[51] "The conception" "was foreign to Buddhism" "that the divine Head of the Community is not absent from his people, but that he dwells powerfully in their midst as their lord and king, so that all cultus is nothing else but the expression of this continuing living fellowship. Buddha has entered into Nirvâna; if his believers desired to invoke him, he could not hear them" (Oldenberg, p. 369).
[52] "Buddhist doctrine might be in all its essentials what it actually is, even if the idea of Buddha remained completely foreign to it" (Oldenberg, p. 322).—And whatever is said of the historic Buddha can be applied equally well to the mythological Buddhas.
[53] For the same idea, see Max Müller, Natural Religion, pp. 103 ff. and 190.
[54] Op. cit., p. 146.
[55] Barth, in Encyclopédie des sciences religieuses, VI, p. 548.
[56] Oldenberg, op. cit., p. 53.
[57] 1 Sam. xxi., 6.
[58] Levit. xii.
[59] Deut. xxii., 10 and 11.
[60] La religion védique, I, p. 122.