A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s7.1

v2.c19.s7.1

Just as Buddhism became one of the great religions of the world, a great part of Buddhist literature belongs to universal literature. We have already seen, on various occasions, that Buddhist fables, anecdotes, fairy tales and legends not only migrated to the Far East with Buddhism, but also frequently have their parallels in European literatures, though it is not always certain that the Buddhist narratives migrated to Europe, for the reverse may sometimes have been the case.¹ We have also seen that the Buddha *Rudolf Seydel,*¹ in particular, thought he could prove such numerous coincidences between the Buddha legend and the life of Jesus according to the gospels, that he framed the hypothesis that the Evangelists, besides using an "original text" of St. Matthew and an "original text" of St. Mark, had also made use of a poetical gospel, Christian though influenced by Buddhism, and had taken from this all those legends, parables and utterances which have parallels in the Buddhist texts. He considered this hypothesis to be necessary, because the points of agreement (in his opinion) do not appear singly but massed together, and actually form groups, indeed, a connected whole. A single stick, he says, can easily be broken, but it is more difficult to break a bundle, or indeed a bundle of bundles. This is well said! But if the stick is no stick, but only the phantom of a stick, then even a bundle, or a bundle of bundles of such "sticks" is of no use to us. In reality it is not difficult to show, and has repeatedly been shown, that the majority of the "parallels" indicated by Seydel will not bear closer examination.