BUDDHIST AND CHRISTIAN PARALLELS: THE MYTHOLOGICAL BACKGROUND J. ESTLIN CARPENTER Manchester New College "THE Comparative history of religion," says Dr. Windisch, "is not a history of borrowings." No doubt each great historic faith develops its own genius, under the inspiration of the personalities, known or unknown, who have imparted to it the powerful stimulus of their own life and thought. No doubt also the foundation of many of the widespread myths to be encountered in different parts of the globe the waste and darkness of primeval waters — the world-egg - the wedded union of sky and earth is to be sought in elements of experience that are common to all. The interpretation of the world around finds everywhere similar events to be explained; the same sun rises and sets; the same moon passes through the same phases; the same senses observe them; the same thinking power combines similar recollections into its theories of the universe and its beginnings; and human life, when it has advanced beyond its crudest forms, is organized in similar relations, and is exposed to the same vicissitudes. But on the other hand, every vigorous stock grows by contact and suggestion from without. The vitality of any religion is chiefly proved by its power to assimilate fresh materials, and reshape them by its own plastic force. The dictum of Windisch may be easily reversed. Israel would have been poorly furnished with speculations about primeval antiquity had it not borrowed the conceptions of Babylonian science. But for the Avestan theodicy its hopes for the 1 Buddha's Geburt und die Lehre von der Seelenwanderung, p. 200, Leipzig, 1908. future would have taken a very different form. And had not early Christianity been willing to receive a loan of the highest significance from Hellenic culture, the destiny of Europe and the world would have run in paths beyond our power to imagine. No a priori maxims can govern historical investigation. There is always a case for inquiry; and if any one can prove that the Gospels owe anything to the stories either of Gilgamesh or of the Buddha, he will deserve respectful attention. Doubtless there will be differences of opinion as to what constitutes proof; and the number of coincidences that will be admitted to establish even a probability of relationship will vary from mind to mind. Prepossessions and prejudices are not the peculiar property of Christian apologists. The really interesting parallels between Buddhism and Christianity lie in the great development which transformed the primitive teaching of Gotama from a system of ethical culture, associated with an empirical idealism, into a transcendental philosophy capable of sustaining a lofty religion of spiritual communion, expressing itself in highly organized worship. The attention of western students, however, has hitherto been chiefly attracted by the remarkable resemblances between incidents in the careers of the two teachers, some of their moral precepts, and the legends which gathered around their persons. Founding his argument partly on the Lucan story of the Nativity, a distinguished English critic a generation ago felt himself justified in talking of the "obligations of the New Testament to Buddhism." The .devoted patience and the learned labor of Mr. Albert J. Edmunds have brought together a large number of passages for comparison, the value of which will naturally be very variously estimated. I do not propose in this paper to discuss either his method or his conclusions. Without attempting to deal with the wide range covered by his inquiry, I wish to suggest the possibility of another line of explanation of the likenesses in the stories of the birth. May it not be the case that there was a common mythological background which supplied a typical form for national or 2 Buddhist and Christian Gospels, 2 vols., 4th ed., Philadelphia, 1908. local imagination to cast into its own mould and adorn with its own colouring? The answer to such a question depends on two groups of considerations. In the first place, are there any indications of the diffusion of other beliefs or ideas between India and the Mediterranean lands which would justify us in supposing the existence of such a treasury of mythic representations? And secondly, is there any evidence that it might have contained a description of what was proper to happen when a hero, a prophet, or a god was to be born? Only a few hints and illustrations pointing in this direction can be offered here. I The possibility of the transmission of stories between India and Western Asia has long been recognized. Every one knows the tale of the two women who were brought before Solomon, claiming the same child. The wise judge ordered the child to be divided and half to be given to each disputant. The real mother, rather than see her babe slain, surrendered her half to preserve its life. In the Commentary on the Mahā-Ummagga Jātaka in the book of the Buddha's previous births there is a corresponding story, where the change of scene and fresh local color cannot disguise the similarity. The child of a woman bathing in a tank is carried off by an ogress in human form. The mother runs after her to recover it, but the ogress denies her right, and declares that the babe is her own. Quarrelling loudly, they pass the door of the hall where the future Buddha sits in judgment. He hears their cries and summons them before him. When their pleas are stated, he bids an attendant draw a line upon the ground. The child is laid across it; the ogress is directed to lay hold of its arms, the mother to grasp its legs: "The child shall be hers who drags it over the line." As they begin to pull, the mother, seeing the child suffer, lets go and weeps. "Whose hearts are tender to babes," inquires the "Great Physician," "those who have borne children or those who have not?" The bystanders give the appropriate answer, and Jātaka, 6. 336. 1 Kings iii. 16-28. the infant is restored to the true mother. The dilemma is the same; the conclusion is reached by a similar test founded on the same motive. The two stories seem to be variants of a common original. So far as the literary record goes, the Book of Kings is, of course, far the older. But the tale might have been repeated for centuries in India without being written down. Did it come from there along with the apes and the ivory which Solomon was said to have imported? Or was it picked up in Babylonia in the sixth century when Israel was in exile, and attached to Solomon by the redactor of the traditions of his wisdom? No definite answer is possible, but the acknowledged Indian origin of so many western folk-tales is in favor of the southern reference. On the other hand, the story of Sargon with its parallel in the case of Moses is of undoubtedly higher antiquity than its Indian counterpart. The text in its present form comes from the scribes of Assurbanipal in the seventh century B.C., but it is recognized as a legend of ancient date. My lowly mother conceived me, in secret she brought me forth. She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she closed my door. She cast me into the river, which rose not over me. The river bore me up, unto Akki the irrigator it carried me. Akki the irrigator . . . lifted me out. Akki the irrigator as his own son reared me, etc.5 A similar tale is told at great length and with exuberant imagination in the huge Indian epic, the Mahābhārata." The lady Kunti has conceived by Surya, the Sun. When the child Karna is born, he is placed in a waterproof wickerwork basket, duly pillowed and sheeted, and the basket is set on the waters of the river Asva, whence it is borne on its course to the Ganges. There the beautiful lady Rādhā, who has no son, watches it drifting down the stream. The waves bring it to the bank; the babe is discovered and accepted as a gift from the gods; and the boy is reared by Rādhā and her husband in their own home. Once more we encounter a wandering tale in a new setting, this time doubtless derived from an ancient Mesopotamian source. To Babylonia also belongs the still more widespread 'L. W. King, Chronicles concerning Early Babylonian Kings, 2. 88 (1907). • Third division, Vana Parva, chapter 307, translated by Dutt. legend of the Flood. When the cuneiform story was discovered by one of the pioneers of Assyriological research, Mr. George Smith, it was already known that a similar narrative, afterwards incorporated in the myths of Vishnu, existed in the Brāhmaṇa of a Hundred Paths. Manu, the mythical progenitor of humanity, is warned by a fish of a coming flood. He is directed to build a ship and enter it, and the fish then promises to save him. When the deluge rises, the fish swims up to him; the ship's rope is tied to its horn; and Manu is towed in safety to the Northern Mountain. There he remains while the waters sweep away the previous race, and thence, when the waters subside, he descends to become, like Noah, the sire of mankind. The appearance of this story in the Brahmanical literature which preceded the rise of Buddhism at once raises unanswerable questions. Was it part of the original stock of beliefs which the immigrant Aryans brought with them and in due time adapted to their new home, or was it a later acquisition which was incorporated into the legendary lore fed from all sources after their settlement? Such tales unquestionably travel far. They may, be traced through Syria and Asia Minor into Greece, where Ogyges, Deucalion, and last of all Dardanos, figure in turn as the hero. The steps of migration may be beyond the historian's ken; but it can hardly be doubted that the Mediterranean stories were ultimately derived from a common source in Babylonian culture. They enter Greek literature at a relatively late date, and Pindar is the oldest surviving witness. Usener makes it probable that the Deucalion story was known to one of the Hesiodic poets at the opening of the sixth century B.C., but in the scheme of the Four Ages the Deluge has no place. 9 The parallel of the Four Ages of the Greeks with the later Indian series of Four Yugas has been familiar since Roth's essay in 1866, though his attempt to carry their source back to the earliest days of Indo-Germanic antiquity does not "Sacred Books of the East, 12. 216, translated by-Eggeling. Cf. Mahābhārata iii. 187. Cf. Usener, Die Sintfluthsagen (1899); Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients, p. 131 (1904); and Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie, 1. 448 (1906). 'Die Sintfluthsagen, p. 33. |