Index Page
 The
Abbé Huc on the close similarity of Christian and Buddhist
rites—Confirmed by Fathers Disderi and Grueber—Rev. S. Beal on a
Buddhist liturgy—Mr. Fergusson holds that the various details of the
Christian Basilica have been taken from the temples of the
Buddhists—On which side was the borrowing?—Arguments pro and con.
I have left myself little space to write of the many points of
close similarity between the Buddhists and the Roman Catholics.
The French missionary, Huc, in his celebrated travels in Thibet,
was much struck with this similarity.
"The crozier, the mitre, the dalmatic, the cope or pluvial,
which the grand lâmas
wear on a journey, or when they perform some
ceremony outside the temple, the service with a double choir,
psalmody, exorcisms, the censer swinging on five chains and contrived
to be opened and shut at will, benediction by the lâmas, with the
right hand extended over the heads of the faithful, the chaplet,
sacerdotal celibacy, Lenten retirements from the world, the worship of
saints, fasts, processions, litanies, holy water—these are the
points of contact between the Buddhists and ourselves."
Listen also to Father Disderi, who visited Thibet in the year 1714.
"The lâmas have a tonsure like our priests, and are bound over
to perpetual celibacy. They study their scriptures in a language and
in characters that differ from the ordinary characters. They recite
prayers in choir. They serve the temple, present the offerings, and
keep the lamps perpetually alight. They offer to God corn and barley
and paste and water in little vases, which are extremely clean. Food
thus offered is considered consecrated, and they eat it. The lâmas
have local superiors, and a superior-general." *
Father Grueber, with another priest, named Dorville, passed from
Pekin through Thibet to Patna in the year 1661. Henry Prinsep †
thus sums up what he has recorded:—
"Father Grueber was much struck with the extraordinary
similarity he found, as well in the doctrine as in the rituals, of the
Buddhists of Lha Sa, to those of his own Romish faith. He noticed,
first, that the dress of the lâmas corresponded to that handed down
to us in ancient paintings as the dress of the Apostles. Second, that
the discipline of the monasteries and of the different orders of lâmas
or priests bore the same resemblance to that of the Romish Church.
Third, that the notion of an Incarnation was common to both, so also
the belief in paradise and purgatory. Fourth, he remarked that they
made suffrages, alms, prayers, and sacrifices for the dead, like the
Roman Catholics. Fifth, that they had convents filled with monks and
friars to the number of thirty thousand, near Lha Sa, who all made the
three vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity, like Roman monks,
besides other vows. Sixth, that they had confessors licensed by the
superior lâmas or bishops, and so empowered to receive confessions,
impose penances, and give absolution. Besides all this there was found
the practice of using holy water, of singing service in alternation,
of praying for the dead, and of perfect similarity in the customs of
the great and superior lâmas to those of the different orders of the
Romish hierarchy. These early missionaries further were led to
conclude, from what they saw and heard, that the ancient books of the
lâmas contained traces of the Christian religion, which must, they
thought, have been preached in Thibet in the time of the
Apostles."
In the year 1829 Victor Jacquemont, the French botanist, made a
short
excursion from Simla into Thibet. He writes: "The Grand Lâma
of Kanum has the episcopal mitre and crozier. He is dressed just like
our bishops. A superficial observer at a little distance would take
his Thibetan and Buddhist mass for a Roman mass of the first water. He
makes twenty genuflexions at the right intervals, turns to the altar
and then to the congregation, rings a bell, drinks in a chalice water
poured out by an acolyte, intones paternosters quite of the right
sing-song—the resemblance is really shocking. But men whose faith is
properly robust will see here nothing but a corruption of
Christianity." *
It must be borne in mind that what is called Southern Buddhism has
the same rites. St. Francis Xavier in Japan found Southern Buddhism so
like his own that he donned the yellow sanghati, and called himself an
apostle of Buddha, quieting his conscience by furtively mumbling a
little Latin of the baptismal service over some of his
"converts."
This is what the Rev. S. Beal, a chaplain in the Navy, wrote of a
liturgy that he found in China:—
"The form of this office is a very curious one. It bears a
singular likeness in its outline to the common type of the Eastern
Christian liturgies. That is to say, there is a 'Proanaphoral' and an
'Anaphoral.' portion. There is a prayer of entrance (τῆς
εἰσοδου), an ascription of praise
to the threefold object of worship (τρισαγίον),
a prayer of oblation (τῆς
προσθεσεως), the
lections, the recitations of the Dharani (μυστηριον),
the Embolismus, or prayer against temptation, followed by a
'Confession' and a 'Dismissal:'" *
Turning to architecture, I must point out that Mr. Fergusson, the
leading authority in ancient art was of opinion that the various
details of the early Christian basilica—nave, aisle, columns,
semi-domed apse, cruciform ground plan—were borrowed en bloc from
the Buddhists. Relic-worship, he says, was certainly borrowed from the
East. Of the rock-cut temple of Kârle (B.C. 78) he writes:—
"The building resembles, to a great extent, an early Christian
Church in its arrangements, consisting of a nave and side aisles
terminating in an apse or semi-dome, round which the aisle is carried.
. . . As a scale for comparison, it may be mentioned that its
arrangements and dimensions are very similar to those of the choir of
Norwich Cathedral, and of the Abbaye aux Hommes at Caen, omitting the
outer aisles in the latter buildings.
"Immediately under the semi-dome of the apse, and nearly where
the altar stands in Christian churches, is placed the Dâgoba." †
The list of resemblances is by no means exhausted. The monks on
entering a temple make the gesture that we call the sign of the cross.
The Buddhists have illuminated missals, Gregorian chants, a tabernacle
on the altar for oblations, a pope, cardinals angels with wings,
saints with the nimbus. For a full account I must refer the reader to
my "Buddhism in Christendom."
How is all this to be accounted for? Several theories have been
started:— The first attempts to make light of the matter
altogether. All religions, it says, have sacrifice, incense, priests,
the idea of faith, etc. This may be called the orthodox Protestant
theory, and many bulky books have recently appeared propounding it.
But as these books avoid all the strong points of the case, they
cannot be called at all satisfactory to the bewildered inquirer.
To this theory the Roman
Catholics reply that the similarities between Buddhism and Catholicism
are so microscopic and so complete, that one religion must have
borrowed from the other. In consequence they try to prove that the
rites of Buddhism and the life of its founder were derived from
Christianity, from the Nestorians, from St. Thomas, from St. Hyacinth
of Poland, from St. Oderic of Frioul. *
In the way of this theory, however, there are also insuperable
difficulties. Buddha died 470 years before Christ, and for many years
the Christian Church had no basilicas, popes, cardinals, basilica
worship, nor even for a long time a definite life of the founder. At
the date of Asoka (B.C. 260) there was a metrical life of Buddha (Muni
Gâtha), and the incidents of this life are found sculptured in marble
on the gateways of Buddhist temples that precede the Christian epoch.
This is the testimony of Sir Alexander Cunningham, the greatest of
Indian Archćologists. He fixes the date of the Bharhut Stűpa at from
270 to 250 B.C. There he finds Queen Maya's dream of the elephant, the
Rishis at the ploughing match, the transfiguration of Buddha and the
ladder of diamonds, and other incidents. At the Sanchi tope, an
earlier structure (although the present marble gateways, repeated
probably from wood, are fixed at about A.D. 19), he announces
representations of Buddha as an elephant coming down to his mother's
womb, three out of the "Four Presaging Tokens," Buddha
bending the bow of Sinhahanu, King Bimbisâra visiting the young
prince, and other incidents.
A man who invents, let us say, a submarine boat, at once puts his
idea to a practical test. Let us try and construct a working model
here. Suppose that the present ruler of Afghanistan were paying us a
visit, and, introduced at Fulham Palace, he were to suggest that the
life of Mahomet should supersede that of Jesus in our Bible, and
Mussulman rites replace the Christian ritual in the diocese of London.
What would be the answer? The bishop, anxious to deal gently with a
valuable ally, would point out that he was only a cogwheel in a vast
machinery, a cogwheel that could be promptly replaced if it proved the
least out of gear. He would show that the Anglican Church had a mass
of very definite rules called canon law, with courts empowered to
punish the slightest infringement of these rules. He would show that
even an archbishop could not alter a tittle of the gospel narrative.
Every man, woman, and child would immediately detect the change.
Similar difficulties would be in the way of St. Hyacinth of Poland
in, say, a monastery of Ceylon. The Abbot there would be responsible
to what Bishop Bigandet calls his "provincial," and he again
to his "superior-général," and so on to the Achârya, the
"High Priest of all the World," who, in his palace at
Nalanda, near Buddha Gaya, was wont to sit in state, surrounded by ten
thousand monks. Buddhism, by the time that a Christian missionary
could have reached it, was a far more diffused and conservative
religion than Anglicanism. It had a canon law quite as definite. It
had hundreds of volumes treating of the minutest acts of Sâkya Muni.
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