The Influence of Buddhism on Primitive Christianity. Arthur Lillie
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" (Levit. xxi. 8), a phrase softened into "bread of God" in our version, as the "Encyclopædia Britannica" (article "Bible") has shown. It was believed also that God specially loved the smell. (Levit. viii. 21.) More important still, as pointed out by Sir John Lubbock in his "Origin of Civilisation," p. 272, human sacrifices are expressly ordered in Leviticus (xxvii. 28, 29):—
"Notwithstanding, no devoted thing that a man shall devote unto the Lord, of all that he hath, both of man and beast, and of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed: every devoted thing is most holy unto the Lord.
"None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed, but shall surely be put to death."
"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." ("Religion of Israel," c. vi.)
The French author goes on to say that during their sojourn in Egypt the Jews sacrificed human victims. (Ezek. xx. 26.) "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." (2 Sam. xxi. 1–14.)
This human sacrifice is, of course, a survival of cannibalism. The Australians, as Lumholtz ("Among Cannibals," p. 70) shows, consider "talgoro" (human flesh) the daintiest of food. At their watchfires they discourse upon the delicate fat round the kidneys as an alderman might talk of calipash.
What is all this leading up to? Simply to this, that we must put far away from us the theory of modern pulpits that the bloody sacrifice was a comedy of the priest, a comedy of the Almighty. The sacrifice was not a comedy at all. To the mind of the savage it was at once business and science. It was the bank, the war office, the bureau of agriculture, the college of physicians of the nation. By it alone could the blood-loving Semite gods be influenced to give harvests, shekels, victory; and the ferocious Taboo was pure science likewise. The archer, for instance, who killed a partridge without covering the blood with earth was killed in turn, because the Taboo was a mechanism that could only be kept in working order by a remorseless attention to its most minute rules. Writers like Kuenen and Lightfoot assure us that it is quite impossible that Christianity can be due to any influence outside Judaism, because it is such a very obvious development of Jewish thought. This is a startling statement. Christianity pronounced the slaughter of animals at the altar a piece of useless folly, and tore up the great ordinances of Taboo, the Covenant between Israel and the Maker of the Heavens. It proclaimed three Gods instead of one. It pronounced that the Jewish holy books were parables rather than a statement of actual facts. Such ideas were at this epoch current in the West, owing to the activity of the missionaries of an Eastern creed.
To them we will now turn.
CHAPTER II.
Buddha.
I propose now to give a short life of Buddha, noting its points of contact with that of Jesus.
PRE-EXISTENCE IN HEAVEN.
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" (in Buddhism by Swayambhu, the self-existent), Pravritti was the Pleroma. "It was the Father's good pleasure that in him the whole Pleroma should have its home." (Col. i. 19.)
"BEHOLD A VIRGIN SHALL CONCEIVE."
Exactly 550 years before Christ there dwelt in North Oude, at a city called Kapilavastu, the modern Nagar Khas, a king called Suddhodana. This monarch was informed by angels that a mighty teacher of men would be born miraculously in the womb of his wife. "By the consent of the king," says the "Lalita Vistara," "the queen was permitted to lead the life of a virgin for thirty-two months." Joseph is made, a little awkwardly, to give a similar privilege to his wife. (Matt. i. 25.)
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 Mâyâ Devî, the Queen of Heaven. And one of the titles of this lady is Kanyâ, the Virgin of the Zodiac.
Queen Mâyâ 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 Kalyâna, whose son was Varakalyâna," and so on, and so on. (Dîpawanso, see "Journ. As. Soc.," Bengal, vol. vii., p. 925.)
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 (leviathan), 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 (xliv. 2):—
"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 Mâyâ 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 (earth, heaven, hell,) 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:
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