A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s7.43

v2.c19.s7.43

Whilst we have thus seen that doubts as to an historical connection on the strength of any of the parallels cited from the canonical gospels are more than justifiable, and whilst we can at the very most speak of the possibility of such a connection, we find in the apocryphal gospels which originated in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A. D., a whole series of legends, the loan of which from Buddhist literature may be asserted with as great a degree of probability as is at all possible in questions of this kind. The tales of the Bodhisattva, who is taken to the temple in his boyhood, and before whom the statues of the gods arise, so as to fall down at his feet, and that of the Bodhisattva’s first day at school, coincide so exatly with the stories of the childhood of Jesus as related in the pseudo-St. Matthew’s gospel, Chapter XXIII and in St. Thomas’s gospel, Chapts. VI-VIII and XIV, that the dependence of the Christian legend upon the Buddhist one, could only be doubted by persons who refute any such dependence on principle. Or take such legends as the following: in Pseudo-Matth., Chapt. XIII, it is said of the child Jesus that, while still in his mother’s womb, a light shone forth from him, so that the dark cavern into which Mary entered, was illuminated and became bright as day, and that the Saviour’s mother was in no wise stained with blood through the birth of the child, and felt no pain: in the proto-gospel of St. James, Chapt. VI, it is told of the six-months old Mary, that she walked towards her mother with seven steps; in the same gospel, Chapt. XVIII, it is related that the forces of nature and the activities of mankind came to a sudden standstill at the birth of Jesus; in Pseudo-Matth., Chapt. XX, a palm-tree inclines its branches down to the ground at the command of the infant Jesus, in order to offer its fruits to Mary, who is thirsty and exhausted. It is so very obvious to anyone acquainted with the legend of Buddha, that these wonder-tales must be assumed to be of Indian origin, that even among Christian theologians, there are only few who doubt an historical connection.¹