In chapter ii. I said that Buddha, like the Gnostic Christ, ruled the Pleroma or Pravritti. In the "Lalita Vistara" many pages are devoted to show that he is Purusha, the God-man of the Hindoos. Purusha is always contrasted with Pracriti, the Buthos of the Gnostics, that part of the Kosmos which is un-fashioned and non-luminous. Purusha is like the divine man of the Kabbalah, the Christ of St. Paul, humanity, ideal humanity. Valentinus proclaimed that from Sophia the Mother, proceeded Ecclesia the Church. Jesus called his flock the sons of Sophia, and said that his mother, the Holy Spirit, had carried him up to the top of Mount Tabor. As early as the Asoka inscriptions the triad of Buddhism was:-- 1. Buddha or Swayambhu, the Self-Existent. 2. Dharma or Prajñâ (Sophia). 3. Sangha (literally Union). Sangha "created the worlds," says the Pûja Kanda. (For this triad, see Hodgson, "Lit. Nepal," p. 88.) This triad with the vulgar is now Buddha, his Law, and the Church. A version of this was not unknown in Palestine, for Hegesippus records of the early Christians:-- "In every city that prevails which the Law, the Lord, and the Prophets enjoin." CHAPTER XI. _Rites._ I have left myself little space to write of the many points of close similarity between the Buddhists and the Roman Catholics. The French missionary Huc, in his celebrated travels in Thibet, was much struck with this similarity. "The crozier, the mitre, the dalmatic, the cope or _pluvial_, which the grand lamas wear on a journey, or when they perform some ceremony outside the temple, the service with a double choir, psalmody, exorcisms, the censer swinging on five chains, and contrived to be opened and shut at will, benediction by the lamas, with the right hand extended over the heads of the faithful, the chaplet, sacerdotal celibacy, Lenten retirements from the world, the worship of saints, fasts, processions, litanies, holy water--these are the points of contact between the Buddhists and ourselves." Listen also to Father Disderi, who visited Thibet in the year 1714. "The lamas have a tonsure like our priests, and are bound over to perpetual celibacy. They study their scriptures in a language and in characters that differ from the ordinary characters. They recite prayers in choir. They serve the temple, present the offerings, and keep the lamps perpetually alight. They offer to God corn and barley and paste and water in little vases, which are extremely clean. Food thus offered is considered consecrated, and they eat it. The lamas have local superiors, and a superior general." ("Lettres edifiantes," vol. iii., p. 534.) Father Grueber, with another priest named Dorville, passed from Pekin through Thibet to Patna in the year 1661. Henry Prinsep ("Thibet Tartary, etc.," p. 14) thus sums up what he has recorded:--