INTRODUCTION. It will be noticed that not a few of the religious and moral maxims which are metrically rendered in this volume bear a striking resemblance to some of the most admired texts of the New Testament. With the view of affording the reader the means of judging with what degree of exactness the metrical versions reproduce the sentiments and expressions of the Indian writers, I have given in an Appendix a faithful prose version of the passages, to which, in some cases, the contexts have been added. It has been supposed that an influence has been exercised on the religious ideas of the Indians by the introduction of a knowledge of Christianity into India in the earlier centuries of our era. This has been argued at length in regard to the "Bhagavad Gita" (a theosophical episode of the Mahābhārata), by Dr Lorinser, who in the Appendix to his German translation of that work,* presents us with a collection of passages from the work in question, which he regards as borrowed from, or influenced by, the New Testament, and alongside of which he places the texts which he regards as having exercised this influence. The "Indian Antiquary," a monthly journal published at Bombay, contains in the number for October 1873, pp. 283-296, a translation of this Appendix. I quote from this translation, p. 286, the following sentences of Dr Lorinser:-"If now we can find in the Bhagavad Gitā 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 * Die Bhagavad Gita uebersetzt und erläutert von Dr F. Lorinser, Breslau, 1869. coincidences are no play of chance, but that taken altogether they afford conclusive proof that the composer was acquainted with the writings of the New Testament, used them as he thought 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 beyond doubt, I shall place side by side the most important of these passages in the Bhagavad 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 expression. These are far the most numerous, and 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 expression agree, though the former receives from the context a meaning suited to Indian conception." Although the influence of the Christian Scriptures may not be considered to extend to the religious and moral ideas, not of a specifically Christian character-such as are adduced in the present volume-which are found in the Indian writers, and to affect their originality, I regard the question raised by Dr Lorinser as of sufficient interest to induce me to reproduce here, with modifications, the discussion of the subject which appeared in the introduction to my little work, "Religious and Moral Sentiments, metrically rendered, from Sanskrit Writers" (published in 1875), which is incorporated in the present volume. In order, if possible, to reach a solution of the problem propounded by Dr Lorinser, three points must be considered. and settled-1st, the age of the Bhagavad Gita; 2dly, whether, supposing its antiquity not to be such as to guarantee its originality, any Christian doctrines could, at the date of its composition, have been imported into India and promulgated in an oral or written form so as to be accessible to the author, if his mind was open to their reception; and 3dly, whether his work, when compared with the Christian Scriptures, or doctrines, manifests any such similarity to their ideas as to justify the supposition of their being borrowed. Without myself offering any definite opinion on this intricate problem, the solution of which depends on the answers to be given to these various questions, I shall refer the reader to what has been said on the first two points by the different writers quoted further on, and myself offer some remarks on the third point. In forming an opinion on a question of this kind, we should, supposing the alleged resemblances to be admitted, consider, first, whether the ideas, sentiments, or figures of speech supposed to be borrowed by the Indians from the west are not such as might naturally arise in the human, or at least in the oriental, mind; secondly, whether they cannot be traced, at least in germ, in Indian writers of such antiquity as to exclude the supposition of foreign influence; thirdly, whether they do not so pervade the Indian writings as to be manifestly indigenous and original; fourthly, whether the writings of any other countries, known to be independent of Christian influences, contain ideas or sentiments supposed to be exclusively or peculiarly Christian; and fifthly, what probability there is that the Brahmans of the period in question could have been brought into contact with foreign ideas, and whether they would have been intellectually and morally open to, and susceptible of, such influences. I venture to make the following remarks on this subject. There is, no doubt, a general, or perhaps I might say, a striking, resemblance between the manner in which Krishna asserts his own divine nature, enjoins devotion to his person, and sets forth the blessings which will result to his votaries from such worship, on the one hand, and, on the other, the strain in which the founder of Christianity is represented in the Gospels, and especially in the Fourth, as speaking of himself and his claims, and the redemption which will follow on their faithful recognition. At the same time, the Bhagavad Gītā contains much that is exclusively Indian in its character, and which finds no counterpart in the New Testament doctrine. Some of the texts in the Indian poem also present a resemblance more or less close to some in the Bible. Perhaps the most striking are the declarations of the Bhagavad Gitā, ix. 29, "They who devoutly worship me are in me, and I in them;" and xii. 8, "Repose thy mind upon [or in] me, fix thine understanding on me, and thou shalt thereafter* dwell in me," as compared with John vi. 56, "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me and I in him;" and John xvii. 20 f., "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which believe on me through their word; that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us." Here, however, it will be observed, that the condition of indwelling in the speaker is not the same in all the cases; and, in particular, that the Indian work neither recognises the idea of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, nor the existence of two divine. persons. In the Rigveda some passages occur which in part convey the same or a similar idea. Thus in ii. 11, 12, it is said: tve Indra apy abhuma viprāḥ, "O Indra, we sages have been in thee;" and in x. 142. 1, Ayam Agne jaritā tve abhūd api sahasaḥ sūno nahy anyad asty ápyam, "This worshipper, O Agni, hath been in thee: O son of strength, he has no other kinship;" and in viii. 47. 8, Yushme devāḥ api smasi yudhyantaḥ iva varmasu, "We, O gods, are in you, as if fighting in coats of mail." In the Sanskrit and German Lexicon compiled by Dr Böhtlingk and himself, Professor Roth assigns to the words api smasi in the last passage the sense of "being in anything," being closely connected with it. To the similar phrases, apy abhūma and abhud api, in the other two texts, he ascribes the sense of "having a share in," which seems to be the meaning in one passage at least, (Aitareya Brahmana, vii. 28), where the compound verb occurs. In any case, close connection is 66 Lorinser translates the words ataḥ urddhvam, here rendered "thereafter," by "in the height" (in der Höhe). He here follows Schlegel, who has, apud superos, and Thomson, whom he cites as having on high after this life." The words, however, usually mean "after this," and K. T. Telang gives "hereafter." With this passage Dr Lorinser compares Colossians iii. 1, "Seek those things which are above," etc. |