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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
styled himself a Bauddha, or a Buddha, especially as an Indian origin was assigned to the doctrines he introduced. Epiphanius, indeed, explains how this happened by going a step further. According to him Scythianus, quusi Sakva, the master and instructor of Terebinthus, was an Arabian or Egyptian merchant, who had grown rich by trading with India, whence he imported not only valuable merchandise, but heretical doctrines and books. Suidas calls Manes himself a Brahman), a pupil of Bauddha, formerly called Terebiuthus, who, coming into Persia , falsely pretended that he was born of a virgin. These accounts are no doubt scanty and in some respects inaccurate, but they demonstrate clearly that the Buddhism of India was not wholly unknown to the Christian writers between the second and fifth centuries of our era.
Without at present referring more particularly to the information furnished us by Chinese travellers in India between the third and sixth centuries, we may next advert to the strange theories which were gravely advanced, by men of the highest repute in Europe for erudition and sagacity, from the middle to the end of the last century, respecting the origin and character of Buddha. Deeply interested by the accounts which were transmitted to Europe by the missionaries of the Romish Church, who penetrated to Tibet, Japan, and China, as well as by other travellers to those countries, the members of the French Academy especially set to work to establish coincidences the most improbable, and identified Buddha with a variety of
