The Secret Vault presents: The Christian and Pagan Creeds Collated. Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
By the Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
"That the name of Chrishna, and the general outline of his story," says the pious and learned Sir William Jones, "were long anterior to the birth of our Saviour, and probably to the time of Homer, we know very certainly." - Asiatic Researches, vol. l, p. 259.
"In the Sanskrit Dictionary, compiled more than two-thousand years ago, we have the whole story of the incarnate deity born of a virgin, and miraculously escaping in his infancy from the reigning tyrant of his country." - Ibid. pp. 259, 260. 267. 272, 273.
"I am persuaded," continues this great author than, whom higher authority cannot he adduced - "I am persuaded, that a connection existed between the old idolatrous nations of Egypt, India, Greece, and Italy, long before the time of Moses." - Ibid. p. 259. -
"Very respectable natives have assured me, that one or two missionaries have been absurd enough in their zeal for the conversion of the Gentiles, to urge, that the Hindus were even now almost Christians; because their Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesa, were no other than the Christian Trinity: a sentence, in which we can only doubt whether folly, ignorance, or impiety, predominates. The Indian triad, and that of Plato, which he calls the Supreme Good, the Reason, and the Soul, are infinitely removed from the holiness and sublimity of the doctrine which pious Christians have deduced from the texts in the Gospel." Ibid, p. 272.
The celebrated poem Bhagavat, contains a prolix account of the life of Chrishna: - "Chrishna, the incarnate deity of the Sanskrit romance, continues to this hour the darling god of the Indian women. The sect of Hindus, who adore him with enthusiastic and almost exclusive devotion, have broached a doctrine which they maintain with eagerness, that he was distinct from all the avatars (or prophets), who had only a portion of his divinity, whereas Chrishna Was the person of Vishnu (God) himself in a human form." - Ibid. p. 260. [For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." - 2 Colossians, 9.]
Coincidences with Jesus and other gods
[LN., Birth early years combine the stories of Adam (rib [a]) Jesus (threat of Herod [b]) Hercules (killing of serpent- snake[c]) Jesus (raised the dead [d]) Jesus (meekness[e] washing of feet [f] pure and chaste [g] started a war, Jesus said he did not come to bring peace but war [h])]
Chrishna was believed to have been born from the left intercostal rib of a virgin [a] of the royal line of Devaci.
"He passed a life of a most extraordinary and incomprehensible nature. His birth was concealed, through fear of the tyrant Cansa, [b] to whom it had been predicted that one born at that time, in that family, would destroy him."- Ibid. p. 259.
"He was fostered, therefore, in Mat'hura, by an honest herdsman, surnamed Ananda, or the Happy, and his amiable wife, Yasoda." - Asiatic Researches, vol. 1, p. 260.
"Chrishna, when a boy, slew the terrible serpent Caliya, [c] with a number of serpents and monsters. He passed his youth in playing- with a party of milk-maids; and at the age of seven years, he held up a mountain on the tip of his little finger. He saved multitudes, partly by his arms, and partly by his miraculous powers. He raised the dead, [d] by descending for that purpose to the lowest regions. He was the meekest [e] and best-tempered of beings. He washed [f] the feet of the Brahmins, and preached very nobly indeed, and sublimely, but always in their favour [g] he was pure and chaste in reality but exhibited an appearance of excessive libertinism; and had wives or mistresses too numerous to be counted. Lastly, he was benevolent and tender, [h] yet fermented and conducted a terrible war." - Ibid. p. 273.
"The adamantine pillars of our faith cannot be shaken by an investigation of heathen mythology. I, who cannot help believing the divinity of the Messiah, from the undisputed antiquity, and manifest completion of many prophecies, &c. am obliged, of course, to believe the sanctity of the venerable books to which that sacred person refers." - Ibid. p. 233.
The above extracts are taken literally from the 1st volume of the Asiatic Researches, chapter 9, on the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India, written in 1784, and since revised by the president, Sir William Jones. [LN., Jones, William Sir, 1746 to 1794, he was an Anglo-Welsh philologist, a puisne judge, scholar of ancient India, especially interest in the relationship between European and Indian languages.]
I have thought it supremely important to present the text of this great author; and leave the reader to draw his own conclusion. Higher authority could not be quoted. One better acquainted with the Hindustani language, and with the documents and evidence from which such information could be acquired, could hardly be conceived to exist; and certainly, never was any man further from the intention of supplying arms to infidelity. The unquestionable orthodoxy of Sir William Jones must, therefore, give to admissions surrendered by him, the utmost degree of cogency; while his unequalled and unrivalled learning stands as a tower of strength, to render our position impregnable, upon the lines to which he has authorized our advance, and recognized our right.
Nothing in the whole compass of ecclesiastical history has so perplexed and distressed the modern advocates of Christianity, as these surrenders made by their own best and ablest champion, to the cause of infidelity. Our evangelical polemics, indeed, lose all temper upon hearing but an allusion to this most unluckily discovered prototype of their Jewish deity. No language of insolence against those who point out the resemblance, is too outrageous -no shift or sophistication to evade or conceal it, too pitiful.
The sun is not more dissimilar to the moon, say our Unitarian divines, than is Christina to Christ. [a] No man in his senses, say our evangelicals, could believe that the two personages were identical. Our Methodists [b] meanly and pitifully alter the spelling of the name from the original orthography, which rests on the high authority of Sir William Jones, and invariably print it as Krishnu, or Krishna, to screen the resemblance from the eye's observance; while they accuse their opponents of spelling it as they do (correctly), for the contrary purpose of making the resemblance more striking.
[a] Rev. Mr. Beard's Third Letter to the Author, p. 87.]
[b] Rev. Dr John Pye Smith, in Answer to the Author, p. 54. A truly sublime specimen of evangelical malignity. This holy Parthian throws his stone and protects himself under pretence of treating his adversary with contempt!]
[c] He was satisfied, it seems, before he began to inquire - a pretty good security to ensure that the result of his inquiry would be satisfactory. He who is in possession of what he pretends to seek for, before he commences his search, will be sure to know when and where to find it.]
Dr Bentley's Theory.
Dr Bentley, as a dernier resource, flies to astrology - source inexhaustible of all that is wild in conjecture, and delusive in argumentation, to supply his drowning hypothesis with a straw to swim on. "My attention," says he,
"was first drawn to this subject, by finding that a great many Hindu festivals, marked in the calendar, had every appearance of being modern; for they agreed with the modern astronomy only, and not with the ancient. I observed also several passages in the Geeta having a reference to the new order of things. I was, therefore, induced to make particular inquiries about the time of Krishna, who, I was satisfied, was not near so ancient as pretended. [c] In these inquiries, I was told the usual story, that Krishna lived a great many ages ago; that he was contemporary with Yudhishthira; that Garga, the astronomer, was his priest; and that Garga was present at his birth and determined the position of the planets at that moment, which position was still preserved in some books to be found among the astronomers: besides which, there was mention made of his birth in the Harivansa, and other Pnranas. These I examined, but found they were insufficient to point out the time; [d] therefore directed my attention towards obtaining- the Janampatra of Krishna, containing the positions of the planets at his birth, which at length I was fortunate to meet with; [e] from which it appears that Chrishna was born on the 23d of the moon Saravana." The writer then gives the position of the planets at the birth of Krishna, and states that "they place the time of the fiction in the year 600AD, on the 7th of August, at midnight." - Bentley on ancient and Modern Hindu Astronomy, quoted by Mr. Beard, in his 3rd Letter to the Author, p. 90.
[c] He was satisfied, it seems, before he began to inquire - a pretty good security to ensure that the result of his inquiry would be satisfactory. He who is in possession of what he pretends to seek for, before he commences his search, will be sure to know when and where to find it.]
[c] Aye, to be sure! to be sure! they pointed the wrong way!]
[d] O fortunate fellow! I'd have sworn he would have met with it!]
Dr Bentley is indeed a name of first-rate honour among Christian theologues, and is frequently appealed to as one of their highest authorities, "the learned Bentley," "the prince of critics," &c. The reader, however, cannot be better led to judge how he should appreciate this great man's decision than by consulting the temper and spirit which appears in the annexed specimen of his manner of answering the objections of unbelievers, and which I find quoted by his zealous admirer: - "What a scheme would these men make? What worthy rules would they prescribe to Providence? And pray, to what great use or design? To give satisfaction to a few obstinate, intractable wretches; to those who are not convinced by Moses and the prophets but want one to come from the dead and convert them! Such men mistake the methods of Providence, and the very fundamentals of religion, which draws its votaries by the cords of a man; by rational, ingenuous, and moral motives; not by conviction mathematical, not by new evidence miraculous, to silence every doubt and whim that impiety and folly can suggest. And yet all this would have no effect upon such spirits and dispositions. If they now believe not Christ and his Apostles, neither would they believe if their own schemes were complied with." - Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, p. 114.
More coincidences with Jesus
The reader is here in full possession of the Christian argument. He must bear in mind, however, that the argument, as thus far stated, is entirely in Christian hands, had we ventured to supply to these admissions, the further discoveries which unbelieving historians have made, we might have enriched our matter with the still more striking- coincidence of the facts; that the reputed father of Chrishna was a carpenter, and that he was put to death at last between two thieves; after which, he arose from the dead, and returned again to his heavenly seat in Vaicontha; leaving the instructions contained in the Geeta to be preached through the continent of India by his disconsolate son, and disciple Arjun."
Tractable indeed, and easy of faith, must the adopters of Dr Bentley's explanation of the matter be, who can suffer evidence of this character, yielded and supplied as it is, by authority as great as any they can pretend, and that authority too, entirely adverse to our deductions, to be swept away by palmistry, by a calculation of the position of the planets; or defeated by a sagacious discovery of some chronological discrepancy, which Dr Bentley, who was satisfied that it was there before he looked for it, found in the Janampatra.
Astronomical nonsense
The exquisite accuracy of the astrological demonstration, that Krishna was born on the 7th of August, AD. 600, at midnight; can only be put on the same footing with the chronology of Julius Africanus, who has in like manner demonstrated that the world was made on the 1st of September and was exactly five thousand five hundred and eight years, three months, and twenty-five days old at the birth of Christ.
The argument against the antiquity of the Hindu mythology, from the discovery that "a great many of its festivals, as now observed, agree with the modern astronomy only, and not with the ancient," is of no more validity, than if it were objected (as with equal truth it might be) that the time of celebrating our Christian festivals has in like manner been accommodated to more modern arrangements of our calendar, and agrees not with the ancient astronomy. When the Hindu astronomers at any time found it convenient to alter their calendar, it was surely as competent in them to make the times of celebrating their ancient festivals agree with their improved knowledge of astronomy; as it. was for our Christian astronomers to alter the style, and to fix the celebration of Easter and Whitsuntide to different seasons of the year from those in which they had been observed for previous ages.
As for all the uncertainty with respect to the alleged time of the birth of Chrishna, there is but little ground for the advantage of Christians, who have never yet been able to fix the date of the day, or month, or even of the year of the birth of Christ.
"The year in which it happened," says Mosheim, [Ecclesiastical History, vol. 1, p. 53.] "has not hitherto been fixed with certainty, notwithstanding the deep and laborious researches of the learned."
The learned John Albert Fabricius has collected all the opinions of the learned on the subject: [in his Bibliography. Antiquary, cap. 7, sect. 10, p. 187.] that which appears most probable is, that it happened about a year and six months before the death of Herod, in the year of Rome 748 or 749. "The uncertainty, however, of this point," continues our great ecclesiastical historian, "is of no great consequence. We know that the Sun of Righteousness has shone upon the world; and although we cannot fix the precise period in which he arose, this will not preclude us from enjoying the direction and influence of his vital and salutary beams." [LN., Fabricius, John Albert. 1668 to 1736 a German classical scholar and bibliographer.]
This is the most unfortunate figure of speech (if it be no more than a figure of speech) that Christians could possibly resort to; since, instead of raising and exalting our ideas of the divine Saviour above all associations with the wild conceits of the heliolatry and idolatry of the heathen world, it brings us at once to the irresistible apprehension, that the Christian Saviour, after all, is no more than what the Aesculapius, Hercules, Adonis, Bacchus, Apollo, and Chrishna were; that is, an emblematical personification of the Sun.
"Colonel Valency," says Sir William Jones, "assures me that Chrishna in Irish means the Sun." - Asiatic Researches vol. 1, p. 262.
The taking of the name of a thing in any unknown language for the name of a person, would naturally render these personifications infinite; and cause the natural history of things without life to be related or understood as if they had been real adventures of actually existing personages. Hence, have we actions and sufferings, sentiments and affections, and all that could be predicated of rational beings - predicated not only of animals, but of vegetables and inanimate substances, of the works of men's hands, and even of the abstractions of their thoughts. The ship Argo, in which Jason and his companions sailed for the golden fleece, had its imaginary moral qualities; it fought the waves, it suffered, it conquered, it was translated into heaven. The disposition of mind called charity, is described by St. Paul, under all the circumstances that could be imagined of a most accomplished and lovely woman: "She suffers long and is kind; she doth not behave herself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked," &c. (1 Cor. 13.); though nothing could be further from his intention, than that we should take charity to be a person who had a real existence, and fall to the folly of endeavouring to find out when she was born, under what king's reign, and in what country, &c; as it may be conjectured some have done with respect to other personifications, whose existence, actions and sufferings, were of an equally metaphorical and figurative origination. But if the identity of the mythological personages, Christ and Chrishna, and the absolute derivation of the Christian from the Hindu or Brahmanical religion, might yet seem matter rather of curious excogitation, than of satisfactory proof; the matter receives the utmost corroboration which any historical fact of such remote antiquity, could be conceived to have, from the entire discomfiture and overthrow of all attempts to evade the conclusion, which we achieve in the strength of further researches, later discoveries, and ampler concessions won from the conviction of the most intelligent of Christians themselves, who have dared to trust themselves with the important investigation.
We have become better acquainted with the evidences of the Christian religion than it was possible for the Lardner's, Watsons, or Paley's to have been. - We have means of information which they had not. - We are in possession of intelligence, the result of more extensive research, of more impartial enquiry, and of more recent discoveries, of which they were absolutely ignorant.
No work whatever, of the divines of the now antiquated school of Christian-evidence writers, can be fairly adduced either as authority or argument, against the thousand-fold more formidable array of objections, which have emerged even within the last ten years, from the further concessions made by divines themselves, from the improved powers of reasoning, advanced science, extended knowledge, and greater moral courage of unbelievers, to bring up that science and knowledge to the conflict.
To pretend any longer that infidels insist only on arguments that have already been answered, or refuted, is to discover the grossest ignorance of what their arguments really are, and in that ignorance to find the only excuse for what such a pretence really is, - the grossest falsehood.
To pretend to refer the anxious mind for the solution of its doubts to any defence of the Christian religion written earlier than the present century, is but parallel in absurdity to the setting a medical student of the present day to acquire his knowledge of chemistry and physic from the cumbrous folios of Paracelsus, Bombastus, or the Commentaries of Van Sweeten, Hippocrates, and Galen.
After the unmeasured abuse, and bitter vituperations which I have incurred for the prominence which I have given to this most pregnant argument, I find Godfrey Higgins, Esq. of Skellow Grange, Yorkshire, himself a very learned, ingenious [f] and sincere Christian, in his superb work on the Celtic Druids, published by R. Hunter, 1827, thus laying at our feet, the keys of the fortress, in the assault of which, I have taken such hard words, hard usage, and everything that was hard, except hard arguments : -
[f] Mr. Higgins must forgive my hoping, that his false way of spelling Christina (which is certainly Christina, and not Krishna,) may not be an exception against his ingenuousness, it was very natural that he should endeavour to bring his Christ out of the scrape as well as he could and save his Saviour! But Krislina, or Chrishna is fatal to Christ, spell him even as you will!] [LN., Higgins, Godfrey, 1772 to 1833, He was an English magistrate and landowner, historian and Antiquarian.]
Astronomical calculators
"After Baillie, and some other learned astronomers had turned their attention to the ancient astronomical instruments, calculations and observations, of India, it was discovered that they proved the antiquity of the world to be so great, that what was called by our priests, the Mosaic system of chronology, could not be supported.
Immediately upon this, they set every engine at work to counteract the effects of the recorded observations of the Hindus, by representing that they are, in fact, merely pretended observations founded on back-reckonings.
"Professor Playfair of Edinburgh, has given the most decisive proofs in the Edinburgh Philosophical Transactions [See Vol. 2, and Vol. 4.] that the Brahmins, to have made the back-reckonings, must have been well acquainted with the most refined of the theoretical improvements of modern astronomy. Instead of having forgot the principles of their formulae, they must have been much more learned than we know they were, and in fact than their ancestors; indeed, more learned than our modern astronomers were, until the astronomical theories of Newton were completed very lately, by the discoveries of some of the French philosophers."
"Near the city of Benares, in India, are the astronomical instruments cut out of the solid rock of a mountain, which in former times, were used for making" the observations, which Sir William Jones and the priests say, were only back-reckonings. The Brahmins of the present day, it is said, do not know the use of them; they are of great size, and tradition states them to be of the most remote antiquity. If the astronomical facts stated in the works of the Brahmins, be the effects of the back reckonings, the Brahmins of the present day are as ignorant of the formulae on which they are grounded, as they are of the nature of the astronomical instruments. If they have become acquainted with them, it is by the instruction of Europeans."
"A gentleman, in the Asiatic Researches, has lately, by means of the most deeply learned and laborious calculations, [These "laborious calculations," are Dr Bentley's wretched shifts to save Christianity.] discovered that the history of Krishna, one of the most celebrated Gods of the Hindu's, was invented in the year of Christ six hundred; and that the story was laid about the beginning of the Christian sera. This goes directly to overthrow all the Hindu calculations. He has proved this as clear as the sun at noon! He has absolutely demonstrated it! but it is unfortunate for this demonstration, that the statue of this God is to be found in the very oldest caves and temples throughout all India, - temples, the inscriptions on which are in a language used previously to the Sanskrit, and now totally unknown to all mankind, any day to be seen amongst other places, in the city of Seringham, and the temple at Malvalipuram."
Alexandra the Great an Achilles heel
It has been moreover satisfactorily proved, on the authority of a passage of Adrian, that the worship of Krishna was practised in the time of Alexander the Great (330 years before Christ), at what still remains one of the most famous temples of India, the temple of Mathura, on the Jumna, the Matura Deorum of Ptolemy. So much for this astronomical demonstration." - Celtic Druids, pp. 154, 155,156,157.
"It seems the miraculously and stupendously learned Bentley, who was to put all the enemies of the Lord to silence, has reckoned without his host; and in discovering by help of the Janampatra, that, from a certain relative location of the planets, it would appear that Chrishna was born on the 7th of August, 600AD, at midnight; it happened most unfortunately for his learned wiseacre-ship, not to occur to him, that all these facts of the locations of the planets, are periodical---so that if he be right, that the time of the birth of Chrishna can be inferred from such a location and the circumstances attending it, (a thing in itself very doubtful); all that he will prove, will be, that the pretended birth of this God must have taken place, at a similar part of a period, some time before the war of Alexander the Great. And thus, if we know the length of the period or cycle referred to, we shall know the latest' time at which this God was feigned to be born before the birth of Alexander." Mr. Higgins informs us, that when our army, of Indian Sepoys arrived at Thebes in Egypt in the course of the French war, they discovered their favourite God Chrishna, and instantly fell to worshipping, (no doubt the cunning rogues of Brahmins [g] came to Egypt in the year 600 and placed his statue amongst the ruins!") [g] This sarcasm is very severe, but it is from the pen of Christian Mr. Higgins, a believer in divine revelation,]
"I made every attempt my time would permit," says Col. Fitz Clarence, "to discover the celebrated figure which caused the Hindu's with the Indian contingent, to find fault with the natives of this country, for allowing a temple of Vishnu to fall to ruins; but did not succeed." [In his Travels, pp. 393, 394.]
"I could say much more," says Mr. Higgins, "on the subject of this temple at Mathura, for it is very curious - but I much prefer letting it alone!" - Celtic Druids, p. 157.
In the name of God, what means this letting it alone? Christians have to thank their persecuting City Aldermen, their prompt recourse to the arguments of stone and iron, their Dorchester and Oakliam; that when really learned and intelligent men tread on the thresh-hold of the most important discoveries, they much prefer "letting it alone" and leaving us to guess, where we might certainly have known.
In this dilemma, we may guess with a conviction little short of certainty - that it was never a little that priests would boggle at -1. That the celebrated figure which Col. Fitz Clarence was hindered from seeing, would have established the absolute identity of the Indian Chrishna and the Egyptian Christ:
In confirmation of this guess (if it be no more), we have the farther light of an admission from the Rev. Mr. Maurice, of the curious fact, that "the two principal pagodas of India, viz. those of Benares and Mathura, are built in the form of crosses." [Maurice's Indian Antiquities, vol. 2, p. 361, quoted by Mr. Higgins, p. 127 f Celtic Druids.]
2. That the grounds on which the Hindus found fault with the British government for allowing a temple of Vishnu to fall to ruins, was, that the Christian religion was absolutely one and the same with the ancient Hindu idolatry:
Whose religion is it anyway
3. That the travelling Egyptian Therapeuts brought the whole story from India to their monasteries in Egypt, where, sometime about the commencement of the Roman monarchy, it was transmuted into Christianity. The tales that had been previously told of the idol of the Ganges, were transferred to the twice-living demon of the Jordan, precisely as we see the histories of the Grecian heroes, plagiarized and told over again of Romans. Thus, the combat of the Horatii and Curiatii, had been related under different names, but with the same circumstances, by Democrates apud Stobceum. The action of Mutius Scaevola was told before of Agesilaus, and that of Curtius precipitating himself into the gulf, has been ascribed also to a son of King Midas. See also Pagan heroes turned into Christian saints, out of number: indeed, half the saints of the Roman calendar are heathen gods and goddesses, and like the Jewish Jesus, a false creation proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain.
4. And lastly, that the Missionaries engaged by the East India Company, and otherwise sent to India for the ostensible purpose of propagating the gospel, are employed really in the diametrically opposite work, of doing their utmost to suppress it; and to carry on the counsel which we see guiding their machinations at home, suppressing evidence, perverting facts, destroying or hindering the monuments of antiquity from coming to the knowledge of the community, persecuting and railing at infidels, and keeping up that state of general ignorance and consequent devotion, that best disposes enslaved and degraded millions to bow to the yoke of tyranny, and "to order themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters."
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next Chapter 25. Apollo Jesus Christ.