The learned author of the Hibbert Lectures for 1881 has made some very interesting and important suggestions as to the rise of the Buddhist legends, and as he seems to imply a similar growth of the “Christian legend,” it may be advisable to consider both accounts in their relation to the literary sources which profess to authenticate them. Let us assume, therefore, that the Lalita Vistara was actually in circulation about the beginning of the Christian era,[159] and let us take for granted that one of the oldest Suttas,[160] professing to relate a portion of Buddha’s ministry, was extant in the form in which we have it, some three centuries earlier, or a century after Buddha’s death. A comparison of these two productions reveals at once the fact that in the earliest there is no reference to the divinity, pre-existence, or supernatural birth of Buddha, and making allowance for the usual exaggeration of language, that there are very few miraculous incidents recorded in it. It has been asserted that Buddha never professed to work a miracle. Certainly the fragments of his original teaching which survive indicate that he would be the first to repudiate all such as have been ascribed to him. Be that as it may, it is a literary fact that in the supposed earliest books only a few miracles are recorded. We may infer therefore that by the time they were composed his orthodox disciples had not formed those conceptions of his person and mission which their pious descendants later on learned to believe and to proclaim.[161]