Christianity and Buddhism

One of the sorrowful peculiarities of our time is the fact that so-called educated society, after its recent prostration before materialism and rationalistic theories, has begun to be carried away by opposing systems, such as spiritism, hypnotism, and others. On the one hand, this phenomenon is entirely understandable as an obvious reaction against materialism, which betrayed the hopes placed in it that it would uncover and explain all the mysteries of existence, and therefore ceased to satisfy the eternally restless inquisitiveness of thought; but on the other hand, it is also lamentable in that it shows how deeply modern cultured society has been shaken in its worldview and how thoroughly it has lost even the capacity for sound discernment of the truths of spiritual life. Common sense says that if those systems which were until recently proclaimed all-encompassing and wholly sufficient (although it would have been enough to glance at the history of philosophy or of the intellectual development of humanity to be convinced of the naivety and falseness of this assumption)—systems whose falseness was clearly demonstrated by the representatives of the Christian religion—proved themselves deplorably incapable of satisfying the higher demands of the spirit, then evidently the latter is right, and Christianity alone can satisfy the mind that thirsts for truth. Meanwhile, the perverted mind of modern cultured society does not acknowledge this logical conclusion, and with irritated nervousness or caprice, having convinced itself of the failure of its hopes in its cherished worldview system—which proved utterly untenable—it rushes to the opposite extreme, from materialism to extreme spiritualism, from unbelief passing over into superstition. How indeed can one explain that strange fact that people who have lost sound faith in Christianity, undermined in them by rationalistic theories, began with a kind of longing to seek truth outside Christianity, and not believing its entirely historical facts, which find their justification in their very conformity with the demands of sound logical thinking, began to believe in certain fantastic ravings of Eastern Brahmins or Buddhist lamas, seeing in them something nearly coinciding with the last word of scientific knowledge and in any case the fruits of a wondrous, all-illuminating speculation? It is no secret to anyone that the fascination with Buddhism, especially in recent times, is taking on a kind of epidemic character, and if men of science, concentrating their attention on this system, endeavor to clarify for themselves the meaning of this religious system, others, guided more by the vague demands of unsatisfied feeling, turn to it as a panacea for all spiritual languishing and woes: poets glorify Buddhism as a great spiritual system, surrounding its founder with a halo of extraordinary greatness,[1] various psychopaths who have lost the last spark of common sense in religious doubts and wanderings open temples to it in the centers of the Christian world, such as in Paris, while exalted women of the sort of the notorious Blavatsky travel to the very depths of India and Tibet in order to prostrate themselves on the spot before Buddhist “Mahatmas” and to astonish the world with tales of their mind-boggling miracles.[2]

Once a certain demand arises, suppliers of the required material inevitably appear, and one cannot help but notice that in recent times a tendency has been surfacing considerably in the literature—to bring Christianity and Buddhism closer together in one way or another, to place the former in a causal connection with the latter. This tendency was already manifested by Schopenhauer, who in his “Parerga and Paralipomena” expressed the wish that biblical scholars should acquaint themselves more closely with the Indian religions for the purpose of clarifying the kinship between Christianity and Buddhism. His followers went further, taking their teacher’s wish for reality, and such scholars as Seydel, Brodbeck, and others were already directly endeavoring to derive Christianity from Brahmanism and Buddhism. This idea became popular in Germany, and for example, a certain Rüdt recently delivered a lecture in Mannheim before an assembly of women and young ladies, in which, without any restraint whatsoever, he preached that Christianity is merely an echo of Buddhism and that its origin should be sought not at all in Judaism, as had been done until now, but in the teaching of Buddha.[3] The assertion is, of course, a bold one, and in order for it to have any plausibility, it must be corroborated one way or another by some more or less convincing data, and this task was taken up by a certain Russian, N. Notovich, who recently published in Paris in the French language a book representing in its own way one of the signs of our time. The book appeared under the title “The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ”[4] and has as its aim to solve that mysterious period in the life of Jesus Christ which is wholly passed over in silence by the Evangelists, namely the period from His first visit to the Jerusalem temple at the age of twelve until full manhood, when He already came forward openly to public ministry as the Messiah. This is indeed a period which has repeatedly aroused the curiosity of researchers who wished in one way or another to lift the mysterious veil that the Evangelists drew over it, but all efforts were of course in vain, because what God has concealed cannot be disclosed by man. But Mr. Notovich evidently holds a different view and has indeed published a book which allegedly fully clarifies the enigma and makes perfectly understandable what until him was considered incomprehensible in its mysteriousness. In a word, he has discovered how and where Jesus Christ spent the mysterious years before His Baptism, and his book enjoyed extraordinary success, which is itself a significant fact for characterizing our time. It suffices to say that within a few months it went through up to ten editions and was translated from French into several foreign languages!

What then is the substance of the matter, and what is the explanation for this extraordinary success of the book of a certain Russian Notovich, who until then was entirely unknown?[5] The explanation is very simple and, unfortunately, far from flattering to our time. The matter is as follows.

The aforementioned N. Notovich, evidently not knowing where to lay his turbulent head, worn out by all manner of failures in various bold enterprises, set out for distant and barely accessible Tibet, and having made his way there, unfortunately broke his leg and was received for treatment in one of the Buddhist monasteries (namely the monastery of Gimis near Leh), where kind lamas tended to him. During this involuntary confinement in the monastery (for that is precisely how he himself recounts the story of his discovery in the preface to his book), he had the opportunity to become well acquainted with the worldview and life of the lamas or Mahatmas, learned a little of the Tibetan language, and was even afforded the opportunity to rummage through the monastic library. Great then was his amazement when he found there, among other manuscripts, a Tibetan manuscript bearing the title: “The Life of the Holy Issa, the Best Among the Sons of Men.” When one of the lamas with whom he had grown closer read and explained this story to him, Notovich could not but arrive at the conviction that this was none other than an Indian account of Jesus Christ and one that concerned precisely that period of His life which had until then remained veiled in obscurity. The manuscript begins with a brief account of the history of the Jews from the Egyptian captivity to the birth of Issa (i.e., Jesus), after which follows the biography of the latter. According to this biography, Issa was the son of poor but devout parents, sent and chosen by God “to restore those who had fallen into sin and to help the suffering.” Already in his youth He began to preach repentance, and at the age of thirteen He enjoyed great renown and fame. At this time He was betrothed and fled to India, where He began to reject castes. Through His preaching He persuaded the people to reject their idols. The priests strove to incite the people against Him, but their efforts were in vain, and they themselves were forced to flee. From India, Issa went to Persia, but there the priests forbade the people to listen to Him. The Magi secured his expulsion from their country, whereupon He returned thence to Palestine when He was already twenty-nine years old. There His preaching aroused the suspicion of the Roman government, which saw in Him a dangerous agitator, and the procurator Pilate attempted to persuade the priests and elders to put Him to death. Having failed in this, he himself through the aid of false witnesses secured his condemnation to death. Issa was crucified and buried, but on the third day a rumor spread that his tomb was empty and “the most high Judge sent His angels to bring to heaven the mortal remains of the saint, in whom a portion of the divine Spirit had dwelt upon earth.” Then his followers spread the preaching about Him throughout the whole earth. Interspersed with this narrative are various sayings, evidently having as their aim to show that the teaching of this Issa is in close connection with Christianity in its moral, theological, and historical aspects.

So then, this is the substance of this sensational publication. It is evidently an entire discovery, and moreover the discovery of an extraordinary historical fact. Thus—the causal connection between Christianity and Buddhism, hitherto only suspected, here finds documentary confirmation, and it is for this reason that the modern reading public, avid for everything extraordinary, has pounced with nervous greed upon this sensational novelty as confirming and satisfying its thirst to seek the explanation of all questions of religious life in the depths of the mysterious East. And at the sight of this fascination there involuntarily arises the question: can it be that we are living at the end of the nineteenth century—that century which until recently bore on its banner the motto of the most sober, critical attitude toward all historical phenomena, which in the name of such a motto subjected even the most sacred documents of Christianity to merciless criticism, documents that had proven their historical veracity through nearly two thousand years of universal recognition, which even in significant measure rejected these documents as unreliable and resolved to believe only in facts precisely attested “by a commission of learned specialists?” Alas, yes, in this very century, and at its very end, and here one inevitably recalls the well-known proposition that extremes meet, for unbelief has made complete brotherhood with superstition—and moreover with superstition worthy of the darkest Middle Ages. For in reality, Mr. Notovich’s book is nothing other than a literary farce calculated precisely upon the credulity of modern society, and a farce all the more impermissible in that it touches upon the most sacred domain, into which one cannot intrude with unwashed hands. Fortunately, critics were found who assessed this book in a worthy manner, and among them is the famous orientalist and expert in Indian literature Max Müller,[6] although the very fact that exposing this hoax required such a colossus of Indology is itself cause for somber reflection. But let us turn to a review of the book itself.

According to Notovich’s assertions,[7] the manuscript he discovered fully proves that: Christ was in India, studied there the Sanskrit and Pali languages, read the Vedas and the Buddhist canon, and then, having absorbed the views of Buddhism, returned to Palestine, where he founded a new religion. The very account of his life and activity could have been recorded in India by curious lamas from the words of certain Jewish merchants who happened to be in India for commercial affairs shortly after the crucifixion of the Galilean Teacher. The manuscript is written in the Pali language, the sacred language of southern Buddhism; subsequently it was brought from India to Nepal and Magadha around 200 A.D., and from Nepal to Tibet, where it was carefully preserved in Lhasa, the capital of Tibetan Buddhism. Since the Pali language was not understood by the natives, the manuscript was translated into the local Tibetan language, and Tibetan translations of it are to be found, according to Notovich’s statement, in several Buddhist monasteries, including among others the monastery of Gimis, where he was fortunate enough to find one copy of it. In all of this there is as yet nothing incredible. The language of Magadha, as well as of southern Buddhism in general, was undoubtedly Pali, and Buddhism penetrated into Tibet through Nepal. But the assertion that Jewish merchants who had arrived in India shortly after the crucifixion knew not only about what had happened to Christ in Palestine, but also about what had happened to Jesus or Issa during the time when he spent fifteen years living in India among Brahmins and Buddhists, studying their sacred languages and their sacred books—this is already directly something contrived and implausible. Another incongruity consists in the fact that Jewish merchants who had arrived on commercial business in India were fortunate enough to encounter precisely those individuals who had known Issa when he was studying Sanskrit and Pali and the sacred books written in them. To say this means to lose sight of the fact that India is a very large country, and that in it such coincidences are less plausible than anywhere else. Furthermore, still stranger seems the fact of how those persons to whom Issa was known as a simple curious Jew studying Indian wisdom could at once recognize that this was precisely the same person who had been put to death under Pontius Pilate. Even his very name was not one and the same. In India he allegedly bore the name Issa, very similar to the Arabic name Issal Masih, Jesus Messiah, while, by some strange circumstance, the name of Pontius Pilate remained unchanged in passing from the Hebrew language into the Pali language and from Pali into Tibetan. One must bear in mind that this part of Tibet was subsequently converted to Islam.

Thus, already at the first touch of criticism, several peculiarities and incongruities in the manuscript discovered by Notovich come to light. But still stranger is the incongruity that, contrary to Notovich’s assurance that copies of this manuscript in Tibetan translation are preserved in many Tibetan monasteries, to this day not a single researcher of Tibetan literature has ever anywhere encountered the slightest reference to it. Had Mr. Notovich been better acquainted with the Buddhist literature of Tibet and China, he would never have permitted himself the assertion that the life of Issa discovered by him is well known in Tibetan literature, even if read only by learned Buddhists. European scholarly orientalists have at their disposal excellent catalogues of manuscripts and books of the Buddhists of Tibet and China. A complete catalogue of the canon of sacred Buddhist books (“Tripitaka”) in Chinese was translated into English by a pupil of Max Müller, the Reverend Bunyiu Nanjio, M.A., and published by the well-known Clarendon Press in 1883. It contains no fewer than 1,662 titles. The Tibetan catalogue is in its own way a remarkable work, and it was published in volume XX of Asiatic Researches by Csoma de Kőrős, the celebrated Hungarian traveler who spent many years in the monasteries of Tibet and is known as an outstanding expert in Tibetan literature. Recently it was republished by Feer in the Annales du Musée Guimet. This catalogue is not limited to sacred books alone, but contains everything of note in the old, classical literature of Tibet. All of this literature falls into two collections known by the names Kanjur and Tanjur. The Kanjur consists of 108 large volumes, divided into seven sections,[8] while the Tanjur consists of 225 volumes. The difference in content between them is that the Kanjur contains chiefly the sacred books, namely the word of Buddha, while the Tanjur contains books pertaining to grammar, philosophy, and so forth, which, although also considered part of the canon, are not regarded as sacred. Thus, the manuscript discovered by Notovich would necessarily have been listed in one of these collections—if not in the Kanjur, then in the Tanjur—yet it figures in neither the one nor the other, and only one conclusion remains: either Mr. Notovich has made a discovery that should put all the learned orientalists of our time to shame, or he has perpetrated a forgery which is all the more shameful in that it touches upon the most sacred domain of knowledge.

Max Müller, pausing not in the least upon the first half of the alternative as entirely absurd and impossible, is thus inclined to lean toward the second; but wishing to show every possible indulgence, he is disposed to think that Notovich himself has become a victim of deception at the hands of cunning Mahatmas, who have more than once displayed a propensity for playing tricks on “western barbarians” who intruded with their uninvited curiosity into the forbidden domains of their religious knowledge, as happened, for example, even with such researchers as Lieutenant Wilford and Jacolliot, to say nothing of Blavatsky, who was completely blinded by the tricks of the cunning Mahatmas. “It is more pleasant to think,” says the famous orientalist, “that Buddhist monks can at times be jokers, than that Mr. Notovich is a rogue.”[9] But reality seems rather to incline in favor of the latter supposition. This is indicated first of all by the circumstance that Mr. Notovich took every measure to make something truly extraordinary of his manuscript and to present its publication as a kind of feat of self-denial. Thus, he reports that the Roman Catholic Cardinal Rotelli, upon learning of the contents of the manuscript, offered him a large sum of money not to publish it, out of fear that its disclosure would undermine the people’s faith in Christ, while Renan allegedly would not have been averse to publishing it under his own name in order to gain glory from this discovery. Likewise, the missionaries (of the Moravian Brethren) residing in the Tibetan city of Leh placed every possible obstacle in the way of his enterprise and endeavored to destroy all traces of such documents. All of this is in the highest degree implausible and smacks of obvious fabrication, calculated moreover for the crudest sensation among a credulous, though so-called intelligent, crowd. Passing over Renan, with regard to whom these tales may perhaps alone have some plausibility—although it must also be said of him that he was by no means as petty an egotist as Notovich wishes to make him out to be—the reports concerning the other persons involved are already plainly at odds with all probability, and with regard to Cardinal Rotelli, the Roman Catholic press unanimously refutes this fabrication. And for what purpose would the cardinal have entered into the transaction attributed to him with Notovich? If the narrative about Issa were historically credible, it would remove no small number of difficulties. It would in any case show in an irrefutable manner that the evangelical Jesus was a real person and not a myth, as some rationalists suppose. The teaching attributed to him in the Tibetan document is in many respects similar to the Gospel teaching, and if there is a difference—if especially in the former the miraculous element is almost entirely absent—then a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church could calmly oppose to this document a tradition confirmed by two thousand years of the existence of the Church of Christ, which is in any case fully competent to counterbalance such a Tibetan document as yet acknowledged by no one. Still more incredible is what Mr. Notovich says about the missionaries of the Moravian Brethren. Notovich gives to understand that these missionaries do not enjoy the confidence of the population in Leh and that the Buddhist monks would under no circumstances show them the manuscript containing the life of Issa. This is again strange: but why precisely not? If Issa is one and the same as Jesus Christ, then both Buddhist monks and Moravian missionaries could see from this that they believe in one and the same teacher, which is highly important for bringing them closer together. But the further one reads, the more incongruities and contradictions appear. “How is one to explain,” writes Mr. Notovich, “that these missionaries themselves have not seized those documents, copies of which I saw in the Gimis monastery?” But how could they have done so, when, by Notovich’s own words, the Tibetan Mahatmas never showed them these manuscripts! Notovich goes still further. “This is simply my supposition,” he says, “but if it is correct, then the missionaries have seized only the copies, while the originals remained in Lhasa… At the end of the present year I intend to set out for Tibet with the aim of finding the original documents relating to the life of Jesus Christ. I hope that this enterprise will succeed, notwithstanding the opposition of the missionaries, toward whom I shall nevertheless never cease to feel the deepest respect.” Here everything is in the highest degree tangled and self-contradictory. To simultaneously accuse the missionaries of so vile a deed as the theft and destruction of such important historical documents as the biography of Jesus Christ, and to feel toward them the deepest respect—this could only be done by the very embodiment of confusion, entangled in the irresolvable contradictions of a self-invented lie.

Finally, even this is not enough. In publishing his document, allegedly obtained in distant Tibet, Mr. Notovich overlooked the fact that even Tibet with its mysterious Lhasa is by now not so inaccessible that it should be impossible to verify what was or is happening there at any given time. In Leh there reside, besides the Moravian missionaries, several English missionaries, several lady missionaries, and a doctor. All of these are persons whom one can approach for verification of a given fact. And what turns out to be the case? Simply this: that no Russian “gentleman” was ever seen by any of them in Leh or near it, that no Russian gentleman lay in any monastery with a broken leg, and that the local doctor set no one’s broken leg. Of course, the supposition is possible here too that Mr. Notovich carefully concealed his Russian origins and healed his broken leg himself with the help of compassionate Mahatmas—but nonetheless it is extremely striking that no one among the local inhabitants—whether Europeans or natives—had heard of anything of the kind. And when the rumor of the publication in Paris of some newly discovered life of Christ reached Tibet, this naturally aroused a lively interest there as well, but by no means in favor of Mr. Notovich, as may be judged from the following letter of an English lady from Leh, dated the 29th of July of the present year, addressed to Max Müller. “Yesterday,” writes this lady, “we were at the great Gimis monastery, the largest of the Buddhist monasteries here—it has 800 lamas. Have you heard of a certain Russian who could not manage to gain admission to this monastery, but finally broke his leg outside its walls and was admitted into it? His purpose was to copy a Buddhist life of Christ supposedly to be found here. According to his account, he succeeded in this and subsequently published it in French. There is not a single word of truth in this entire story! There was no Russian here. For the last fifteen years no one has entered this monastery with a broken leg! There is no ‘Life of Christ’ here whatsoever! It has now become clear to me that those persons who spread it about in England that they resided in Buddhist monasteries in Tibet and penetrated the mysteries of esoteric Buddhism there are simply deceivers. All these monasteries are the most squalid of places. The lamas are the most squalid of people among their squalid nation. They are terribly ignorant and simply idol-worshippers.”[10]

After such testimony, there is scarcely anything left to add on the question under consideration. Evidently this entire “unknown life of Christ,” together with all the circumstances that accompanied its discovery, is a brazen and vile fabrication, all the more abominable in that it touched upon a domain so sacred to every Christian.[11] And the only thing that can be set alongside this brazen and vile fabrication is that shameful credulity with which educated society, which until recently was carried away by the brilliance of the critical wit of the Strausses and Renans who exercised themselves in exposing the “mythical element” in the Gospels, became the victim of the crudest deception by the first rogue who came along! Truly—this is one of the signs of our time, and a most sorrowful sign…