698 The American Naturalist. [August. 
our era, and the island is even now regarded as the headquarters 
of Buddhism. Indeed, Ceylon may be called the Palestine of 
the Buddhists ; it is held in the same esteem by the Buddhist 
world in which Jerusalem was held in Europe at the time of the 
crusades. To explain this, I must relate a curious tradition. 
According to the Pali manuscripts, the sacred books of the 
Buddhists, which are older and at least as reliable as our bible, 
Buddha came personally to Ceylon about 550 B. C, and preached 
his new creed, which was received with the greatest enthusiasm, 
and began to spread with surprising quickness. He had twelve 
followers or disciples with him. The story of the twelve apostles 
of Christ is evidently borrowed from the much older Buddha 
tradition, yet is even here nothing new, but an astronomical alle- 
gory, the origin of which must be sought in remotest antiquity. 
By the twelve followers of Buddha, as well as the twelve dis- 
ciples of Christ, are meant the twelve signs of the zodiac, which 
were known already to the ancient P2gyptians, Assyrians and 
Chaldeans. The story of Christ, there cannot be the shadow of 
a doubt, is an allegory ; Chri.st representing the sun which, rising 
in the sign of Virgo (the virgin), proceeds higher and higher, till 
it crosses the highest meridian (whence the origin of the cros.s), 
and then, gradually sinking, brings summer to another world 
(descent into Hades), but ultimately again rises in renewed 
splendor (resurrection from the dead). These astronomical facts 
some oriental philosopher tried to interpret to the benighted and 
unreasoning multitude, and thus once more resorted to the story 
of a semi-divinity with twelve disciples, which, as we know, is of 
far more ancient date. Even long after Buddha ^ and Christ, we 
have again the story of the mythical King Arthur and his twelve 
knights of the round table, and of Charlemagne with his twelve 
paladines. Of course we know Charlemagne to be an historical 
character, but probably so were King Arthur, Christ and Buddha, 
still that they should all be accompanied by twelve is very sig- 
nificant and points to the same eastern source. 
Now Buddha, when he felt his end approaching, commanded 
his disciples to erect a large funeral-pyre and cremate his body. 
