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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
quarians. In particular it cannot be denied that this influence was of great importance in the worship of Krishna as an incarnation of Vishnu, and that much of what is related of Christ in the Gospels was transferred to Krishna. We can no longer doubt, therefore, the possi bility of the hypothesis that the composer of the Bhagavad-Gita also, in which this deifi. cation of Krishna reaches, in a measure, its climax, used Christian ideas and expressions, and transferred sayings of Christ related in the Gospels to Krishna, from the same motive and by the same right by which the story of the life of Krishna was adorned with incidents which the Christians narrated of Christ.
[OCTOBER, 1873.
fit, and has woven into his own work numerous
passages, if not word for word, yet preserving the meaning, and shaping it according to his Indian mode of thought, a fact which till now no one has noticed. To put this assertion be yond doubt, I shall place side by side the most important of these passages in the Bhaga vad-Gita, and the corresponding texts of the New Testament. I distinguish three different kinds of passages to which parallels can be adduced from the New Testament : first, such
as, with more or less of verbal difference, agree in sense, so that a thought which is clearly Christian appears in an Indian form of ex
If
pression—these are far the most numerous, and
now we can find in the Bhagavad-Gita passages, and these not single and obscure, but numerous and clear, which present a surprising similarity to passages in the New Testament, we shall be justified in concluding that these coincidences are no play of chance, but that, taken all to gether, they afford conclusive proof that the composer was acquainted with the writings of the New Testament, used them as he thought
indicate the way in which the original was used in general; secondly, passages in which a peculiar and characteristic expression of the New Testament is borrowed word for word,
though the meaning is sometimes quite changed ; thirdly, passages in which thought and ex pression agree, though the former receives from the context a meaning suited to Indian con ceptions.
I—Passages which differ in expression but agree in meaning. New Testament.
Bhagavad-Gita. He who has brought his members under sub
But I say'unto you that whosoever looketh on
jection, but sits with foolish mind thinking in his
a woman to lust after her hath committed adul
heart of the things of sense, is called a hypocrite.
tery with her already in his heart. (Matt. v. 28.)
(iii. 6.)”
But know they who, scorning it, do not keep my decree, are bereft of all understanding, sense less, lost. (iii. 32.)f
In every object of sense, desire and inclination are inherent. Let a man not subject himself to them, they are his foes. (iii. 34.):
A man that is an heretick . . . reject; knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth,
being condemned of himself. (Tit. iii. 10, 11.) Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. (Rom.
vi.12.) Because the carnal mind is enmity against God. (Rom. viii. 7.)
Thy birth is later, that of Vivasat was earlier;
Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet
how am I to understand that thou didst declare
Many are my births; that are past, many are
fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham P (John viii. 57.) I know whence I came, and whither I go : but
- There is in this sloka a polemical allusion to the abuso
that these ideas are not originally Indian representations
made of the Yoga, by regarding abstinence from external works as the main point. Lassen remarks,—“even now
that, they, have been taken over from, Christianity, as
it in the beginning P (iv. 4.)
indeed India abounds with men, who, either carried away by the fame of sanctity, or by the resolution to extort re. wards from the gods as it were by force, bind themselves by the strictest vows, and in fasting, silence, and immove
-
(as they are not found anywhere else in heathendom), but Dr. A. Weber among others (Indische Studien, II. 39S ff.) supposes, and has partly demonstrated.
- In this sloka is expressed with almost dogmatic preci
able positions of the body, yet indulgelascivious desires with in and dream of pleasures in the future.” In the Bha
sion the Christian doctrine of concupiscence, which becomes sin only when man willingly obeys its inspirations. Conf. also James, i. 14-15. With reference to the expression ‘ene
gavad-Gita, the peculiar stress laid on the inner purity of the mind, which, in this form, scarcely occurs elsewhere in
mies' conf. also Matt. x. 36, which, by ascetic authors, is
applied mystically to lust which dwells in man.
Indian literature, would itself alone suggest the influence
§ The avatāras all belong to the time of the Purānas
of Christian ideas, even if other vestiges of it could not
idea of Tiortus and dydn m, point to a believing in and trustful
(hence to a post-Christian age), and Thomson believes also that many of them owe their origin ‘to the Land of the Bible,’ but whether before or after the Christian era is a question he does not venture to decide, ‘though doubtless many points of resemblance exist between Krishna and our
consecration to a person.
Saviour'; the tenth avatāra (Kalkin) is said strongly to
be pointed out. + Also John, xiv. 23-24. We often meet with the expressions sraddhá and bhakti, which, as in the Christian
There appears to be no doubt