to attend, the attempt to apply Buddhist ideas to the explanation of the thoughts of Jesus. It could only indeed appear to have some prospect of success if we could make up our minds to follow the example of the author of one of the most recent of fictitious lives of Christ in putting Jesus to school to the Buddhist priests; in which case the six years which Monsieur Nicolas Notowitsch allots to this purpose, would certainly be none too much for the completion of the course. [1] If imagination boggles at this, there remains no possibility of showing that Buddhist ideas exercised any direct influence upon Jesus. That Buddhism may have had some kind of influence upon Late Judaism and thus indirectly upon Jesus is not inherently impossible, if we are prepared to recognise Buddhistic influence on the Babylonian and Persian civilisations. But it is unproved, unprovable, and unthinkable, that Jesus derived the suggestion of the new and creative ideas which emerge in His teaching from Buddhism. The most that can be done in this direction is to point to certain analogies. For the parables of Jesus, Buddhist parallels were suggested by Renan and Havet. [2]
How little these analogies mean in the eyes of a cautious observer is evident from the attitude which Max Muller took up towards the question. "That there are startling coincidences between Buddhism and Christianity," he remarks in one passage, [3] "cannot be denied; and it must likewise be admitted that Buddhism existed at least four hundred years before Christianity. I go even further and say that I should be extremely grateful if anybody would point out to me the historical channels through which Buddhism had influenced early Christianity. I have been looking for such channels all my life, but hitherto I have found none. What I have found is that for some of the most startling coincidences there are historical antecedents on both sides; and if we once know these antecedents the coincidences become far less startling."
A year before Max Muller formulated his impression in these terms Rudolf Seydel[4] had endeavoured to explain the analogies
- ↑ La Vie inconnue de Jesus-Christ, par Nicolas Notowitsch. Paris, 1894.
- ↑ See Julicher, Gleichnisreden Jesu, i., 1888, p. 172 ff.
- ↑ Max Muller, India, What can it teach us? London, 1883, p. 279.
- ↑ Rudolf Seydel, Professor in the University of Leipzig, Das Evangelium von Jesu in seinen Verhaltnissen zu Buddha-Sage und Buddha-Lehre mit fortlaufender Rilchsicht auf andere Religionskreise. (The Gospel of Jesus in its relation to the Buddha Legend and the Teaching of Buddha, with constant reference to other religious groups.) Leipzig, 1882, p. 337. Other works by the same author are Buddha und Christus. Deutsche Bucherei No. 33, Breslau, Schottlander, 1884. Die Buddha-Legende und das Leben Jesu nach den Evangelien. 2nd ed. Weimar, 1897. (Edited by the son of the late author.) 129 pp. See also on this question Van den Bergh van Eysinga, Indische Einflusse auf evangelische Erzdhlungen. Gottingen, 1904. 104 pp. According to J. M. Robertson, Christianity and Mythology (London, 1900), the Christ-Myth is merely a form of the Krishna-Myth. The whole Gospel tradition is to be symbolically interpreted.
