RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT INDIA 475 



one tries to avoid one or the other failing, the oftener one arrives 

 at a non liquet as his final decision. The cases in which objective 

 criteria help us out of this uncertainty are not very frequent, and 

 unfortunately often these prove to be not really the important ones. 

 Thus, for example, I fear that the question regarding the relations 

 between the New Testament and Buddhism belongs to those that 

 do not admit of an absolute yes or no. I myself can of course not 

 speak here with the authority of the specialist. Only a high authority 

 on the New Testament can shoulder the responsibility of deciding 

 this case. Still, my subjective impression is that nothing in the 

 four Gospels necessarily points to any real borrowing from India. 

 There is hardly more than inner parallelism with Buddhism. A 

 prominent Indologist said a short time ago that just as "Babel" 

 now knocks noisily at the gates of the Old Testament, so Buddha 

 knocks, gently, at the door of the New Testament. Certainly any 

 one who examines the later periods of early Christian literature 

 hears such knocking now and then. Even the dullest ear can hear 

 it repeated in the medieval Christian tale of Barlaam and Josaphat, 

 the whole history of the youth of the royal son of the house of Sakya. 

 But Buddha scarcely seems to me to knock at the gates of the New 

 Testament. 



The results of the investigations are similar, when we examine 

 whether Christianity, in turn, has influenced ancient Indian forms of 

 religion, the Krishna religion, for example. When we are dealing 

 with influences coming from the opposite direction, from west to 

 east, as in this case, the leading part falls to Indology, for the reasons 

 I have already mentioned. Even here, however, the outcome, partially 

 at least, is quite uncertain. Even if the wonderful poem Bhagavad 

 Gita sings that the belief and love of the pious man look towards 

 the god incarnate, even if the divine Krishna says there, " Whoever 

 loves me is not lost," I for one should not like to assert positively 

 that Christian influences are in evidence. It seems to me that the 

 thought expressed in the Bhagavad Gita is everywhere in accord 

 with Indian thought in its development. Even here, again, the later 

 texts show us another picture. We find a kind of Christmas-cult con- 

 secrated to the birth of the child Krishna. We come across stories of 

 the new-born god incarnate in a stable ; shepherds and shepherdesses 

 are gathered round the blessed mother; even "the ox and the ass" 

 are present. Such facts will, of course, silence even great skepticism. 



Let us look backward. Can we conceal from ourselves the fact 

 that when Indology, together with classical philology, or with New 

 Testament research, treats such problems of derivation, the results 

 are rather meagre? What does the holy martyr Josaphat signify for 

 Christianity, or the idyl of the Krishna child for Hinduism? It is 

 well to record scrupulously such borrowings; the amateur may, with 



