226. View of the Senbya Pagoda, Burmah. From a photograph.
These two—the holed stone and the simulated cist—are perhaps the most direct evidences of similarity between the East and the West, but the whole system affords innumerable points of contact, not sufficiently distinct perhaps to quote as evidence individually, but collectively making up such a case that it seems very difficult to refuse to believe that both styles were the product of one kindred race of men, and who at the time they erected them must have been more or less directly in communication with one another.
The literary evidence is much less complete or satisfactory. So far as I know, no paragraph has been detected in any classical authors which would lead us to suspect any connexion at any time between India and any country so remote from it, as France for instance, and still less with Denmark, unless it be the Woden myth belonging to the latter country. That, however, was either so indistinct originally, or has been so obscured by later additions, that it is now almost impossible to say what it is. Though so frequently insisted upon, it seems almost impossible that by any process, the gentle ascetic Sakya Muni could ever have become the fierce warlike Woden, and except some nominal similarities there seems nothing to connect the two. It may be that at some time about the Christian era, a chief of that name migrated from the Crimean Bosphorus to the Baltic, and may have brought with him some Asiatic practices, but the connecting link between him and India seems wholly wanting, and not likely to be now supplied.
The one passage that seems to bear directly on the subject, strange to say, comes this time from India itself. Among the edicts that Asoka engraved on the rocks in various parts of India, the last or thirteenth is to the following effect, so far as it can be made out. It is unfortunately the nearest to the ground, and consequently in all the published copies appears more or less injured. Two more copies of the edicts are known to exist,—one in the Dehra Doon, the other in Orissa: when they are copied and published, perhaps a more perfect translation may be possible. Meanwhile, Mr. Prinsep's translation runs thus:—"There is not in either class of the heretics of men a procedure marked by such grace ... nor so glorious nor friendly, nor even so extremely liberal, as Devanampiyo's (Asoka's) injunction for the non-injury and content of living creatures.... And the Greek king besides by whom the kings of Egypt, Ptolemaios, Antigonus and Magas.... Both here and in foreign countries wherever they go, the religious ordinances of Devanampiyo effect conversion. Conquest is of every description, but the conquest that bringeth joy, springing from pleasant emotion, becometh joy itself. The victory of virtue is happiness. Such victory is desired in things of this world and things of the next world."[583] In other copies of this edict the names of Antiochus and Alexander are found, making five well known names, and curiously enough all five are mentioned by Justin within a few lines of one another in the last chapter of his twenty-sixth book and the first chapter of his twenty-seventh book. There is thus no doubt who the kings were, nor of more than a year as to the date of this edict, which must have been within a year or so of 257 B.C.
The great interest, however, for our present purpose is that an Indian emperor, in the middle of the third century before Christ, should be in a condition to form an alliance with Magas of Cyrene so near the African dolmen-field. As before mentioned (ante, p. 410), we are still very deficient in our knowledge of the Megalithic remains of this country; but we do know that they exist, and that those which have been illustrated are of a singularly Indian type. It is also nearly certain that many of the rock-cut chambers about his capital are monasteries or temples, not tombs, as has always been too hastily assumed. Whether, on further investigation, these will prove to be so essentially Indian as they at present appear to be, remains to be seen, but meanwhile the possibility of an alliance of this sort two or three centuries before Christ, takes away much of the improbability that would otherwise exist in assuming that Indian influence might have extended further westward at some subsequent period, and that the African dolmens might be proved to be allied to, and possibly contemporary with, those of India.
Buddhism in the West.
The great basis, however, on which any proof of the existence of a connexion between the East and West must eventually rest, will probably be found in the amount of pure Buddhism which crept into Christianity in the early age of the Church. The subject has not yet been fairly grappled with by any one capable of doing it justice. It has been frequently alluded to by travellers, who have been struck with resemblances which could hardly be accidental, and used sometimes by scoffers in order to depreciate Christianity; but no serious historian of the Latin Church has had sufficient knowledge of Buddhism or of its forms to be able to appreciate correctly either the extent or the cause of its introduction; and till some one does this, it will be treated by the general reader as an idle speculation. Yet it probably is not too much to assert, that at least nine-tenths of the institutions and forms which were engrafted on pure evangelical Christianity in the middle ages, are certainly derived from Buddhist sources.
Of these, one of the most striking is the introduction of monastic institutions, which exercised so important an influence on the forms of Christianity during the whole period of the middle ages. It is in vain to look for their origin in anything that existed in Europe before the Christian era. Nothing can be more forced than the analogies it has been attempted to establish between the Vestal virgins and the nuns of the middle ages, and no trace of conventual life can be found among the semi-secular priesthood of classical times. According to the usually received opinion, Antony (A.D. 305[584]) was the first monk, and from him and about his time a prolific progeny are traced to the Thebais, which is usually assumed to be the cradle of the institution. Monastic life was, however, absolutely antithetical to the religious institutions of the ancient Egyptians, amongst whom the king was high priest and god, and where civil could hardly be distinguished from religious rank. It was equally opposed to the feelings of the Arabic or at least Semitic races, that superseded the Coptic in that country, and could consequently hardly have existed at all, unless introduced from some foreign source and maintained by some extraneous influence. The Essenes are the only sect to whom in the ancient world in the West anything like the peculiar institutions of monasticism can be traced; but unfortunately we do not know how or when they adopted them. Josephus represents them as only one of the three principal sects into which the Jews in his time were divided; but the silence not only of the Bible but of the Rabbis weakens the force of his statement, while his unfortunate omission of the name of their Lawgiver[585] leaves us in the dark on the most essential point. That it was not Moses, whose name is usually interpolated, is quite certain. He never inculcated any such doctrines, and one hardly dares to suggest the Indian name, which would clear up the whole mystery at once. Be this as it may, the sect only arose apparently in the time of the Maccabees, and practically disappeared with the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus; all which would accord perfectly with the hypothesis of their Indian origin, but would hardly suffice to support the idea that they were the sect from whom, in the fourth century, the Christian Church adopted the principles and practices of Asceticism.