Rites.

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 lamas 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 lamas, 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 lamas 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 lamas have local superiors, and a superior general." ("Lettres edifiantes," vol. iii., p. 534.)

Father Grueber, with another priest named Dorville, passed from Pekin through Thibet to Patna in the year 1661. Henry Prinsep ("Thibet Tartary, etc.," p. 14) 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 lamas corresponded with 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 lamas 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 lamas 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 lamas 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 lamas 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 Lama 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." (Corr. vol. i., p. 265.)

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 sanghÂti, 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 (t?? e?s?d?? [Greek: tÊs eisodou]), a prayer of incense (t?? ????at?? [Greek: tou thymiamatos]), an ascription of praise to the threefold object of worship (t??sa???? [Greek: trisagion]), a prayer of oblation (t?? p??s ?ese?? [Greek: tÊs pros theseÔs]), the lections, the recitations of the DharanÎ (?st????? [Greek: mystÊrion]), the Embolismus or prayer against temptation, followed by a 'Confession,' and a 'Dismissal.'" ("Catena of Buddhist Scriptures," p. 397.)

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. Mr. Fergusson lays special stress on the DÂgoba and its enshrined relics, represented in the Christian Church by the high altar, the bones of a saint, the baldechino. 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. ("Indian and Eastern Architecture," p. 117.)

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," where I give (pp. 182, 184) drawings of monks and nuns, the Virgin and Child (p. 205), the adoration of the rice cake on the altar (p. 83), Buddha coming down to the altar with the heavenly host (p. 210), the long candles, artificial flowers, cross, incense burner, and divine figure with the aureole, of the Buddhist temple (p. 208). The election of the Grand LÂma I show to be pin for pin like the election of the Pope. The list is endless.

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. (See AbbÉ ProuvÉze, "Life of Gabriel Durand," vol. ii., p. 365.)

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 Gatha), 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 archÆologists. He fixes the date of the Bharhut Stupa at from 270 to 250 B.C. There he finds Queen MÂyÂ'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 19 A.D.), 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 a novel high explosive, or a quick-firing gun, 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 "supÉrieur gÉnÉral" (p. 478), and so on to the ÂchÂrya, the "High Priest of all the World," who, in his palace at Nalanda, near Buddha GayÂ, 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 Sakya Muni.

THE END.

Printed by Cowan & Co., Limited, Perth.