified in the story of Devadatta in Kullavagga, vii. 1. 2, 3. In the Mahavagga, Kullavagga, Sutta Nipâta, and similar books, however, miracles are ascribed to Buddha, and conversions attributed to their performance.

163. T. W. Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, p. 128.

164. Oldenberg, Buddha, etc., p. 190.

165. Matthew xi. 27; xxviii. 16-20.

166. Mark i. 7-11; ii. 10-28; viii. 38; xii. 35-37.

167. Pressensé, Vie de Jésus, p. 373.

168. Cox, Commentary on Job, p. 19.

169. See Mahavagga, i. pp. 15-20, for specimens of the “three thousand five hundred” wonders of Buddha. “The marvellous in the Gospels is but sober good sense compared with what we find in ... the Hindu European mythologies” (Renan, Études d’histoire Relig. pp. 177, 203).

170. Godet, Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith, pp. 118-161.

171. Dr. Dods, Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ, p. 201; Dr. Fairbairn, Studies in Religion as a Philosophy, p. 36.

172. p. 58, one-vol. edition.

173. Trench, Hulsean Lectures, p. 150.

174. Sutta Nipâta, translated by Fausböll in vol. x. p. 102; parallel suggested to John xviii. 37.

175. Hibbert Lectures, pp. 144-147.

176. Dorner, Doctrine of the Person of Christ, Introd. pp. 56-60, 64-70; Liddon, Bampton Lectures, 1866, pp. 364-380; Lange, Life of Christ, vol. i. pp. 121-124.

177. E.g. the Targums.

178. E.g. De Opific. Mund. i. 4; De Mundi incor. § 16, 17.

179. Sears, Fourth Gospel, pp. 220 seq.; Westcott, Introduction to St. John, pp. xvi, xvii; Dorner, op. cit. vol. i. pp. 327-332.

180. Dharma, an ancient Brahman term, meaning law or order; what holds things as they are, or ought to be. In later Sanskrit it also means duty and virtue, i.e. law performed.—Gifford Lectures, Natural Religion, pp. 94, 95. Buddha is also an ancient Brahman term applied to one who has attained a perfect knowledge of the Self.—Satapatha-brahmana, xiv. 7. 2. 17. In Buddhism Dharma means Buddha’s doctrines, “bodhi,” i.e. knowledge self-acquired, as distinguished from “Veda,” i.e. revelation obtainable only through the Brahmans.—Sir Monier Williams’ Buddhism, p. 97.

181. Oldenberg, Buddha, etc., pp. 205-208; Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 87; Spence Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 375. His relation to the philosophical systems of his day is illustrated in several Suttas; see Sutta Nipâta, in vol. x. Part ii. of Sacred Books of the East, pp. 148-152. Evidently he regarded them with aversion, and even contempt.

182. Le Bouddha, etc., p. 79. The legends indicate that his use of the vernacular was matter of principle. Two Brahmans, “excelling in speech, excelling in pronunciation,” complained that the monks corrupted the word of the Buddhas by repeating it in their own dialect, and asked permission to put it into classical or polished verse. “How can you, O foolish ones, speak thus?... You are not, O monks, to put the words of the Buddhas into polished (Sanskrit) verse. Whosoever does so shall be guilty of a dukkata.”—Kullavagga, v. 33. 1; Sacred Books of the East, vol. xx.

183. Mahâparanibhâna Sutta, ii. 1. 2; Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi.; Mahavagga, i. 6. 18, 27; ibid. vol. xiii.

184. Not as the Nothing, as Wuttke tries to show in Geschichte des Heidenthums, ii. § 166. Oldenberg, Buddha, etc., p. 212.

185. Samyutta-ka-Nikâya, quoted by Oldenberg, Buddha, etc., p. 217.

186. Bouddha et sa Religion, p. iii, Introduction.

187. “The Modern Buddhist,” published in the volume called The Wheel of the Law: Buddhism illustrated from Siamese Sources, by H. Alabaster; London, 1876.

188. Dr. Westcott, Social Aspects of Christianity, p. 12; Aristotle, Ethic., i. 1; iv. 3.

189. “The Modern Buddhist,” Alabaster, Wheel of the Law, p. 73; Spence Hardy, Eastern Monachism, pp. 5, 339; Gogerly’s translation of the Brahmajala Sutta in Digha Nikâya, Journal of Ceylon Asiatic Society, 1846.

190. Preface to Müller’s Dhammapada, p. xxx, old ed.

191. Note at pp. 31, 32 of Dhammapada in vol. x. of Sacred Books of the East. Frankfurter, App. Bamp. Lect. 1881, p. 349.

192. Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 95; Spence Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 388; Oldenberg, Buddha, etc., quoting Bhikkuni Samyutta, p. 258; Colebrooke’s Essays, vol. i. p. 417, Cowell’s edition; Sabbasava Sutta, 10, 11, 12: Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi.