Dhammapada

SR No.: 007674
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Max Muller
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1881
Total Pages: 2540
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 45 MB

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of Glory. But this was not the supreme goal of the Buddhist faith; and the angel, though the same person as the king, from the Buddhist point of view (as resulting from, and carrying on, the same Karma), would be a different person from the king, according to the Christian point of view; for there is no mention of the passage of a soul from the earth to heaven, no conscious identity, no continuing memory.
INTRODUCTION.
We may draw, from the above, two conclusions. Firstly, that the use of a word in Sanskrit authors is but very little guide to the meaning of the corresponding word in the Pâli Buddhist scriptures whenever the word has reference to an idea of a religious character.
And, secondly, that very little reliance can be placed, without careful investigation, on a resemblance-however close at first sight-between a passage in the Pâli Pitakas and a passage in the New Testament.
It is true that many passages in these two literatures can be easily shown to have a similar tendency. But when some writers on the basis of such similarities proceed to argue that there must have been some historical connection between the two, and that the New Testament, as the later, must be the borrower, I venture to think that they are wrong. There does not seem to me to be the slightest evidence of any historical connection between them; and whenever the resemblance is a real one-and it often turns out to be really least when it first seems to be greatest, and really greatest when it first seems least-it is due, not to any borrowing on the one side or on the other, but solely to the similarity of the conditions under which the two movements grew.
This does not of course apply to the later literature of the two religions; and it ought not to detract from the very great value and interest of the parallels which may be adduced from the earlier books. If we wish to understand what it was that gave such life and force to the stupendous movement which is called Buddhism, we cannot refrain from comparing it—not only in the points
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