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There are two Zoroasters. One of these Zoroasters lived 6,000 years
B.C. according to Darmesteter, and the other about 500 years B.C.
The earlier Zoroaster swathed Persia in a network of silly rites
and regulations. A culprit who "threw away a dead dog" was
to receive a thousand blows with the horse-goad, and one thousand with
the Craosha charana. A culprit who slew a dog with a "prickly
back" and a "woolly muzzle" was to receive a similar
punishment. * This
Zoroaster was particular about the number of gnats, ants, lizards that
the devout were enjoined to kill. †
This Zoroaster proclaimed a god who loved to see on his altar a
"hundred horses, a thousand cows, ten thousand small
cattle," and so on. ‡
But the second Zoroaster proclaimed a bloodless altar, and sought to
tear the network of the first Zoroaster to shreds. What was the
meaning of this? Simply that the Buddhist Wanderers had by this time
invaded Persia, and had fastened their doctrines upon the chief local
prophet. This was their habit. A study of this second religion, the
religion of Mithras, will help us to some of the secrets of Buddhist
propagandism.
Mr. Felix Oswald cites Wassiljew as announcing that the Buddhist
missionaries
had reached Western Persia B.C. 450. This date would, of
course, depend on the date of Buddha's life and Buddha's death. The
latter is now definitely fixed by Buhler's translation of Asoka
Rupnath rock-inscription, B.C. 470. Wassiljew, citing Daranatha,
announces that Madeantica, a convert of Ananda, Buddha's leading
disciple, reached Ouchira in Kashmir. From Kashmir Buddhism passed
promptly to Kandahar and Kabul (p. 40) . Thence it penetrated quickly
to Bactria, and soon invaded "all the country embraced by the
word Turkistan, where it flourished until disturbed by Mahomet."
Tertullian has two passages which describe the religion of Mithras.
He says that the devil, to "pervert the truth," by
"the mystic rites of his idols, vies even with the essential
portions of the sacraments of God. He, too, baptises some—that is,
his own believers and faithful followers. He promises the putting away
of sins by a laver (of his own), and, if my memory still serves me,
Mithras there (in the kingdom of Satan) sets his mark on the foreheads
of his soldiers, celebrates also the oblation of bread, and introduces
an image of the resurrection, and before a sword wreathes a
crown." *
Here is another passage:—
"Some soldier of Mithras, who at his initiation in the gloomy
cavern,—in the camp, it may well be said, of darkness,—when at the
sword's point a sword is presented to him as though in mimicry of
martyrdom, and thereupon a crown is put upon his head, is admonished
to resist and cast it off, and, if he likes, transfer it to his
shoulders, saying that Mithras is his crown. He even has his virgins
and his ascetics (continentes). Let us take note of the devices of the
devil, who is wont to ape some of God's things." †
From this it is plain that the worshippers of Mithras had the
simple rites of Buddhist and Christian, baptism and the bloodless
altar; also an early Freemasonry, which some detect veiled in the
Indian life of Buddha. Thus the incident of the sword and crown in the
Mithraic initiation is plainly based on the menacing sword of Mara in
the "Lalita Vistara," and the crown that he offered Buddha.
In modern Masonry it is feigned that Hiram Abiff, the architect of
Solomon's temple, made three efforts to escape from three assassins.
These are plainly Old Age, Disease and Death. He sought to evade the
first at the east of the temple, in the same way that Buddha tried to
escape by the eastern gate. The second and third flights of Hiram and
Buddha were to the same points of the compass. Then Buddha escaped the
lower life through the Gate of Benediction, and Hiram was killed. The
disciples of Mithras had, in the comedy of their initiation,
"seven tortures,"—heat, cold, hunger, thirst, fire, water,
etc.—experiences by no means confined to histrionics in the
experience of Buddha's Wanderers. A modern mason goes through the
comedy of giving up his gold and silver, and baring his breast and
feet, a form that once had a meaning. Mithras was born in a cave; and
at Easter there was the ceremony called by Tertullian the "image
of the resurrection." The worshippers, Fermicus tells us, *
placed by night a stone image on a bier in a cave and went through the
forms of mourning. The dead god was then placed in a tomb, and after a
time withdrawn from it. Then lights were lit, and poems of rejoicing
sounded out: and the priest comforted the devotees. "You shall
have salvation from your sorrows!" Dupuis naturally compares all
this to the cierge pascal and Catholic rites. In Jerusalem the Greek
pontiff goes into the cave called Christ's sepulchre and brings out
miraculous fire to the worshippers, who are fighting and biting each
other outside, imaging unconsciously Buddha's great battle with Mara
and the legions of hell, its thunder and lightning and turmoil,
followed by a bright coruscation, and by the angels who greeted his
victory. This sudden illumination, which is the chief rite of
Freemasonry, of Mithraism, and of Christianity, has oddly enough been
thrown overboard by the English Church.
That Mithraism was at once Freemasonry and Buddhism is proved by
its great spread. Judaism and the other old priestcrafts were for a
"chosen people." At the epoch of Christ, Mithraism had
already honeycombed the Roman paganism. Experts have discovered its
records in Arthur's Oon and other British caves.
A similar Freemasonry was Pythagoreanism in Greece. Colebrooke, the
prince of Orientalists, saw at once that its philosophy was purely
Buddhist. Its rites were identical with those of the Mithraists and
Essenes. Alexandria was built by the great invader of India, to bridge
the East and the West. And an exceptional toleration of creeds was the
result.
On the subject of the Essenes Philo wrote a most interesting letter
to a man named Hephćstion, of which the following is a portion:—
"I am sorry to find you saying that you are not likely to
visit Alexandria again. This restless, wicked city can present but few
attractions, I grant, to a lover of philosophic quiet. But I cannot
commend the extreme to which I see so many hastening. A passion for
ascetic seclusion is becoming daily more prevalent among the devout
and the thoughtful, whether Jew or Gentile. Yet surely the attempt to
combine contemplation and action should not be so soon abandoned. A
man ought at least to have evinced some competency for the discharge
of the social duties before he abandons them for the divine. First the
less, then the greater.
"I have tried the life of the recluse. Solitude brings no
escape from spiritual danger. If it closes some avenues of temptation,
there are few in whose case it does not open more. Yet the Therapeutć,
a sect similar to the Essenes, with whom you are acquainted, number
many among them whose lives are truly exemplary. Their cells are
scattered about the region bordering on the farther shore of the Lake
Mareotis. The members of either sex live a single and ascetic life,
spending their time in fasting and contemplation, in prayer or
reading. They believe themselves favoured with divine
illumination—an inner light. They assemble on the Sabbath for
worship. and listen to mystical discourses on the traditionary lore
which they say has been handed down in secret among themselves. They
also celebrate solemn dances and processions of a mystic significance
by moonlight on the shore of the great mere. Sometimes, on an occasion
of public rejoicing, the margin of the lake on our side will be lit
with a fiery chain of illuminations, and galleys, hung with lights,
row to and fro with strains of music sounding over the broad water.
Then the Therapeutć are all hidden in their little hermitages, and
these sights and sounds of the world they have abandoned make them
withdraw into themselves and pray.
"Their principle at least is true. The soul which is occupied
with things above, and is initiated into the mysteries of the Lord,
cannot but account the body evil, and even hostile. The soul of man is
divine, and his highest wisdom is to become as much as possible a
stranger to the body with its embarrassing appetites. God has breathed
into man from heaven a portion of His own divinity. That which is
divine is indivisible. It may be extended, but it is incapable of
separation. Consider how vast is the range of our thought over the
past and the future, the heavens and the earth. This alliance with an
upper world, of which we are conscious, would be impossible were not
the soul of man an indivisible portion of that divine and blessed
spirit. Contemplation of the divine essence is the noblest exercise of
man; it is the only means of attaining to the highest truth and
virtue, and therein to behold God is the consummation of our happiness
here."
Here we have the higher Buddhism, which seeks to reach the plane of
spirit, an "alliance with the upper world," by the aid of
solitary reverie. That Philo knew where this religion had come from
is, I think, proved by another passage.
"Among the Persians there is the order of Magi who deeply
investigate the works of nature for the discovery of truth, and in
leisure's quiet are initiated into, and expound in clearest
significance, the divine virtues.
"In India, too, there is the sect of the Gymnosophists, who,
in addition to speculative philosophy, diligently cultivate the
ethical also, and have made their life an absolute ensample of virtue.
"Palestine, moreover, and Syria are not without their harvest
of virtuous excellence, which region is inhabited by no small portion
of the very populous nation of the Jews. There are counted amongst
them certain ones, by name Essenes, in number about four thousand, who
derive their name in my opinion by an inaccurate trace from the term
in the Greek language for holiness (Essen or Essaios—Hosios, holy),
inasmuch as they have shown themselves pre-eminent by devotion to the
service of God; not in the sacrifice of living animals, but rather in
the determination to make their own minds fit for a holy
offering." *
Plainly here the Essenes are pronounced of the same faith as the
Gymnosophists of India, who abstain from the bloody sacrifice, that is
the Buddhists.
I think I have now proved that Essenism was due to a Buddhism
influence. Few deny this now, and fewer would support that energetic
but rather wild apologist, Dr. Lightfoot, in his assertion that
"there is no notice in either heathen or Christian writers, which
points to the presence of a Buddhist within the limits of the Roman
Empire till long after the Essenes ceased to exist."
But supposing this to be true, we have at any rate an historical
statement that 30,000 Buddhist monks went back to India if they did
not come from it. In the Mahâwanso, or ancient Buddhist history of
Ceylon, it is announced that on the occasion of the consecration of
the famous Buddhist tope at Ruanwelli (160 to 137 B.C.), Buddhist
monks came from all parts, including "30,000 from the vicinity of
A’lasadda, the capital of the Yona country." (Alexandria, the
capital of Greece). *
Dr. Lightfoot, the champion controversialist of his day, springs up
at this and maintains that the Yona country is Bactria alone, and that
the Alexandria here mentioned is a small town fifteen miles from
Caubul. The first assertion disappears in the presence of Asoka's
Girnar inscription. The "dominions of Ptolemaios" must
certainly have included Egypt; and no town in Afghanistan could
possibly be called "The capital of the Greek dominions."
The second suggestion of this distinguished controversialist,
brings with it developments that its author could never have
anticipated, for the Cingalese historian announces that the invited
monks arrived at Ruanwelli and were properly fęted.
Let us suppose for a moment that Dr. Lightfoot's ipse dixit is
correct, and that 30,000 monks were at Alexandria in Afghanistan. This
Alexandria must have been a small village. It is not now discoverable
on any map. Imagine 30,000 monks living by daily begging in such a
thrifty place. It took the English government three and a half months
to prepare supplies for the Tirah campaign. Imagine 30,000 monks
marching from Caubul to Peshawur. Did they lay in a vast store of food
with camels, mules, etc., for carriage? If so, had they armed men with
them to protect this food from the starving robbers of the passes? And
how did they traverse the fifteen or sixteen hundred miles that
separate Peshawur from Adam's bridge? How were they fed in the
numerous dense jungles and wastes that crossed their path? Also, could
30,000 Buddhists march safely across the kingdoms in India that had
never been converted to Buddhism, and who viewed the followers of
Buddha as graceless heretics, and burnt them on red hot iron beds?
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(5)
Prophets dreaming in solitude and prophets who had failed in life were
both part of the same mechanism; for the prophet when he had obtained
the inner light was turned into an itinerant missionary. In a work
recently recovered, the "Teaching of the Apostles," the
Christian missionaries are called "Prophets," and they were
only allowed to remain three nights in one place. The Parivrâjikas,
or wandering missionaries of Buddhism, could only sleep one night in
the same place, and that not in a house. These wandering missionaries,
although their work is finished, still exist in Tibet. In that cold
climate they say their home is "the starry tent of Buddha,"
and as often as not sleep in the open on the snow.
