Mr. Felix Oswald cites Wassiljew as announcing that the Buddhist missionaries had reached Western Persia, B.C. 450. This date would, of course, depend on the date of Buddha's life and Buddha's death. The latter is now definitely fixed by Buhler's translation of Asoka's Rupnath rock-inscription, B.C. 470. Wassiljew, citing Daranatha, announces that Madeantica, a convert of Ananda, Buddha's leading disciple, reached Ouchira in Cashmir. From Cashmir Buddhism passed promptly to Candahar and Cabul. (p. 40). Thence it penetrated quickly to Bactra, and soon invaded "all the country embraced by the word Turkistan, where it flourished until disturbed by Mahomet."
Tertullian has two passages which describe the religion of Mithras.
He says that the devil, to "pervert the truth," by "the mystic rites of his idols vies even with the essential portions of the sacraments of God. He too baptises some—that is, his own believers and faithful followers. He promises the putting away of sins by a laver (of his own), and, if my memory still serves me, Mithras there (in the kingdom of Satan) sets his mark on the foreheads of his soldiers, celebrates also the oblation of bread, and introduces an image of the resurrection, and before a sword wreathes a crown." (Pres. v., Hœr. chap. xl.)
Here is another passage.
"Some soldier of Mithras, who at his initiation in the gloomy cavern,—in the camp, it may well be said, of darkness,—when at the sword's point a sword is presented to him as though in mimicry of martyrdom, and thereupon a crown is put upon his head, is admonished to resist and cast it off, and, if you like, transfer it to his shoulders, saying that Mithras is his crown. He even has his virgins and his ascetics (continentes). Let us take note of the devices of the devil, who is wont to ape some of God's things." ("De Corona," xv.)
From this it is plain that the worshippers of Mithras had the simple rites of Buddhists and Christians, baptism and the bloodless altar; also an early Freemasonry, which some detect veiled in the Indian life of Buddha. Thus the incident of the sword and crown in the Mithraic initiation is plainly based on the menacing sword of Mâra in the "Lalita Vistara" and the crown that he offered Buddha. In modern masonry it is feigned that Hiram Abiff, the architect of Solomon's temple, made three efforts to escape from three assassins. These are plainly Old Age, Disease, and Death. He sought to evade the first at the east of the temple, in the same way that Buddha tried to escape by the eastern gate. The second and third flights of Hiram and Buddha were to the same points of the compass. Then Buddha escaped the lower life through the Gate of Benediction, and Hiram was killed. The disciples of Mithras had, in the comedy of their initiation, "seven tortures,"—heat, cold, hunger, thirst, fire, water, etc.,—experiences by no means confined to histrionics in the experience of Buddha's Wanderers. A modern mason goes through the comedy of giving up his gold and silver and baring his breast and feet, a form that once had a meaning. Mithras was born in a cave; and at Easter there was the ceremony called by Tertullian the "image of the resurrection." The worshippers, Fermicus tells us ("De Errore," xxiii.), placed by night a stone image on a bier in a cave and went through the forms of mourning. The dead god was then placed in a tomb, and after a time withdrawn from it. Then lights were lit, and poems of rejoicing sounded out, and the priest comforted the devotees. "You shall have salvation from your sorrows!" Dupuis naturally compares all this to the cierge pascal and Catholic rites. In Jerusalem the Greek pontiff goes into the cave called Christ's sepulchre and brings out miraculous fire to the worshippers, who are fighting and biting each other outside, imaging unconsciously Buddha's great battle with Mâra and the legions of hell, its thunder and lightning and turmoil, followed by a bright coruscation, and by the angels who greeted his victory. This sudden illumination, which is the chief rite of Freemasonry, of Mithraism, and of Christianity, has oddly enough been thrown overboard by the English Church.
That Mithraism was at once Freemasonry and Buddhism is proved by its great spread. Buddhism was the first missionary religion. Judaism and the other old priestcrafts were for a "chosen people." At the epoch of Christ, Mithraism had already honeycombed the Roman paganism. Experts have discovered its records in Arthur's Oon and other British caves.
A similar Freemasonry was Pythagoreanism in Greece. Colebrooke, the prince of Orientalists, saw at once that its philosophy was purely Buddhist. Its rites were identical with those of the Mithraists and Essenes. These last must now be considered. They have this importance, that they are due to a separate propagandism. Alexandria was built by the great invader of India, to bridge the east and the west. And an exceptional toleration of creeds was the result.