These scrolls were written in Pali, which certain lamas study even now, so as to be able to translate it into the Thibetan.
The chroniclers were Buddhists belonging to the sect of the Buddha Gothama.
The details concerning Jesus, given in the chronicles, are disconnected and mingled with accounts of other contemporaneous events to which they bear no relation.
The manuscripts relate to us, first of all,—according to the accounts given by merchants arriving from Judea in the same year when the death of Jesus occurred—that a just man by the name of Issa, an Israelite, in spite of his being acquitted twice by the judges as being a man of God, was nevertheless put to death by the order of the Pagan governor, Pilate, who feared that he might take advantage of his great popularity to reestablish the kingdom of Israel and expel from the country its conquerors.
Then follow rather incoherent communications regarding the preachings of Jesus among the Guebers and other heathens. They seem to have been written during the first years following the death of Jesus, in whose career a lively and growing interest is shown.
One of these accounts, communicated by a merchant, refers to the origin of Jesus and his family; another tells of the expulsion of his partisans and the persecutions they had to suffer.
Only at the end of the second volume is found the first categorical affirmation of the chronicler. He says there that Issa was a man blessed by God and the best of all; that it was he in whom the great Brahma had elected to incarnate when, at a period fixed by destiny, his spirit was required to, for a time, separate from the Supreme Being.
After telling that Issa descended from poor Israelite parents, the chronicler makes a little digression, for the purpose of explaining, according to ancient accounts, who were those sons of Israel.
I have arranged all the fragments concerning the life of Issa in chronological order and have taken pains to impress upon them the character of unity, in which they were absolutely lacking.
I leave it to the savans, the philosophers and the theologians to search into the causes for the contradictions which may be found between the "Life of Issa" which I lay before the public and the accounts of the Gospels. But I trust that everybody will agree with me in assuming that the version which I present to the public, one compiled three or four years after the death of Jesus, from the accounts of eyewitnesses and contemporaries, has much more probability of being in conformity with truth than the accounts of the Gospels, the composition of which was effected at different epochs and at periods much posterior to the occurrence of the events.