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VI. The Gospels of the Infancy, the Lalita Vistara, and the Vishnu Purāna: or the Transmission of Religious Legends between India and the West

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

Buddhism and Christianity are essentially unlike, no two religions more so, but no other worldwide religions have so many points of superficial resemblance. Some of these resemblances are natural or accidental. For instance, Christ and Buddha taught in parables, because, as Galen says, parables are the most instructive form of teaching for simple men. Again, Buddhism and Christianity lay stress on right conduct; and although Buddhists and Christians do not mean exactly the same thing by these words, both lay hold of great ethical principles. Such coincidences are in the nature of things. But the greater number are undoubtedly due to the secular contact of the two religions in Central Asia from the second to the twelfth century a.d., and they are confined of necessity to legend and to ritual.

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Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1917

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References

page 209 note 1 Quoted by Harnack from an Arabic translation. Expansion of Christianity, i, p. 266, Eng. trans.Google Scholar

page 210 note 1 In the course of a long life I do not remember to have seen devotion more visibly expressed than in the faces of a rather uninteresting, middle-aged Hindu magistrate at the Rāmlīlā, and of a Russian moujik at the Holy Sepulchre. Some of Goya's Spanish nuns have the same look of rapt devotion and of awe.

page 210 note 2 “The convergence of these lines of development in the various nations of antiquity during the age of Hellenism is among the best established facts of history. Contemporary ideas of a cognate or similar nature were not simply the result of mutual interaction, but also of an independent development along parallel lines. This makes it difficult, and indeed impossible in many cases, to decide on which branch any given growth sprang up. The similarity of the development on parallel lines embraced not only the ideas, but frequently their very mode of expression and the form under which they were conceived” (Harnack, , op. cit., i, p. 33, n. 1).Google Scholar

page 210 note 3 JRAS. 1907, pp. 311 ff.Google Scholar

page 211 note 1 I have summarized the teaching of Albertus in the first part of his little work De adhaerendo Deo. Not many of my readers probably know the work, and the sentences are very curious. I therefore give a number of extracts, which convey the doctor's meaning much more forcibly than I can.

(a) The end of all exercises is to attain to union with God through the pure intellect, divested of all sensible objects: Finis omnium exercitiorum hic est, scilicet intendere et quiescere in Domino Deo intra te per purissimum intellectum et devotissimum affectum sine phantasmatibus et implicationibus, c. 4. Est liominis in hac vita sublimior perfectio ita Deo uniri ut tota anima cum omnibus potentiis suis et viribus in Dominum Deum suum sit collecta, ut unus fiat spiritus cum eo, c. 3.

(b) Man is deceived by his senses and appetites: Quamdiu homo cum phantasmatibus et sensibus ludit, et insistit, videtur nondum exisse motus et limites bestialitatis suae, hoc est, illius quod cum bestiis habet commune, c. 4.

(c) The way of ascent is by interior contemplation: Super omnia valet ut teneas meutem nudam sine phantasmatibus et imaginibus et a quibuscunque implicationibus; ut nec de mundo, nec de amicis, nec de prosperis, nec de adversis praesentibus, praeteritis, vel futuris in te nec in aliis, nee etiam nimis de propriis peccatis solliciteris, etc., c. 8. Ascendere ad Deum hoc est intrare in se ipsum. Qui enim interius intrans et intrinsecus penetrans se ipsum transcendit, ille veraciter ad Deum ascendit, c. 7.

(d) In this way the soul becomes transformed: Sic transformatur quodammodo in Deum quod nee cogitare nec intelligere nec amare nec memorari potest nisi Deum pariter et de Deo, c. 6.

(e) Indifference to externals: Unde si voluntas adsit bona, et Deo in intellectu pure conformis et unita fuerit, non nocet si caro et sensualitas et exterior homo moveatur ad malum, et torpeat ad bonum, c. 6.

(f) Union with God only possible through the pure intellect when stripped of all things sensible or temporal: Non multum cures actualem devotionem, aut sensibilem dulcedinem, vel lacrimas, sed. tantum per bonam voluntatem in intellectu sis mente cum Deo intra te unitus. Quippe super omnia placet Deo mens nuda a phantasmatibus, id est, imaginibus, speciebus, ac similitudinibus rerum creatarum, c. 10.

(g) And lastly Albertus admits that he shares this doctrine with the Gentiles: Animadvertendum est etiam in hoc differentiam inter contemplationem catholicorum fidelium et philosophorum gentilium quia contemplatio philosophorum est propter perfectionem contemplantis, et ideo sistit in intellectu, eb ita finis eorum in hoc est cognitio intellectus. Sed contemplatio sanctorum, quae est catholicorum, est propter amorem ipsius, scilicet contemplati Dei, c. 9.

page 213 note 1 This remark applies only to the literature of Southern Buddhism. The works of the Northern Buddhists were written from the beginning, but they do not go back beyond the first century A.D. For the age of the more important works of the Southern Buddhists see the Introductions by Max Müller, Rhys Davids, and Fansböll in Sacred Books of the East, vols, x, xi.Google Scholar

page 213 note 2 (Garbe, , Indien und das Christentum, pp. 101–11Google Scholar. Jātaka No. 537 in the Pali, No. 31 in the Jātaka-māla.

page 214 note 1 Soon after I had written the above, a child brought me his storybook. The very first story was of a gigantic ogre who carried off a little girl on his shoulder in order to eat her. It is the proper thing for giants to carry little boys and girls on their shoulder, and devour them in their dens. The framework of the Buddhist Jātaka is as old as the history of the doings of the giants. What has St. Christopher in common with such giants?

page 215 note 1 I have epitomized the article on St. Christopher in Smith's Dictionary of Christian Biography, where all the authorities are given. For Garbe's discussion of the history of the Christian legend v.o.c., pp. 101–4. The English reader will remember the story of the ferrymen who ferried St. Peter across the Thames one night to found his church on the island of Westminster. The two stories have always been associated somehow in my mind.

page 216 note 1 Here is one which will be novel to my readers. The retired head of a department of the British Museum employed his leisure in arranging the records of Westminster Abbey, and is my authority. On one occasion the mediaeval Abbot took Mr. Winkle with him to visit Pickwick Manor; and on another occasion he gave Sam Weller a licence for a public-house at Croydon. Where did Dickens get these names? They are uncommon; but the conjunction of them in a mediaeval MS. would be held good proof of Dickens' prodigious learning, if we did not know that it was fortuitous.

page 217 note 1 The basilican church according to the received theory had its origin in the Roman house with such modifications as were required for the accommodation of large numbers. The atrium, impluvium, and triclinium are all represented. See Schulze, , Archæologie der alt-christ lichen Kunst, pp. 48 ffGoogle Scholar., and Essenwein, , “Christlicher Kirchenbaues,” pp. 22 ffGoogle Scholar., in Durm & Wagner's Handbuch der Architektur, Bd. iii, to mention only the books that happen to be at hand. Garbe, , pp. 124–5Google Scholar, claims a Buddhist origin for the Christian round tower or campanile on the strength of two somewhat antiquated authorities; but it is un necessary to discuss such vagaries. The canon holds good that India got so much of its architecture as was not indigenous from the West, and influenced in its turn the architecture of the East in Java, Central Asia, and China, etc. I have discussed elsewhere (JRAS. 1898, pp. 282ffGoogle Scholar.) the influence of Babylonian and Assyrian art and architecture upon India. As for the Indians in Armenia referred to by Garbe, , p. 124Google Scholar, they were a rude tribe of North-West India, which fled to Armenia from the turmoil and anarchy that attended the last throes of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom; and so far as we know they had no architecture of their own, or any influence whatever. Moreover, they were Hindus and not Buddhists. JRAS. 1904, pp. 309 ff.Google Scholar

page 217 note 2 Garbe, , op. cit., pp. 56–8.Google Scholar

page 219 note 1 I believe I am right in saying that according to the school of Lightfoot, Westcott, and Hort, the school which prevails in England, and which I regard as the sanest of all schools, the Synoptics are to be put before A.D. 80. Among Germans I would point to Blass, Philology of the Gospels, for a similar opinion. Harnack dates St. Mark and St. Matthew between A.D. 65 and A.D. 75, St. Luke between A.D. 78 and A.D. 93. Regarding the Fourth Gospel, there is as yet no general consensus of opinion; but, as a Cambridge don wittily observed, for every year the Germans study it they have to put it a year further back. It purports to have been written by St. John and another, and this in a view very commonly taken. Lightfoot has pointed out that the O.T. quotations are taken, not from the LXX, but from the Hebrew. The author must therefore have been a Jew.

page 220 note 1 The Chinese had no knowledge of India until late in the second century b.c. For the earliest attempts to reach India by a direct route through South-Western China, see Wylie's translation of the History of the Early Han in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. ix, pp. 55 ff., and Richthofen, , China, i, pp. 452–4.Google Scholar

page 220 note 2 De Morgan, , Les Premières Civilisations, pp. 265–6Google Scholar. De Morgan points out that the population on the eastern slopes of the Zagros range must have been small; the neolithic remains that he found were few. Cf. Herodotus, , i, 125Google Scholar, for the ten tribes of the Persians; also Rawlinson's notes on them, i, pp. 412 ff. For the Eastern Satrapies of Darius, v. Herodotus, iii, 92 ff.

page 220 note 3 An Asiatic elephant represented on the black obelisk of Shalmanasar (b.c. 858–24) forms the earliest proof, so far as I know, of any intercourse between India and the West (JRAS., 1898, pp. 259, 260Google Scholar). It formed with other animals part of the tribute of an Armenian tribe, the Muzri. How it came into the possession of the Muzri, the obelisk does not say. Less than seven hundred years before Shalmanasar, Tahutimes III had hunted a herd of 120 elephants in the Euphrates' lands (Petrie, , History of Egypt, XVIIth and XVIIIth Dynasties, p. 124Google Scholar); and the elephant roamed at one time overall the country intervening between Syria and India. The elephant brought by the Muzri may not therefore have been Indian; but probably it was; and if so, it must have passed through the hands of various Scythian tribes. The introduction of the horse from Turkestan into Media and Babylonia, as well as the diffusion of cereals and fruit-trees, shows the kind, of commerce that went on among these neolithic folk. The Āryas brought both horses and cereals with them into India; but these must have been known there at a much earlier time.

page 221 note 1 De Morgan, , op. cit., pp. 264–8Google Scholar, gives a bird's-eye view of the movements of the peoples about the commencement of the second millennium B. C. The migration of the Āryas from the regions north of the Elburz range and the Hindu Kush into Mesopotamia, Media, Persia, and the Panjāb was made in successive waves, and covered several centuries. They had to pass through mountainous districts occupied from the earliest times by a brachycephalic race, the Homo Alpinus of the anthropologists; and the Indo-Afghans are the evidence of this passage, being the descendants of the Druhyus and other Aryan tribes which settled in the neighbourhood of the Kabul River among the earlier broad-heads. Once the Indo-Aryans had settled in the Panjāb, they were separated from the Medes and Persians by a vast extent of mountain, desert, and marsh; the intervening spaces were nowhere thickly peopled; and some of the intermediate tribes were pure savages even in Alexander's time. The Dravidians on the lower Indus with the “Black Ethiopians” of Mekran may have had some ethnological connexion with the “Black-heads” of Babylonia, and the Brāhmani bulls which came to Babylonia in the seventh century b.c. probably came by this route.

page 222 note 1 In JRAS., 1898, pp. 241 ffGoogle Scholar., I have given all the evidence I could find regarding the earliest intercourse by sea between India and Babylonia. In the light of further knowledge I would now modify some things I have said there, particularly where I have followed the late T. de Lacouperie, a learned and unfortunate man, but no trustworthy guide.

page 222 note 2 Herodotus, , iv, 44.Google Scholar

page 222 note 3 A list of place-names is preserved to us by Stepb. Byz., hut nothing more.

page 222 note 4 Pythagoras und die Inder, von d. v. Schroeder.

page 223 note 1 JRAS. 1909, pp. 569 ff.Google Scholar

page 223 note 2 Müller, Max, Last Essays, i, 269, 270Google Scholar, quoted by Garbe, , op. cit., p. 24Google Scholar. Good summaries of the whole controversy will be found in Weber, , History of Indian, Literature, Eng. trans., 2nd ed., pp. 211–12Google Scholar; and in D'Alviella, , Ce, que l'Inde doit, etc., pp. 138 ff.Google Scholar

page 223 note 3 Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, etc., s.n. Æsop. See also the articles on Babrius and Phædrus. Æsop was a slave, and according to one account a Phrygian; and the Phrygians had much in common with the Scyths.

page 224 note 1 No nation has carried the love of animal forms in art to such an extent as the Scythians dwelling between the Carpathians and the Altai Mountains. Not only the art but the beast-fables of the Middle Ages in Europe owe much to them; and Celtic art is directly descended from the Scythian. The Middle Ages went a step further when they used the beast-fable as a vehicle for satire. Bishops, priests, monks, and nuns all came under the biting tongue of Reynard.

page 224 note 2 e.g. Garbe, , op. cit., pp. 24–5Google Scholar, following Winternitz, compares a Jātaka story (No. 32) of the peacock who lost his bride, the mallard's daughter, with the story of Hippokleides given by Herodotus, vi, 129. Hippokleidos, the Athenian, was one of the many suitors for the daughter of Kleisthenes. He was first favourite until on the last day, after the banquet, he summoned a flute-player and began to dance. He danced in Laconian fashion, then in Attic, and finally he had a table brought in, and acted a pantomime with his feet, standing on his head. “Son of Tisander,” says Kleisthenes, “you have danced away your match.” “What care I !” quoth Hippokleides. If the learned Professor had ever watched the slow and pompous strut of the peacock nautching in his native jungle, and exposing to his admiring seraglio the naked beauties of his nether person, he would scarcely have been reminded of Hippokleides' lively dancing. Hippokleides forfeits a wife through youthful levity and drunken jollity, the peacock through stolid and gross indecency.

page 225 note 1 “The form of the Hindu collections of fables is a peculiar one, and is easily recognizable, the leading incident which is narrated invariably forming a framework within which stories of the most diverse description are set” (Weber, , op. cit., p. 212).Google Scholar

page 225 note 2 Sir G. Grierson has shown that the Paisachi dialect must have been widely spoken at one time in the Panjāb, and he has found traces of it in Kashmiri. In a private letter to me he pointed out that the Greeks rendered Indian words and names according to the Paisachi pronunciation: the phonetic changes, e.g. Marti-khora and Sandracottus, for Mard-khor (man eater, a synonym for tiger) and Chandra-gupta, are instances in point. Pausanias, ix, 21, 4, first identified Ctesias' Martikhora with the tiger.

page 226 note 1 The work of Iambulus on India, which Diodorus Siculus quotes as his authority (ii, 55), appears to have been entirely taken up with marvels of this kind.

page 226 note 2 On the Jātakas or Buddhist birth-stories see Davids, Rhys, Buddhist India, pp. 189208Google Scholar; more especially pp. 206–8.

page 227 note 1 The account given by Megasthenes in Strabo, , xv, pp. 711–14Google Scholar, summarizes almost all that was known of the Brāhmans and Garmānai (Sarmānai) or Sramanas.

page 227 note 2 Strabo, , xv, p. 712.Google Scholar

page 227 note 3 Eudoxus of Cyzicus embarked a company of singing girls, physicians, and other skilled artisans—μουσικ παιδισκρια κα ἰατροὺς κα ἄλλους τεχντας—on board the ships with which he proposed to circumnavigate Africa, and make the voyage to India (Strabo, , ii, p. 99Google Scholar). This gives a fair idea of the civilian emigrants to the East.

page 227 note 4 Asterusia in the Hindu Kush. Bevan, House of Seleucus, i, p. 274Google Scholar, from Steph. Byz.

page 228 note 1 Droysen, , Geschichte des Hellenismus, vol. iiiGoogle Scholar, and Bevan, , House, of Seleucus, vol. i, pp. 206–79Google Scholar, review at length all the colonies known to have been founded by Alexander, the Seleucids, and the Ptolemies. S. Lévi's excellent monograph, Quid de Græcis, etc., gives some further light.

page 229 note 1 For the use of Greek in the countries east of the Euphrates see JRAS. 1912, pp. 1012Google Scholar ff., also JRAS. 1913, pp. 122Google Scholar ff., and various other passages, and Minn, JHS. 1915, pp. 22 ff.Google Scholar

page 230 note 1 In A.D. 79 Pan Tch'ao sent his lieutenant Kan Ying on a mission to the West, but Kan Ying never got beyond the Persian Gulf. The History of the Later Han gives the first Chinese account we have of the Roman Empire, or more properly of Syria, known as Ta-ts'in or Li-kien and later as Fou-lin. Chavannes, Les pays d'occident d'après le Heou Han Shu, T'oung-pao, série ii, vol. viii, pp. 159, 179–87Google Scholar. Hirth, China and the Roman Orient, etc.

page 231 note 1 Rawlinson, , The Seventh Oriental Monarchy, pp. 141, 161, 169, 298, 426, 427Google Scholar. Burgess, , Cave Temples of India, pp. 327, 328Google Scholar. Cunningham, , “Coins of the Tochari,” etc., p. 62Google Scholar of the reprint from Numismatic Chronicle, ser. III, vol. ix, pp. 268311Google Scholar. JRAS. 1907, pp. 959, 960.Google Scholar

page 231 note 2 For the connexion between Characene and the Panjāb v. JRAS. 1912, pp. 987 ff.Google Scholar

page 232 note 1 Antiq. I, c. 6, para. 4.

page 232 note 2 There are numerous articles in the JRAS. 1912, 1913Google Scholar, by Dr. Fleet, Dr. Thomas, myself, and others which deal with most of the questions regarding early Kushan history. For their later history see JRAS. 1913, pp. 1054–64Google Scholar; Allan, , Coins of the Guptas, pp. xxviviiiGoogle Scholar; Chavannes, . T'oung-pao, sér. ii, vol. viii, p. 189, etc.Google Scholar

page 233 note 1 JRAS. 1912, pp. 687Google Scholar ff., and JRAS. 1913, pp. 627Google Scholar ff. (Thomas), and the discussion on Kanishka's date, pp. 911–1042.

page 233 note 2 De la Vallée Poussin in his work, Bouddhisme et religions de l'Inde, pp. 65–6Google Scholar, gives a brilliant little sketch of the Mahāyāna doctrine, etc. See also Garbe, , op. cit., pp. 159Google Scholar ff., for a detailed discussion of numerous points.

page 234 note 1 “As, when to them who sail

Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past

Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow

Sabæan odours from the spicy shore

Of Araby the Blest, with such delay

Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league

Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles.”

Milton: Paradise, Lost, iv, 159–65.Google Scholar

page 234 note 2 Philostratus, , Vit. Apollon., iii, 23Google Scholar: “I know that a knowledge of maritime affairs is held as reputable as that of governing a city or commanding an army, but it has fallen into contempt on account of the character of such as follow it.” It was “a condition of life not only ignoble but detestable”. Tertullian, , Adv. Valent., xiiGoogle Scholar: “What ship's captain (nauclerus) fails to rejoice even with indecent frolic? Every day we witness the uproarious ebullitions of sailors' joys.”

page 235 note 1 Dio Chrysos. orat. xxxv.

page 235 note 2 Beal, , Buddhist Records of the Western World, ii, p. 269.Google Scholar

page 235 note 3 Ptolemy, Geog. i, c. 11, para. 8; McCrindle's translation, p. 14.

page 236 note 1 The sponsors for this colony are Dio Chrysostom, Orat. xxxii, and Ptolemy, Geog. i, c. 17, paras. 4 and 5 (McCrindle's trans., p. 29). From Periplus, c. 26, it may be inferred that these Indians had settled in Alexandria not long before the Periplus was written, i.e. a.d. 70–5. v. JRAS. 1916, pp. 832–5Google Scholar, for the destruction of Aden, Hippalus, and the date of the Periplus, and JRAS. 1907, pp. 953–4Google Scholar, for a history of this colony, etc.

page 237 note 1 Herodotus, , iv, 44Google Scholar: μετ δ τοτους пεριпλώσαντας, Ίνδος τε κατεστρψατο Δαρεος κα τ θαλσσῃ τατῃ χρτο.

page 237 note 2 The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, ed. Hilprecht, vol. x: Business Documents of Murashu and Sons, ed. Rev. A. T. Clay, Introduction, pp. viii, ix. I have to thank Dr. Daiches for the reference.

page 237 note 3 JRAS. 1898, pp. 268–9.Google Scholar

page 237 note 4 Periphus, c. 36.

page 237 note 5 Beal, , Buddhist Records of the Western World, ii, p. 278.Google Scholar

page 237 note 6 JRAS. 1912, pp. 981 ff.Google Scholar

page 237 note 7 Babylonian Expedition, etc., p. viii. “The Babylonians of the time of Artaxerxes I and Darius II evidently contained more foreigners than direct descendants of the earlier inhabitants—a thorough mixture of native Babylonians and Cassites, Persians and Medians, and even Indians, including also members of the mountainous tribes of Asia Minor.” Cf. vol. ix, pp. 26–9. Nebuchednezar had transported thousands of captives to Babylonia; with Cyrus came Persian officials and Persian merchants; and there were “constantinvasions of nomadic tribes”. Persian and Aramaic names are especially numerous: there is also a very large number of Jewish names. All these intermarried. Slaves got Babylonian names from their masters. Persians, Aramæans, and others gave their children Babylonian names; parents with Babylonian names have children who bear Persian, Hebrew, or Aramaic ones. These tablets extend from b.c. 464 to b.c. 404. According to Clay, Ezekiel's river of Kebur is the Kaburi Canal not far from Nippur, p. 28.

page 238 note 1 Acts ii, 9. “The church that is at Babylon … saluteth you,” says St. Peter (1 Peter v, 13). There is no tradition of St. Peter, the Apostle of the Circumcision, having visited Babylon, and Babylon is generally taken to be Rome. But Blass points out (Philology of the Gospels, pp. 27–9Google Scholar) that if Rome had been meant the order of the provinces to which the epistle was addressed would have been different. Now (if we put the epistle before the Neronian persecution), is there any proof that the Christians used Babylon as a synonym for Rome? The matter is doubtful.

page 238 note 2 e.g. by Auz, Zur Frage nach dem Ursprung des Gnostizismus.

page 239 note 1 “The Hymn of Bardaisan,” rendered into English by F. C. Burkitt, verses 4, 5, 14.

page 239 note 2 Flügel, , Mani, p. 102.Google Scholar

page 239 note 3 Flügel, , Mani, p. 361, n. 317.Google Scholar

page 239 note 4 Euseb. Hist. Eccles., v, 10Google Scholar. Pantænus went as a missionary, says Eusebius, to the peoples of the Orient—κρυκα το κατ Χριστν εὐαγγελου τος п᾽ νατολς ἔθνεσιν Harnack and the Germans generally, as Garbe, , op. cit., p. 418Google Scholar, rightly says, understand Pantænus' India to be South Arabia. But why? Because, say they, there were Jews in South Arabia. Probably there were, but Jews must also have been engaged in the sea trade with Ophir, which Josephus puts near the mouth of the Indus (Abiria). So far as mere possibilities go, the chances are equal. But we must decide the question by Eusebius' use of the word India. He refers to India several times in his Hist. Eccles., the Prœparat. Evang., and the Vita Constantini, and he mentions an Indian embassy to Constantine. In not one of these passages is South Arabia meant. Why should Eusebius mean South Arabia in this solitary instance?

page 240 note 1 Bardaisan in Euseb. Prœparat. Evang., vi, 10Google Scholar. See JRAS. 1907, p. 959, n. 4.Google Scholar

page 240 note 2 Heou Han Shu, trs. Chavannes, T'oung-pao, sér. u, vol. viii, No. 2, pp. 192–3.

page 241 note 1 The Acts of Thomas contain two stories dissimilar in character, without any necessary connexion, and in my opinion originally quite independent of each other. The first part is an apologue, the last part an ordinary martyrdom. These have been connected at some time or other by a history of various miracles said to have been performed by the Apostle. The MSS. reflect the difference. Of twenty-one codices used by Bonnet in his edition of the Acts (Acta S. Thamœ, p. xvi f.Google Scholar) seventeen contain the first part or apologue, ten the martyrdom, and sometimes two, but never more than five, the intervening history. The apologue alone mentions the visit of the Apostle of the Parthians to Gondophares: and it is the only part which concerns us. St. Thomas builds a palace in heaven, the palace is for a king, and the king is Gondophares. Why Gondophares should be selected, unless the author knew of a true tradition, and wished to give his apologue a historical character, it would be hard to say. But the palace in heaven has its parallel in the tower of the Shepherd of Hermas (Vis. iii, 2 ff. ). The tower was the most popular figure in a work which was a very general favourite with the Christians of the second century, a sort of Pilgrim's Progress. The idea is taken, of course, from 1 Peter ii, 5: “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house”—κα αὐτο ὡς λθοι ζντες οἰκοδομεσθε, οκος пνευματικς. For Garbe's view of the legend v. op. cit., pp. 131–56.

page 241 note 2 JRAS. 1907, pp. 957Google Scholar ff., where the authorities are given.