[72]. Sacred Books of the East, vol. xiii. p. 37; Introd., vol. xi. p. xx.
[73]. Oldenberg, Buddha, etc., p. 27.
[74]. Mahavansa, by Turnour; Dipavansa, xx. 20, quoted by Professor Max Müller in Sacred Books of the East, vols. x. p. xxiv, and xiii. p. xxxv.
[75]. Buddhist Birth Stories, vol. i. p. lvii; Trübner’s Oriental Series.
[76]. Weber, Indian Literature, p. 294; ibid.
[77]. We may safely assert that in the mass of Buddhist literature already available nothing has been found, nor is anything at all likely to be found, corresponding in character and evidential value to the Christian Scriptures. What would the New Testament have been, asks Professor Müller, “if the spurious Gospels, the pseudo-apostolic and post-apostolic productions, the debates of the Councils, the commentaries of the Fathers, and the lives of the saints, had all been bound and mixed up with it”? (Sacred Books of the East, vol. i., Introd., pp. xv, xvi.) And yet this is a parallel to the confusion represented by the so-called Buddhist Bible. In truth, it is not a Bible, but a library, containing not only the earliest treatises, but the commentaries upon them made in later ages, and extracts and repetitions from itself so extensive and numerous that were they omitted this portentous collection—four times as voluminous as our Christian Bible—would be found to be much shorter than it. When the original Bible of Buddhism has been disinterred from this pile it will be found to resemble almost in nothing our New Testament, but it may present many analogies to the Talmud and Targums, and perhaps some very interesting resemblances to isolated portions of the Old Testament. As far as it has been translated to us, the Tripitaka contain neither prophecy nor history; but one division of it presents suggestive coincidences with portions of the apocryphal Scriptures; and scholars may find a comparison of some of the texts of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes with those of the Dhammapada and some of the Suttas an agreeable and not unprofitable study, without in the least being tempted to transfer their allegiance from the Hebrew to the Indian sages.
[78]. Eitel, Lectures on Buddhism, p. 6; Hunter, “Historical Aspects of Indian Geography,” Scot. Geog. Mag., Dec. 1888.
[79]. Rogers, Superhuman Origin of the Bible, Lecture v.
[80]. Professor Max Müller, Introduction to the Science of Religion, p. 103.
[81]. Professor Müller, Gifford Lectures, Natural Religion, p. 564.