Civilization, Modern -- 19th century; Literature -- History and criticism
Are these remarkable analogies only casual resemblances, or are they
real affinities? By affinity we here mean genetic relationship. Are
Buddhism and Christianity related as mother and child, one being
derived from the other; or are they related by both being derived from
some common ancestor? Is either derived from the other, as Christianity
from Judaism, or Protestantism from the Papal Church? That there can
be no such affinity as this seems evident from history. History shows
no trace of the contact which would be required for such influence.
If Christianity had taken its customs from Buddhism, or Buddhism from
Christianity, there must have been ample historic evidence of the fact.
But, instead of this, history shows that each has grown up by its own
natural development, and has unfolded its qualities separately and
alone. The law of evolution also teaches that such great systems do not
come from imitation, but as growths from a primal germ.
Nor does history give the least evidence of a common ancestry from
which both took their common traits. We know that Buddhism was derived
from Brahmanism, and that Christianity was derived from Judaism. Now,
Judaism and Brahmanism have few analogies; they could not, therefore,
have transmitted to their offspring what they did not themselves
possess. Brahmanism came from an Aryan stock, in Central Asia; Judaism
from a Semitic stem, thousands of miles to the west. If Buddhism and
Christianity came from a common source, that source must have antedated
both the Mosaic and Brahmanical systems. Even then it would be a case
of atavism in which the original type disappeared in the children, to
reappear in the later descendants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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