nation of Vishnu for the Western,
as was Krishna for the Eastern World. As was indicated in the opening of
this lecture, the Theosophists are making special claim to Him,[91] and
are reviving the threadbare theory that He was a follower of Buddha.

So strong an effort is made to prove that Christianity has borrowed both
its divine leader and its essential doctrines from India, that a
moment's attention may well be given to the question here. One
allegation is that the Evangelists copied the Buddhist history and
legends in their account of Christ's early life. Another is that the
leaders of the Alexandrian Church worked over the gospel story at a
later day, having felt more fully the influence of India at that great
commercial centre. The two theories are inconsistent with each other,
and both are inconsistent with the assumption that Christ Himself was a
Buddhist, and taught the Buddhist doctrines, since this supposition
would have obviated the need of any manipulation or fraud at any point.

In replying as briefly as possible I shall endeavor to cover both
allegations. In strong contrast with these cheap assertions of
Alexandrian corruption and plagiarism is the frank admission of such
keen critics as Renan, Weiss, Volkmar, Schenkel, and Hitzig,[92] that
the gospel record as we have it, was written during a generation in
which some of the companions of Jesus still lived. Renan says of Mark's
Gospel that "it is full of minute observations, coming doubtless from an
eye-witness," and he asserts that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written
"in substantially their present form by the men whose names they bear."
These Gospels were the work of men who knew Jesus. Matthew was one of
the Twelve; John in his Epistle speaks of himself as an eye-witness.
They were written in a historic age and were open to challenge. They
were nowhere contradicted in contemporary history. They fit their
environment.

How is it with the authenticity of Buddhist literature? Oldenberg says,
"For the _when_ of things men of India have never had a proper organ,"
and Max Mueller declares to the same effect, that "the idea of a
faithful, literal translation seems altogether foreign to Oriental
minds." He also informs us that there is not a single manuscript in
India which is a thousand years old, and scarcely one that can claim
five hundred years. For centuries after Gautama's time nothing was
written; all was transmitted by word of mouth. Buddhists thems