Jesus In India — Page 150
140 JESUS IN INDIA manifestation of God to men, the Logos, the Word of God made flesh, the Bread of Life. And it is not a mere chance that heterodox followers of the two religions have afterwards used the Buddha and the Logos conceptions as bases of their emanation theories. It is only a fresh instance of the way in which similar ideas in similarly constituted minds come to be modified in very similar ways. The Cakka-vatti Buddha was to the early Buddhists what the Messiah Logos was to the early Christians. In both cases the two ideas overlap one another, run into one another, supplement one another. In both cases the two combined cover as nearly the same ground as the different foundations of the two teachings will permit. And it is the Cakka-vatti Buddha circle of ideas in the one case, just as the Messiah Logos in the other, that has had the principal influence in determining the opinions of the early disci- ples as to the person of their Master. The method followed in the early Buddhist and early Christian biographies of their respective Masters was the same, and led to similar results; though the details are in no particular quite iden- tical in the two cases. EXTRACT 2 Buddhism, in its Connexion with Brahmanism and Hindūism, and in its Contrast with Christianity, by Sir Monier Monier- Williams, K. C. I. E. , Second Edition, (John Murray, London 1890)