THE LAST SUPPER.
Buddha had his last supper or repast with his disciples. A treacherous disciple changed his alms-bowl, and apparently he was poisoned. (See Rockhill's "Buddha," p. 133.) Fierce pains seized him as he journeyed afterwards. He was forced to rest. He sent a message to his host, Kunda, the son of the jeweller, to feel no remorse although the feast had been his death. Under two trees he now died.
It will be remembered that during the last supper of Jesus a treacherous disciple "dipped into his dish," but as Jesus was not poisoned, the event had no sequence.
"NOW FROM THE SIXTH HOUR THERE WAS DARKNESS OVER ALL THE LAND UNTIL THE NINTH HOUR."
The critical school base much of their contention that the gospels do not record real history on this particular passage. They urge that such an astounding event could not have escaped Josephus and Tacitus. When Buddha died, the "sun and moon withdrew their shining," and dust and ashes fell like rain. "The great earth quaked throughout. The crash of the thunder shook the heavens and the earth, rolling along the mountains and valleys." ("Fo-sho-hing-tsan-king," v. 26.) The Buddhist account is certainly not impossible, for the chronicler takes advantage of the phenomena of an Indian dust-storm to produce his dark picture. At Lucknow, before the siege, I remember a storm so dense at midday that some ladies with my regiment thought the Day of Judgment had arrived.
"AND MANY BODIES OF THE SAINTS WHICH SLEPT AROSE."
When Buddha died at Kus'inagara, Ananda and another disciple saw many denizens of the unseen world in the city, by the river Yigdan. (Rockhill's "Life of the Buddha," p. 133.)
"TO ANOINT MY BODY TO THE BURYING." (Mark xiv. 8.)
The newly discovered fragments of the Gospel of Peter give striking evidence of the haphazard way in which extracts from the Buddhist books seem to have been sprinkled among the gospels. It records that Mary Magdalene, "taking with her her friends," went to the sepulchre of Jesus to "place themselves beside him and perform the rites" of wailing, beating breasts, etc. Amrapalî and other courtesans did the same rites to Buddha, and the disciples were afterwards indignant that impure women should have "washed his dead body with their tears." (Rockhill, "Thibetan Life," p. 153.)
In the Christian records are three passages, all due, I think, to the Buddhist narrative. In one, "a woman" anoints Jesus; in John (xii. 7), "Mary" anoints him; in Luke, a "sinner," who kisses and washes his feet with her hair. Plainly these last passages are quite irrational. No woman could have performed the washing and other burial rites on a man alive and in health.