Jesus In India — Page 119
CHAPTER FOUR 109 was to come had named him Bagwa Metteyya because Bagwa in Sanskrit means 'white,' and Jesus, the Messiah, being an inhabitant of the Syrian territory, was, 'bagwa' i. e. fair-skinned. The people of the land where this prophecy was announced, i. e. , the country of Magadh, in which was located Rajagriha, were dark-skinned. Gautama Buddha himself was dark skinned. Thus, Buddha had narrated to his followers two conclusive signs regarding the Buddha who was to come. One was that he would be Bagwa or fair skinned. And second that he would be Metteyya, that is to say, he would be a traveller, and that he would come from a foreign land. People, therefore, constantly looked out for these signs till they actually saw Jesus, the Messiah. Every Buddhist must necessarily profess the belief that five hundred years after the Buddha, the Bagwa Metteyya did, in fact, appear in their land. It should not be surprising, therefore, if, in support of this belief, books of the Buddhist faith should mention the coming of the Metteyya—the Masiha-to their land, and of the fulfilment of Buddha's prophecy. And even if it were supposed that there is no such mention, even then, because on the basis of divine revelation, the Buddha had communicated to his disciples the tiding that the Bagwa Metteyya would come to their land, no Buddhist who was cognizant of this prophecy could deny the coming to this land of the Bagwa Metteyya, whose other name was Masiha; because the non-fulfilment of the proph- ecy would mean the falsity of the faith itself. If such a prophecy, for whose fulfilment a time frame had also been fixed, and which Gautama Buddha had communicated to his disciples again and 1. The period of a thousand or five thousand years is incorrect. (Author)