Parallels between Buddha and Jesus

Dec 30, 1896.  Swami Vivekananda was fast asleep on the ship which was taking him back to India after a whirlwind tour of Europe and America when he had a vivid dream.  An old and bearded man appeared before him, saying, “Observe well this place that I show to you. You are now in the island of Crete. This is the land in which Christianity began.”  In support of this origin of Christianity, the speaker gave two words, one of which was Therapeutae, and showed both to be derived direct from Sanskrit roots.  “The proofs are all here,” added the old man, pointing to the ground, “Dig and you will find!”.  The Swami woke, feeling that he had had no common dream, and tumbled out on deck, to take the air. As he did so, he met a ship’s officer, turning in from his watch.

“What is the time?” he asked him.
Midnight,” was the answer.
“And where are we?”
“Just fifty miles off Crete !”

This unexpected coincidence startled the Swami, lending inevitable emphasis to the dream itself.   He who until then had never doubted the historicity of Jesus began to wonder if the latter had ever existed.  The British school of Archaeology was then active in the Near East, so he wrote to a British archaeologist friend to determine if there were any discoveries which validated his dream[1].  He was unable to follow up because he passed away soon after in 1902.  This story was recorded by Sister Nivedita. Vivekananda also recounted the strange dream in a conversation with Surendranath Sen in 1898 (available online).

Textual scholarship over the past century has confirmed that there was an element of truth in Swami Vivekananda’s dream.  Scholars, most certainly unaware of Vivekananda’s dream (and he in turn, unaware of them), have uncovered intriguing parallels between the life and teachings of Jesus and Buddha. The investigation was triggered by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhaeur (1788-1860) who, after comparing the Christian Bible with the Buddhist scriptures, proposed that the ethical teachings and the Christian notion of incarnation had to be of Indian origin.  Beginning in the late nineteenth century, scholars such as Rudolf Seydel(1835-1892), Arthur Lillie(1831-?), J. Albert Edmunds(1857-1941), and Richard Garbe(1857-1927) worked on this matter.  The investigation flagged for a while but again picked up pace after  the liberalization that followed the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).  Recent work on the subject has been done by Marcus Borg, Zacharias Thundy, Roy Amore, J. Edgar Bruns, Elmar Gruber and  Holger Kersten.   The next two sections explore some of the similarities that have been identified in the biographical accounts as well as the teachings of Jesus and Buddha.

Biographical parallels

The bending tree and the gushing water

When the Buddha’s mother, Maya, was to give birth, a tree bent down for her and two streams of water came gushing forth to refresh the mother and the child, as per the Abhinish-kramana Sutta:

Now, in the garden, there was one particular tree called a Palasa, perfectly strait from top to bottom, and its branches spread out in perfect regularity, its leaves variegated as the plumage of a peacock s head, soft as Kalinda cloth, the scent of its flowers of most exquisite odour. Delighted at the sight, Maya rested awhile to admire it, and gradually approached under the shade of the tree ; then that tree, by the mysterious power of Bodhisatwa, bent down its branches, and, forthwith, the queen with her right hand took hold of one ; just as in the air, there appears a beautifully tinted rainbow stretching athwart heaven; so did she take hold of that curving branch of the Palasa tree and look up into heaven’s expanse.….Then there came forth from mid-air two streams of water hot and cold, respectively, to refresh and cleanse the child’s body as he stood there on the ground; and again there was brought to him a golden seat on which to repose whilst he was washed. [2]

We find a similar story in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew , an apocryphal text which was written at least five to six centuries after the birth of Jesus.  Here also, a tree bends to provide fruit to the mother and a stream of water gushes up.

And it came to pass on the third day of their journey, while they were walking, that the blessed Mary was fatigued by the excessive heat of the sun in the desert; and seeing a palm tree, she said to Joseph: Let me rest a little under the shade of this tree. Joseph therefore made haste, and led her to the palm, and made her come down from her beast. And as the blessed Mary was sitting there, she looked up to the foliage of the palm, and saw it full of fruit, and said to Joseph: I wish it were possible to get some of the fruit of this palm. And Joseph said to her: I wonder that thou sayest this, when thou seest how high the palm tree is; and that thou thinkest of eating of its fruit. I am thinking more of the want of water, because the skins are now empty, and we have none wherewith to refresh ourselves and our cattle. Then the child Jesus, with a joyful countenance, reposing in the bosom of His mother, said to the palm: O tree, bend thy branches, and refresh my mother with thy fruit. And immediately at these words the palm bent its top down to the very feet of the blessed Mary; and they gathered from it fruit, with which they were all refreshed. And after they had gathered all its fruit, it remained bent down, waiting the order to rise from Him who bad commanded it to stoop.  Then Jesus said to it: Raise thyself, O palm tree, and be strong, and be the companion of my trees, which are in the paradise of my Father; and open from thy roots a vein of water which has been hid in the earth, and let the waters flow, so that we may be satisfied from thee. And it rose up immediately, and at its root there began to come forth a spring of water exceedingly clear and cool and sparkling. And when they saw the spring of water, they rejoiced with great joy, and were satisfied, themselves and all their cattle and their beasts. Wherefore they gave thanks to God. [3]

Incidentally, this story has also wound up in the Koran (19.22 – 19.26) in the chapter where it expounds the story of the earlier prophet Jesus.  Scholars believe the Koran picked up the story from the Arabic Infancy Gospel which was in circulation then.

Then she (Mary) conceived him; and withdrew with him (Jesus) to a remote place. ‏And the throes of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm-tree. She said: Oh, would that I had died before this, and had been a thing quite forgotten! ‏So a voice came to her from beneath her: Grieve not, surely thy Lord has provided a stream beneath thee. ‏ And shake towards thee the trunk of the palm-tree, it will drop on thee fresh ripe dates. ‏So eat and drink and cool the eye. Then if thou seest any mortal, say: Surely I have vowed a fast to the Beneficent, so I will not speak to any man to-day. [4]

Fall of idols in the temple

The Lalitavistara relates an episode in which the Buddha enters a temple and immediately all the idols fall at his feet:

Now, when the Bodhisatva set his right foot on the floor of that temple, all the inert images of the Devas, such as Siva, Skanda, Narayana, Kuvera, Chandra, Surya, Vaisravana, Sakra, Brahma, and the guardians of the quarters, rose from their respective places, and fell at the feet of the Bodhisatva. Thereupon, men and gods by hundreds of thousands burst into derisive laughter, and covered their faces with their clothes. The whole of Kapilavastu shook in six different ways. Celestial flowers fell in showers. Thousands of clarions resounded without a cause. [5]

Something similar happens to the Mary during her visit to the Egyptian city of Sotinen at a time when she is carrying Jesus in her womb:

And it came to pass, when the most blessed Mary went into the temple with the little child, that all the idols prostrated themselves on the ground, so that all of them were lying on their faces shattered and broken to pieces; and thus they plainly showed that they were nothing [6].

The widow’s mite

In the New Testament, there is the story of a poor widow who contributes two mites to the treasury:

And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much.  And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing.  And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury:  For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living (Mark 12:41-44, Luke 21:1-4)

The Buddhist parallel was discovered by Hans Haas (1868-1934), Professor of Religious History at Leipzig.  In Kumaralata’s Kalpana mandatika (4:22), a widow comes to a religious assembly where she gets something to eat. She regrets that she is unable to give anything whilst others donate precious objects. Then she remembers that she owns two copper coins she had found in a dung heap. She retrieves the coins and joyously offers them. An arhat, who can perceive people’s most secret thoughts, pays no attention to donations by the affluent but sings a song in honour of the poor widow’s piety [7].

In both stories, the person is a poor widow and the contribution is two coins.   According to Gruber,there are several stories in the Buddhist texts which revolve around the theme that the gift of a pure heart is the best gift [7].

Miracle of Loaves and Fishes

In the New Testament, Jesus feeds a gathering of 5,000 people using five loaves of bread and two fish.   Twelve baskets of fragments remained after the feeding.  (Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:5-15)

Similarly in the Jataka 78 (Illisa-Jataka), the Buddha is said to have fed 500 disciples using just a few cakes.  The number 500 occurs repeatedly in Buddhist scriptures, while the much larger number 5000 seems anomalous in the Bible, suggesting that the Biblical account was borrowed from the Buddhist account. [8].

Incidentally, it is worth fact-checking these books because sometimes they contain errors.  While relating this similarity, Gruber claims that just like the Biblical tale, the Buddhist tale also mentions that twelve baskets remained after the feeding was done.  I can’t find any reference to such a number in the Jataka tales, as you can verify from the text below:

Then husband and wife came before the Master and said meal-time had come. And the Master, passing into the Refectory, sat down on the Buddha-seat prepared for him, with the Brotherhood gathered round. Then the Lord High Treasurer poured the Water of Donation over the hands of the Brotherhood with the Buddha at its head, whilst his wife placed a cake in the alms-bowl of the Blessed One. Of this he took what sufficed to support life, as also did the five hundred Brethren. Next the Treasurer went round offering milk mixed with ghee and hooey and jagghery; and the Master and the Brotherhood brought their meal to a close. Lastly the Treasurer and his wife ate their fill, but still there seemed no end to the cakes. Even when all the Brethren and the scrap-eaters through-out the monastery had all had a share, still there was no sign of the end approaching. So they told the Master, saying, “Sir, the supply of cakes grows no smaller.”

“Then throw them down by the great gate of the monastery.”

So they threw them away in a cave not far from the gateway; and to this day a spot called ‘The Crock-Cake,’ is shown at the extremity of that cave  [9].

Walking on water

In the Jataka 190 (Silanisamsa Jataka), a disciple of the Buddha, Sariputta, is initially successful at walking on water but begins to sink midway when his contemplation wanes[10].  He is able to resume walking on water only after he recovers his ecstatic state.  Similarly, in the Gospel of Matthew (14:28-33), the apostle Peter attempts to walk on water but at one point, begins to sink due to lack of faith.  Jesus urges him on: “You of little faith, why did you doubt?.”

Other biographical parallels

Several other parallels have been uncovered, including the following:

The story of Jesus’s temptation by the Devil is similar to the Buddha’s temptation by Mara.

Before the conception of the Buddha, his mother had a dream of a white elephant.  Similarly, Mary had a dream of a white dove.  An elephant would not have made sense in the Judaic tradition so scholars believe it was replaced by a dove.

A light shone through the world when the Buddha was born.  The same anecdote occurs in the life of Jesus.

Five wise men came to see the new-born Buddha, while three Magi came from the East to see the baby Jesus.

A wise old man named Asita holds the infant Buddha in his hands and laments that he won’t be around to see the day this infant blossoms into a great sage.  Similarly, Simeon in the temple holds the infant Jesus and predicts his future greatness (Luke 2:21-38).  In relation to this anecdote, Gruber points out that it is not a Jewish custom to present the child in the temple, indicating a possible borrowing from the Buddhist scripture [11].

Parallels in the teachings

Parallels in the teachings of Jesus and Buddha have also been identified.  Some of these parallels could be attributed to the shared source of wisdom which all sages tap into, but the use of the exact same similes can be surprising.  The following similarities were aggregated by Marcus Borg, who describes himself as a “non-exclusivist Christian” [12].

Compare the remarks by Jesus and Buddha on not being preoccupied with the faults of others:

Jesus: Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Friend, ‘let me take the speck out of your eye;’ wher you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye (Luke  6.41-42)

Buddha: The faults of others are easier to see than one’s own; the faults of others are easily seen, for they are sifted like chaff, but one’s own faults are hard to see, This is like the cheat who hides his dice and shows the dice of his opponent, calling attention to the other’s shortcomings, continually thinking of accusing him. (Udanavarga 27.1)

Both spoke on the spiritual value of being untethered to the phenomenal world :

Jesus: Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. (Matthew 8.20)

Buddha: The thoughtful exert themselves; they do not delight in an abode. Like swans who have left their lake they leave their house and home.  (Dhammapada 7.2)

There are parallels in the use of the harvest simile:

Jesus: The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come. (Mark 4.26-29)

Buddha: The yeoman farmer gets his field well ploughed and harrowed. But that farmer has no magic power or authority to say: “Let my crops spring up today. Tomorrow let them ear. On the following day let them ripen: No! It is just the due season which makes them do this. (Anguttara Nikaya 3.91)

They both spoke of the falling away of family bonds in the spiritual path:

Jesus: Looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3.34-35)

Buddha: Just as the great rivers, on reaching the great ocean, lose their former names and identities and are reckoned simply as the great ocean, so do followers lose their former names and clans and become sons of the Buddha’s clan. (Vinaya Cullavagga 9.1.4)

Their remarks on the separation of the flesh and the soul:

Jesus: No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above: (John 3.5-7)

Buddha: There are these two gifts, the carnal and the spiritual. Of these two gifts the spiritual is preeminent. He who has made the spiritual offering-such a one, the best of mankind, is honored by all beings as one who has gone beyond. (Itivuttaka 4.1)

Roots of the similarities

There are plenty of other parallels which have been found.  Given these similarities, it would not be amiss to ask what, if any, proof exists for the historicity of Jesus. This evidence has been compiled on wikipedia under Historicity_of_Jesus. The most convincing proof could be the fact that the Jewish scriptures refer to Jesus in derogatory terms.

How do we know that the Buddhist scriptures antedate the Biblical gospels?  I won’t go into that here.  The books listed in the last section address the question in considerable detail.  It is worth noting that textual scholarship relies not just on dates but also on the intrinsic structure of the text as well as intertextual references to determine the passages which could have been copied from elsewhere.  In case of Buddhism, there also exist rock inscriptions depicting the life of Buddha in various parts of India.  The dates when these inscriptions were created can be determined quite accurately.

This brings us to the next important question: did there exist any contacts between India and the Near East which could have brought about these parallels?  Several pieces of evidence have been uncovered which shed light on this subject.  Alexander the Great invaded India in 327 BC.  After his death, contact between India and the Greek world continued to exist through the many Greek kingdoms which had been established by his successors.   After the Romans replaced the Greeks, trade relations continued between India and the Roman Empire as documented on wikipedia under Indo-Roman_trade_and_relations and another page on Indo-Roman relations. Roman coins have been found in excavations in southern India.  The Roman Emperor Augustus(63 BC-14 AD) recorded in his Ancyra (modern day Ankara, Turkey) inscription : “Emissaries from the Indian kings were often sent to me, which had not been seen before that time by any Roman leader.”

During excavations in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt at the end of the twentieth century, a Greek play entitled the Charition mime dated 200 AD or earlier was found.  It is a maid-in-distress tale of a Greek woman who is rescued from captivity under an Indian king.  The play features a number of characters who speak an unknown, possibly Indian, language.  You can read a translation of the play here.  For a detailed description of the play, see the article “Charition Mime and Udyavara” by Maddy.

In the year 79 AD, the Roman town of Pompeii near modern-day Naples was submerged after the eruption of the volcano at Mount Vesuvius.  In 1939, the Italian archaeologist Prof.  Maiuri discovered a statue of the Hindu Goddess Lakshmi in the ruins of Pompeii, indicating that some knowledge of Indian culture may have existed in the region in the first century[13].  You can read about this discovery in Maddy’s article on the “Goddess at Pompeii”.

More recently, we have news that the DNA testing of 2000-year old bones found in a Roman cemetery in Italy revealed it to be the remains of a person of East Asian ancestry[14].

At the Red Sea port of Quseir al-Qadim, the ancient Leucos Limen or Albus Portus, archaeologists have recovered three records, one written in the Prakrit script and two in the Old Tamil language.  The garbled text indicates that these were notes written by Indian traders. [15]

Dio Chrysostom (40 AD – 120 AD) was a Greek orator, philosopher and historian in the Roman Empire.  In an address given to the people of Alexandria in Egypt, he alludes to the Indians who were present in the audience:

For I behold among you, not merely Greeks and Italians and people from neighbouring Syria, Libya, Cilicia, nor yet Ethiopians and Arabs from more distant regions, but even Bactrians and Scythians and Persians and a few Indians, and all these help to make up the audience in your theatre and sit beside you on each occasion [16]

So far we have some proof that Indians, possibly traders, were living in Egypt at or before the birth of Jesus.  If you recall the opening paragraph of this article, the old sage in the dream told Vivekananda that Christianity is derived from the ancient sect called Therapeutae, whose name has a Sanskrit origin.  The Therapeutae are conventionally assumed to be a Jewish sect but scholars working on the Jesus-Buddha connection have proposed that the Therapeutae may have been a Buddhist sect instead.  If true, this could also dovetail nicely with the possibility that Jesus had lived in Egypt from the age of twelve to thirty, the span of his life which remains undocumented.

The Buddhist origin of Therapeutae may spring from the mission of Emperor Ashoka, the Buddhist equivalent of the Christian Emperor Constantine, who convened the third Buddhist council around 250 BC.  After the council, Ashoka had sent out Buddhist monks to various regions of the world to spread the teachings of the Buddha.  He engraved on three different rocks in different parts of India, in two different alphabets, the names of five Greek Kings to whom he sent ambassadors: (i) viz., Antiochus of Antioch, Ptolemy of Alexandria, Antigonus of Macedon, Magas of Cyrene and Alexander of Epirus.  No concrete record of the activities of these ambassadors sent to the West has ever been found, but it is tempting to speculate that the Therapeutae who lived in Egypt were somehow successors to these ambassadors.

The life of the Therapeuta has been detailed by the Hellenistic philosopher Philo of Alexandria(20 BC – 50 AD) in his work De Vita Contemplativa.  Their ascetic lifestyle, the presence of female monks (who could be Buddhist Bhikkunis), and other allied remarks regarding them can be seen as indications of them being Buddhist.   For example, Philo says they leave behind “their native lands” to come to Egypt.  This can be interpreted as evidence that the Therapeutae were people of a foreign origin:

When, therefore, men abandon their property without being influenced by any predominant attraction, they flee without even turning their heads back again, deserting their brethren, their children, their wives, their parents, their numerous families, their affectionate bands of companions, their native lands in which they have been born and brought up, though long familiarity is a most attractive bond, and one very well able to allure any one.

…and from all quarters those who are the best of these therapeutae proceed on their pilgrimage to some most suitable place as if it were their country, which is beyond the Mareotic lake, lying in a somewhat level plain a little raised above the rest, being suitable for their purpose by reason of its safety and also of the fine temperature of the air[17].

Furthermore, Philo himself doesn’t know why this sect is called Therapeutae.  According to Thundy, the name “Therapeuta” is a Helenization of the Buddhist Theravada (just as the Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria mangled the name Buddha to “Boutta”) [18].

While Indians certainly existed in Egypt at or before the time of Jesus, the question of whether Buddhist monks lived around the region is still open.

The Vatican response

The increasing evidence of parallels between Jesus and Buddha prompted a response from the Vatican.  Msgr. Pierre Nguyen Van Tot, a Vietnamese priest, wrote a book published by the Vatican university.  I will quote a few remarks from this book along with a rough English translation.

Les verites que le Bouddha a prechees sont une preparation providentielle a l’evangelisation. Elles sont l’illumination a l’interieur de l’homme et ont besoin de la revelation du Christ pour etre completes.. (Buddha’s teaching was a preparation for the complete revelation of Christ.) [19]

Malgre sa grande valeur, l’enseignement du Bouddha n’est pas cense etre au meme niveau que celui du Fils de Dieu. Car sa doctrine reste au niveau humain, tandis que la revelation du Christ vient de Dieu.  (Despite its great value, the Buddha’s teaching is not at the same level as that of Christ; the former is at a human level, the latter comes from God) [20].

Les actes de Siddhartha servent encore d’exemple, mais de son vivant ils n’ont pas eu l’efficacite de ceux de Jesus.  (Buddha’s actions served as an example but were not as effective as those of Jesus) [21].

Les livres du Sutta-pitaka datent du le siecle avant J.C. tandis que les deux preemiers livres du canon du Mahayana appartiennent au I siecle apres J.C. et le dernier est une traduction de l’an 420 de notre ere. (The Buddhist scriptures are dated much later than the Gospel) [22]

Toutes les nouvelles sur l’Enfance ont comme source principale la Mere de Jesus. (The infancy stories of Jesus come directly from his mother, Mary) [23]

Conclusion

As we can see, there was some truth in Swami Vivekananda’s dream mentioned in the opening paragraph of this article. There are other parallels along with copious details and nuances that I have omitted from this article.  Scholars who have investigated these similarities have proposed that either or both of the following could be true:

(a) Jesus absorbed Buddhism from the Therapeutae sect during his youth in Egypt, and it is this interaction that gave rise to the similarities that are found in the teachings.

(b) The gospel writers, who had access to Buddhist monks or scriptures, deliberately burnished the biography of Jesus in order to gain more converts to what was then a minor Christian sect which was being actively persecuted by the Roman rulers.

In this context, it is worth noting that biographical parallels between Jesus and other mythological figures have also been proposed.  See Jesus_Christ_in_comparative_mythology

If this article has whetted your appetite, you may want to check out these books:

J. Albert Edmunds.  Buddhist and Christian gospels.  Philadelphia: Innes & sons, 1908.  Edmunds working with Japanese scholar Masaharu Anesaki applied his expertise in Pali and Greek (the languages in which Buddhist and Christian scriptures were originally written) to produce a very comprehensive book on these parallels.  It can be downloaded for free from the Internet Archive.  See volume 1 and volume 2.

Zacharias Thundy.  Buddha and Christ : nativity stories and Indian traditions.  Leiden ; New York : E.J. Brill, 1993. (amazon).  Thundy was raised Christian in India (a former altar boy) and is currently Emeritus Professor at Northern Michigan University.

Marcus Borg.  Jesus and Buddha : the parallel sayings.  Berkeley, Calif. : Ulysses Press , 1997. (amazon)

Elmar Gruber and Holger Kersten.  The original Jesus : the Buddhist sources of Christianity.  Shaftesbury, Dorset ; Rockport, Mass. : Element, 1995. (amazon)

Humour

Time for some humour.  Goodness Gracious Me was a BBC English language comedy show broadcast in the 1990s which explored the integration issues faced by Indian immigrants to Britain.  The cast consists of British Indian actors.  One of the characters on the show has a penchant for claiming that many things in the Western world are of Indian origin.  In the following clip, which is particularly apposite to the topic at hand, the character demonstrates that Christianity is Indian.

References

1. Sister Nivedita.  The Master as I saw him, London and New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1910, pp 351-352,
2. Samuel Beal.  The Romantic Legend of Sâkya Buddha: From the Chinese-Sanscrit, London: Trubner & Co., 1875, p 43.  http://archive.org/details/theromanticlegen00bealuoft
3.  Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, chapter 20. 
4.  http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Parallelism:_Mary,_Jesus_and_the_Palm_Tree
5.  Zacharias Thundy.  Buddha and Christ : nativity stories and Indian traditions, Leiden; New York : E.J. Brill, 1993, p 111.
6. Gospel of Pseudo-matthew, chapter 23.
7. Elmar Gruber and Holger Kersten.  The original Jesus : the Buddhist sources of Christianity, Shaftesbury, Dorset ; Rockport, Mass. : Element, 1995, pp 104-105.
8. Ibid., p 98.
9. E.B. Cowell.  The Jātaka; or, Stories of the Buddha’s former births, vol.1, London: Cambridge University Press, 1895. http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/j1/j1081.htm
10. Ibid., vol. 2, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/j2/j2043.htm
11. Elmar Gruber and Holger Kersten.  The original Jesus : the Buddhist sources of Christianity, p 86.
12. Marcus Borg.  Jesus and Buddha : the parallel sayings, Berkeley, Calif. : Ulysses Press, 1997.
13. A. Maiuri, Statuetta eburnea di arte indiana a Pompei, Le arti, I (1938-1939), 111-115.
14. McMaster University (2010, February 2). DNA testing on 2,000-year-old bones in Italy reveal East Asian ancestry. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 29, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2010/02/100201171756.htm
15. Richard Salomon.  Epigraphic Remains of Indian Traders in Egypt, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 111, No. 4 (Oct. – Dec., 1991), pp. 731-736
16. Dio Chrysostom.  Discourse 32.40.
17. Philo. De Vita Contemplativa.  http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/yonge/book34.html
18. Zacharias Thundy.  Buddha and Christ : nativity stories and Indian traditions, p 245.
19. Pierre Nguyen Van Tot.  Le Bouddha et le Christ : paralleles et ressemblances dans la litterature canonique et apocryphe chretienne, Rome : Urbaniana University Press, 1987, p 129.
20. Ibid., p 107.
21. Ibid., p 108.
22. Ibid., p 109.
23. Ibid., p 110.

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