200 



that Pantsenus of Alexandria found a Hebrew Gospel of 

 St. Matthew during Ms mission in India in the second 

 century ; that a bishop^ signing himself " Metropolitan of 

 Persia and the Great India/^ was present at the Council of 

 Nicfea in 325 A.D. ; and that Cosmas found Christians in India 

 and Ceylon in the sixth centuiy, we cannot wonder if we seem 

 to find evidences in the later Buddhist writings,, as well as in 

 the Malid-Blidrata and the Bhagavat-GUa, that the Christian 

 story was well known, at least to the learned. 



12. There need be no great mystery, then, in the similari- 

 ties between the personal histories of Buddha and Christ. 

 And I would only here add that, in tracing such historical 

 parallels, it is desirable to observe, if possible, when a story 

 first appears, — a rule that has not always been followed by 

 recent' writers on Buddhism and Christianity. The story of 

 the temptation of Buddha by Mara* (the Buddhist Satan) 

 may be taken as an example. It is not contained in 

 what is manifestly the earliest account of the entrance of 

 Buddha upon his ministry in the Mahavagga, the compara- 

 tive antiquity of which is undoubted. M. Senart, when he 



as their ecclesiastical head the Patriarch of the Jacobite Church at Mardin, 

 a little to the east of Orfah (the ancient Edessa). The late Bishop of the 

 Malabar Christians, Mar Athenasius, went himself to Mardin for consecra- 

 tion. ^ These Malabar Christians still retain six copper plates, on which are 

 inscribed, in the old Tamil vernacular of the country, certain rights and 

 privileges accorded to the Christian community ; on one plate are the signa- 

 tures of the witnesses, ten of which are written in Pahlavi characters, 

 eleven in Kufic character, and four in Hebrew. This Sasanam, or 

 grant, has been believed by, amongst others, Dr. Haug, Dr. E. W. West, 

 and Dr. Burnell, on antiquarian grounds, to belong to not later than the 

 ninth century. This is confirmed by the l"act that on one of the plates is the 

 date 36, which, if it belongs to the era at present in use in Malabar, must point 

 to that century, the Malabar year now being 1059. Such a grant must indicate 

 that the Christians had by that time acquired a very important status in the 

 country. The chief Eabbi of the .Jews at Cochin, on the same coast, has a 

 simikr grant on copper plates, and of no doubt the same date. The tradi- 

 tion, indeed, of the Jewish Colony is that their Sasanam was made in the 

 fifth century. The existence of Pahlavi inscriptions on the ancient crosses 

 and Sasanams of the Christians led Dr. Burnell, who was a careful student, 

 to believe that the early Persian settlers, or missionaries, were Manichfcans. 

 There is, however, no valid evidence for the Manichrean as against the 

 Christian theory ; and if Dr. Haug's translation of the characters that 

 surround the St. Thomas's Mount and Kottayam crosses be correct, the 

 inscription is eminently Christian : " Who believes in the Messiah, and God 

 above, and in the Holy Ghost, is redeemed through the grace of him who 

 bore the cross." 



* Mara, the destroyer ; in the language of the Vedas, death; the Sanscrit 

 toot being mri, to sliuf. 



