Read Ebook: The Influence of Buddhism on Primitive Christianity by Lillie Arthur

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"But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth.

"But thou shalt utterly destroy them, namely the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee."

It accounts, too, for the ferocity of the punishments for the infringement of the Taboo. Death was the penalty. The man who fails to pour dust on the blood of a pigeon that he has knocked down with an arrow, the man who picks up sticks upon the Sabbath, the perfumer who imitates a temple smell, the man who roasts the smallest particle of fat or blood, the labourer who has an abscess and fails to take two turtle doves as a "sin offering" to the priest at "the door of the tabernacle of the congregation" , may all be cut off. Every one may be stoned for infringing the Taboo.

Sir John Lubbock has pointed out that the god of the savage is of limited power and intelligence, and that the Taboo was designed to control rather than conciliate him. He cites the "Eeweehs" of the Nicobar Islands, who put up scarecrows to frighten their gods, and the inhabitants of Kamtschatka, who insult their deities if their wishes are unfulfilled. He cites also the Rishis and heroes of the Indian epics, who are constantly overcoming the gods of the Indian pantheon. Certainly the early god of the Jew was not deemed all-powerful. When the Jews fought against Askelon it is recorded:--

"The LORD was with Judah, and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron."

He wrestles with Jacob , and the superior wrestling of the man forces the god to give his blessing. He strives to kill Moses, but fails to do it. He is a purely local god, like Kemosh and other Semitic deities.

"Surely Yahve is in this place," said Jacob in Mesopotamia, "and I knew it not."

Anthropology divides the early races who used stone implements into two groups, the palaeolithic or rough-stone-using man, and the neolithic man, who polished his implements. The editing of Ezra has burnished up the early Hebrew a little, but it is plain that he had not emerged from the stone age. His god is a stone. Jacob erected a menhir. A menhir is a piece of chipped rock, erect, huge, imposing, the neolithic man's first rude piece of sculpture, the neolithic man's god. Moses erected a circle of these stone monoliths. Joshua erected twelve stone gods on the Jordan, and sacrificed to them. Palestine abounds in such circles archaeologists tell us. These circles were the "high places" of scripture.

Some hold that the Yahve who travelled with Israel in the Ark was a stone. The mighty God of Jacob is called the "Stone of Israel." We read of Eben-ezer, the "Stone of Help," when the Ark gives the victory to Samuel. Daniel's "stone cut out of the mountain without hands" brake in pieces the kings and the kingdoms. The "Shem Hamphoras," the stone in the Holy of Holies in Solomon's temple, was said to be the "Stone of Jacob."

Circumcision, a savage rite, was performed with "knives of flint." Mr. Tylor shows us that even at the date of the Mishna, the beast at the altar was killed with the kelt of the neolithic man. Stones were the official weights in Israel, and also the instruments of execution. David used the sling, and perhaps the chipped stone missiles that we see in museums, and his singing and dancing naked before the fetish, and the very unpleasant scalps that purchased him a wife, savour a little of the latitude of Polynesia. And his hanging up the hands and feet of Rechab and Baanah remind us of the stakes crowned with sculls round the huts of the Dyaks of Borneo.

"At a late date," says M. Soury, "we perceive in Hebrew legislation the repression of monstrous habits and depraved tastes which are only found amongst the very lowest savages. They are forbidden to tattoo themselves, to eat insects, reptiles," etc.

In writing thus, of course, I do not believe myself to be dealing with the actual neolithic period. Its survivals are tough. In India before the Mutiny I was employed with a force sent to put down the rebellion of the Santals. These, a branch of the Kolarias, represent the early races that the Arya displaced. And their institutions were singularly like those of the Jews. They worshipped in "high places" rude circles of upright monoliths. They worshipped in "groves;" and on one occasion we came across a slaughtered kid still warm, that under the holy Sal tree had been sacrificed to obtain the help of Singh Bonga against us. They had, like the Jews, twelve tribes. They believed, like them, that death ended consciousness. They had marriage by capture, softened down into a comedy, like other savage tribes. They believed that all diseases were due to the wrath of evil spirits, or the spell of a sorcerer. All through the night we could hear their war tom-toms sounding, the tuph of the Jews . They fought with the bows and arrows and axes that are marked "aboriginal weapons" in the South Kensington Museum. When we met them in action a chief came forward like Goliath with gestures and shouts of defiance. Like the Jews they were stiff-necked in their conservatism. Buddhism and Buddha had risen in their very midst. Brahmins, Mussulmans, Christians, had ruled them and plied them with missionaries; but pious Hindoos, instead of converting them, had been persuaded to offer sacrifices to Bagh Bhut, a tiger god, all-powerful in Santal jungles. They recited at night their deeds of theft and pillage and slaughter, like the Sioux Indians or the early Jews.

Circumcision is another savage rite. We find it with the Papuans. We find it in Central America. We find it amongst the Australian aborigines. That it was performed in Israel with knives of flint argues a survival from the men of stone implements. Sanitary precautions have been suggested as the origin of the rite, but such an idea would be in advance of the filthy savages using it. The "Encyclopaedia Britannica" holds that it was a sacrifice to Aschera, the goddess of generation, like a somewhat similar mutilation of females. Professor Sayce shows that with young men a complete mutilation in honour of the Phoenician Ashtoreth was common.

Mr. Frazer explains another cruel law of Leviticus. The Maoris believe that if anyone touches a dead body, and then accidentally touches food, any one partaking of that food will join the dead man in the shades. This superstition about the power of the dead is the root idea of other practices, covering pictures and looking-glasses whilst the corpse is still in the house, shunning the graveyard at night when it is buried. It is treated as an enemy who might pass his soul into the picture and do mischief. The death penalty for touching Yahve's food is probably the same superstition. When God is supposed to be walking about on earth in human form, as in the instance of a semi-divine savage chief, the danger of touching his food increases enormously. Mr. Frazer shows that the Mikado used to eat every day off new rude earthenware platters, which were at once broken and buried, that no one might lose his life by accidentally touching a particle of his food. Mr. Frazer gives numerous instances, where the same fatality is believed to result from food contaminated by a menstruous woman.

In the view of M. Soury, the early Jew was a tattooed savage, who ate insects; but anthropology has shed an unexpected light on this. The families, and small clans of early savages, had each some animal as a Totem. They were tattooed with this for distinction, and it was everywhere ruled that cat could not marry cat, or fox fox. A young man tattooed as a fox would have to capture a lady with another crest, "stunning her first with a blow from his dowak" perchance, like the Australian savage described by Sir John Lubbock.

The sacrifice has puzzled the modern divine.

It is urged that rites are necessary to religion, and that the sacrifice was an apparatus to train Israel to a deep sense of sin, and a necessity for a blood atonement. It is contended that it was merely a form, as only the useless portions of the carcase were given to Yahve. Those who talk like this libel the Jewish patriarchs. With savages the blood and the fat are considered the choicest morsels. To stone a poor Jew because he ate a little fat with his supper would have been infamous, if the whole affair was a harmless comedy. We have shown that the one thought of the Jew was a mighty terror, a Great Taboo. Starvation or rich harvests, victory or slavery, were due direct to Yahve; and the bloody sacrifice was the one and sole instrument by which he might be controlled.

As late as Leviticus it was believed that the burnt-offering actually provided food and drink to the Maker of the universe. It is called the "food of God" , a phrase softened into "bread of God" in our version, as the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" has shown. It was believed also that God specially loved the smell. More important still, as pointed out by Sir John Lubbock in his "Origin of Civilisation," p. 272, human sacrifices are expressly ordered in Leviticus :--

"There is indeed no doubt that human victims were offered to Yahve," says M. Soury. "The young of man belonged to Yahve, just as did the young of the animal and the fruit of the tree. All the gods of the Semites,--El, Schaddai, Adon, Baal, Moloch, Yahve, Kemosh,--were conceived in the likeness of Eastern monarchs. They had right absolute over all that was born and all that died in their realms. Man admits his vassalage. He adores the 'master,' and brings to his lord the first-fruits of his flock, his field, and his family."

The French author goes on to say that during their sojourn in Egypt the Jews sacrificed human victims. "In all the history of religions there is no human sacrifice better established than that of the daughter of Jephthah to Yahve. In the time of the Judges, who does not know the story of Samuel and Agag? It is 'before Yahve,' at Gilgal, that Samuel kills his victim. David appeased the wrath of Yahve, who had afflicted the land with famine during three years, by delivering up to the Gibeonites seven men of Saul's blood. The seven victims being hanged 'on the hill before Yahve,' the deity was satisfied."

This human sacrifice is, of course, a survival of cannibalism. The Australians, as Lumholtz shows, consider "talgoro" the daintiest of food. At their watchfires they discourse upon the delicate fat round the kidneys as an alderman might talk of calipash.

To them we will now turn.

I propose now to give a short life of Buddha, noting its points of contact with that of Jesus.

The early Buddhists, following the example of the Vedic Brahmins, divided space into Nirvritti, the dark portion of the heavens, and Pravritti, the starry systems. Over this last, the luminous portion, Buddha figures as ruler when the legendary life opens. The Christian Gnostics took over this idea and gave to Christ a similar function. Buthos was Nirvritti ruled by "The Father" , Pravritti was the Pleroma. "It was the Father's good pleasure that in him the whole Pleroma should have its home."

"BEHOLD A VIRGIN SHALL CONCEIVE."

Some writers have called in question the statement that Buddha was born of a virgin, but in the southern scriptures, as given by Mr. Turnour, it is announced that a womb in which a Buddha elect has reposed, is like the sanctuary of a temple. On that account, that her womb may be sacred, the mother of a Buddha always dies in seven days. The name of the queen was borrowed from Brahminism. She was M?y? Dev?, the Queen of Heaven. And one of the titles of this lady is Kany?, the Virgin of the Zodiac.

Queen M?y? was chosen for her mighty privilege because the Buddhist scriptures announce that the mother of a Buddha must be of royal line.

Long genealogies, very like those of the New Testament, are given also to prove the blue blood of King Suddhodana, who, like Joseph, had nothing to do with the paternity of the child. "King Mahasammata had a son named Roja, whose son was Vararoja, whose son was Kaly?na, whose son was Varakaly?na," and so on, and so on.

How does a Buddha come down to earth? This question is debated in Heaven, and the Vedas were searched because, as Seydel shows, although Buddhism seemed a root and branch change, it was attempted to show that it was really the lofty side of the old Brahminism, a lesson not lost by and by in Palestine. The sign of Capricorn in the old Indian Zodiac is an elephant issuing from a Makara , and it symbolises the active god issuing from the quiescent god in his home on the face of the waters. In consequence, Buddha comes down as a white elephant, and enters the right side of the queen without piercing it or in any way injuring it. Childers sees a great analogy in all this to the Catholic theory of the perpetual virginity of Mary. Catholic doctors quote this passage from Ezekiel :--

"Then said the LORD unto me, This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it; because the LORD, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore shall it be shut."

A DOUBLE ANNUNCIATION.

It is recorded that when Queen M?y? received the supernal Buddha in her womb, in the form of a beautiful white elephant, she said to her husband: "Like snow and silver, outshining the sun and the moon, a white elephant of six defences, with unrivalled trunk and feet, has entered my womb. Listen, I saw the three regions with a great light shining in the darkness, and myriads of spirits sang my praises in the sky."

A similar miraculous communication was made to King Suddhodana:--

"The spirits of the Pure Abode flying in the air, showed half of their forms, and hymned King Suddhodana thus:

"Guerdoned with righteousness and gentle pity, Adored on earth and in the shining sky, The coming Buddha quits the glorious spheres And hies to earth to gentle M?y?'s womb."

In the Christian scriptures there is also a double annunciation. In Luke the angel Gabriel is said to have appeared to the Virgin Mary before her conception, and to have foretold to her the miraculous birth of Christ. But in spite of this astounding miracle, Joseph seems to have required a second personal one before he ceased to question the chastity of his wife. Plainly, two evangelists have been working the same mine independently, and a want of consistency is the result.

When Buddha was in his mother's womb that womb was transparent. The Virgin Mary was thus represented in mediaeval frescoes.

"WE HAVE SEEN HIS STAR IN THE EAST."

Amongst the thirty-two signs that indicate the mother of a Buddha, the fifth is that, like Mary the mother of Jesus, she should be "on a journey" at the moment of parturition. This happened. A tree bent down its branches and overshadowed her, and Buddha came forth. Voltaire says that in the library of Berne there is a copy of the First Gospel of the Infancy, which records that a palm tree bent down in a similar manner to Mary. The Koran calls it a "withered date tree."

In the First Gospel of the Infancy, it is stated that, when Christ was in His cradle, He said to His mother: "I am Jesus, the Son of God, the Word whom thou didst bring forth according to the declaration of the angel Gabriel to thee, and my Father hath sent Me for the salvation of the world."

In the Buddhist scriptures it is announced that Buddha, on seeing the light, said:--

"I am in my last birth. None is my equal. I have come to conquer death, sickness, old age. I have come to subdue the spirit of evil, and give peace and joy to the souls tormented in hell."

In the same scriptures it is announced that at the birth of the Divine child, the devas in the sky sang "their hymns and praises."

CHILD-NAMING.

"Five days after the birth of Buddha," says Bishop Bigandet, in the "Burmese Life," "was performed the ceremony of head ablution and naming the child."

We see from this where the ceremony of head ablution and naming the child comes from. In the "Lalita Vistara" Buddha is carried to the temple. Plainly we have the same ceremony. There the idols bow down to him as in the First Gospel of the Infancy the idol in Egypt bows down to Jesus. In Luke the infant Jesus is also taken to the temple by his parents to "do for him after the custom of the law." What law? Certainly not the Jewish.

HEROD AND THE WISE MEN.

It is recorded in the Chinese life that King Bimbis?ra, the monarch of R?jagriha, was told by his ministers that a boy was alive for whom the stars predicted a mighty destiny. They advised him to raise an army and go and destroy this child, lest he should one day subvert the king's throne. Bimbis?ra refused.

At the birth of Buddha the four Mah?r?jas, the great kings, who in Hindoo astronomy guard each a cardinal point, received him. These may throw light on the traditional Persian kings that greeted Christ.

In some quarters these analogies are admitted, but it is said that the Buddhists copied from the Christian scriptures. But this question is a little complicated by the fact that many of the most noticeable similarities are in apocryphal gospels, those that were abandoned by the Church at an early date. In the Protevangelion, at Christ's birth, certain marvels are visible. The clouds are "astonished," and the birds of the air stop in their flight. The dispersed sheep of some shepherds near cease to gambol, and the shepherds to beat them. The kids near a river are arrested with their mouths close to the water. All nature seems to pause for a mighty effort. In the "Lalita Vistara" the birds also pause in their flight when Buddha comes to the womb of Queen M?y?. Fires go out, and rivers are suddenly arrested in their flow.

More noticeable is the story of Asita, the Indian Simeon.

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