Indian Antiquary Vol 03

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 64

52
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(FEBRUÁRY, 1874.
the year 640, with which the conclusions we have drawn from the age of the Indian texts which describe the festival of Krishra's birthday agree very well. In the train of this festival we must suppose that the other legendary matters came to India which are found in the accounts of the Harivania and of the Jaimini Bharata, in some interpolated passages of the Mahd Bharata, in the Puranas, especially the Bhagavata Purana and its offshoots, which describe and embellish the birth and childhood of Kțishna with notices which remind us irresistibly of Christian legends. Take, for instance, the statement of the Vishnu Purana (Wilson, p. 506) that Nanda, the fosterfather of Krishra, at the time of the latter's birth, went with his pregnant we Yaboda. to Mathura "to pay his taxes" (conf. Luke ü. 4, 5), or the pictorial representation of the birth of Krishna in the cow-stall or shepherd's hut, that corresponds to the manger, and of the shepherds, shepherdesses, the ox and the ass that stand round the woman as she sleeps peacefully on her couch without fear of danger. Then the stories of the persecutions of Kansa, of the "magsacre of the innocents," of the passage across the river (Christophoros), of the wonderful deeds of the child, of the healing virtue of the water in which he was washedt &c. &c. Whether the accounts given in the Jaimini Bharata of the raising to life by Krishna of the dead son of Duhsala, of the cure of Kubja, of her pouring a vessel of ointment over him, of the power of his look to take away sin, and other subjects of the kind, came to India in the same connection with the birthday festival may remain an open question. Their Christian origin is, however, as certain as the assumption that (Ind. Stud. I. 423) the later, exclusively monotheistic direction of the Indian sects, which honour a distinct personal God, pray
for his grace and believe in him (bhakti and braddhd), has been influenced by the acquaintance the Indians had with the corresponding doctrines of Christianity; or in Wilson's words (Mrs. Speir's Life in Ancient India, p. 434; compare my paper on the Ramaláp. Up. pp. 277, 360) " that the remo. delling of the ancient Hindu systems into popular forms, and in particular the vital importance of faith, were directly influenced by the diffusion of the Christian religion."
Now if the Christian Church furnished legendary matter for the Krishra-cult in particular, and for the development of Indian sects in general, it was only making & return for the numerous subjects and motives which, as we know, were taken from India in the early centuries, and found a place in the pictures and ritual of the Christian sects, especially of the Gnostics and Manichæans, but also of the orthodox Church. Buddhism more than all the others showed fruitful missionary activity in this respect : conf. on this what I have said in the Ind. Skizz. p. 92, Ind. Stud. III, 119. In the latter of these passages I have acceded to Hardy's view (Eastern Monachis, p. 416) of the Indian origin of the nimbus. But L. Stephani's paper on the Nimbus and Orown of Rays in the Works of oud Art has made that doubtful again, and the reverse is perhaps the truth. On the other hand, a philological conjecture, which I may give here, has occurred to me in support of the Indian origin of the rosary, which I am inclined, with Koppen(die Rel. des Buddha, II, 319), to derive from Siva's garland of skulls (conf. Lit. Oent.-Blatt. 1859, No. 41, p. 650). The name rosary was perbaps a mistranslation of the Indian word japamald by some one who took it as japdmdud and connected it with japd, a rose. The formation of the rosary from rose-leaves took its origin in the name, was not the reason of the name.
• In these foster-parents to whom Krishna the young prince of an old warrior race is entrusted, as in the transsetion itself, the legend may have preserved traces of the later origin of the conception and worship of Krishr's as an effeminate shepherd, which is such a marked contrast to his older position as a warlike hero and semi-divinity.
Conf. the Arabian Gospel of the Childhood of Christ, cap. 17 . Fabricius, p. 180ff. The water in which the Mahlrjus in Bombay wash is represented as possessing healing power.
I In the Gospel of the Childhood of Christ edited in Ars bie and Latin by H. Sike (Utrecht, 1697) there is (cap. 40-51) an amplification of the legend of the appearance of the young Jesus in the temple which reminds tus of the examination in all branches of learning which Buddha had to undergo. (See Lalitavistara, cap. X.).
Baddha is said to have been attended by an appearance of glory extending six cubita over his head. Beo Kopen, die Religion des Buddha, I, 509; Burnogf, Lotus, p. 617 (the 38th anayañjana), 620. The Jainas observe nothing of the kind of their founder MahAvira, see my paper on the Bhagouati, 2. 806, 811, for the comparison of his head to a perusol cannot be taken in that way, and the glory of his face furpassing that of the full moon" does not neces. sarily imply s nimbus.
It was not, according to De Rossi (Images, P. 20), till the second half of the fourth centary that the figure of
Christ had the nimbus round the head. Conf. also Didron, Iconographie, p. 90 ff..
Besides akshamaia, akshastirl, ja pam014 (conf. Jafadhara in sk. under akshasutrd), the rosary is also called rudr 4 kshamal, and is indispensable at the Siva. puja : Yatha Lingopurone.
vind bha smatripundrena vina rudraksha malayal karoti ja pahomddi tat sarram nishphalam bhavet.ll
It was also, but not in the earliest times in which small staves were employed for a similar purpose, see Hang on the Aitar. Br. pp. 238, 239; Pet. W. V. under kta), nsed to guard against omissions in the Vedicstotrasand fastrastide Bebol. to Katy. 95. 4. 23. The oldest mention of it in the text in. cloded under the Veda I remember is in Ath. Par. 43. 4, 11: gdyatrdakshamalayam sdyampratah latim j pet,"morning and evening one should pray a hundred gayatris on the akshamaid.-What is said in sk. of the one to fourteen muhha, i.e. aya, of the akshasutra, agrees exactly with our rosary, which generally has a larger bead after every ten small ones.
Dr japdmáld may have had at that time a form japamaid, in accordance with the shortening of the feminine 4 or at the end of the first part of a compound, which is found in the Magadhi of the Jainus (nee my paper of the Bhogoratt, 1, 407) and in the Prakrit of Hala, in which care the two words would be identical.