Gandhi Before Gandhi

Author(s): Bipin Doshi, Priti Shah
Publisher: Jain Academy Educational Research Center Promotion Trust Mumbai

Page 125

A GANDHI BEFORE GANDHI
converted to Jainism. The grandfather and the grandson have done for their respective religions what Constantine has done for Christianity. Ashoka has left a number of edicts in the form of inscriptions cut on rocks, caves and pillars and in the language and alphabet of the time, and scattered all over India.
her in very ancient times, that her religions were openly preached and known in the very land which afterwards became the birthplace of Jesus; that Alexander's conquest had made foreign nations more familiar with India and her people and her glory had spread throughout the world then known.
The famous French scholar Senart has recently published these inscriptions in his learned work "Les Inscriptions de Piyadasi." From the thirteenth inscription, which mentions the names of Antiochus of Syria, Ptolemy of Egypt, Antigonus of Macedon, Magas of Cyrene, and Alexander of Epirus, it appears that these kings were contemporaries of Ashoka and that they made treaties with him, and with their permission he sent Buddhist missionaries to preach his religion in those countries. Ashoka's grandson sent missionaries to many foreign countries to preach Jainism and often the monks of one religion were mistaken for those of the other, by reason of a close similarity in dress and ceremonial observances.
Is it then not impossible that Jesus, having heard of the richness of the philosophies and sciences of India, should have gone there with a desire to study them? Add to this the various passages, both in the Old and New Testaments, which bear a close resemblance with the Buddhistic, Hindu and Jain thoughts, (nay, some of the very customs and practices of the Jews of those early times can be fully explained only in the light of Indian wisdom) and the evidence is overwhelming in favor of the theory that Jesus must have been attracted to and lived in India during the time about which the Evangelists are silent.
These religions were therefore well-known in Egypt, Syria, Greece and other places, long before Jesus was born. "Buddhist missionaries," says a Christian writer, "preached in Syria two centuries before the teaching of Christ (which has so many moral points in common) was heard in northern Palestine. So true is it that every great historical change has had its forerunner."
- Virchand R. Gandhi
Chicago, June, 1894.
It is beyond doubt, therefore, that India was commercially connected with the countries situated on the shores of the Mediterranean many centuries before the birth of Jesus; that India's wealth and commodities had attracted different people to