Handbook of History of Religions

SR No.: 007634
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Edward Washburn
Publisher: Sanmati Tirth Prakashan Pune
Total Pages: 678
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 2 MB

Page 577

[Footnote 26: The literature on this subject is very extensive (see the Bibliography). On Buddhism and Christianity see Bohlen's Altes Indien, I. 334 (Weber, Indische Skizzen, p. 92). At a recent meeting of the British Association E.B. Tylor presented a paper in which is made an attempt to show Buddhistic influence on pre-Columbian culture in America. On comparing the Aztec picture-writing account of the journey of the soul after death with Buddhistic eschatology, he is forced to the conclusion that there was direct transmission from Buddhism. We require more proof than Aztec pictures of hell to believe any such theory; and reckon this attempt to those already discussed in the eighth chapter.]
[Footnote 27: It is a mooted question in how far the influence in this line has been reciprocal. See Indische Studien, iii. 128.]
[Footnote 28: The S[=a]nkhya has no systematic connection with the 'numbers' of Pythagoras.]
[Footnote 29: Compare on the Çulvas[=u]tras, Thibaut, J.A. Beng. xliv. p. 227; Von Schroeder, Pythagoras und die Inder; Literatur und Cultur, p. 718 ff, who also cites Cantor, Geschichte der Mathematik, p. 540, and refutes the possibility, suggested by the latter, of the loan being from Greece to India on the ground that the Çulvas[=u]tra are too old to belong to the Alexandrine period, and too essential a part of the religious literature to have been borrowed; and also on the ground that they are not an addition to the Cr[=ajutas[=u]tra, but they make an independent portion (p. 721, note).]
[Footnote 30: Compare Garbe (loc. cit. below), and his S[=all.m]khya Philosophic, p. 94.]