orbit and leads the Persian astrologers to the divine child, and angels
come and converse with shepherds, and a whole train of like celestial
phenomena occurs at various stages of his earthly career, which closes
amid earthquakes, a pall of darkness over the whole scene, a
supernatural war of the elements, the opening of graves and the walking
about of their tenants, and other appalling wonders. Now, if the candid
Buḍḍhist concedes that the real history of Gauṭama is embellished by
like absurd exaggerations, and if we can find their duplicates in the
biographies of Zoroaster, Shaṅkarāchārya and other real personages of
antiquity, have we not the right to conclude that the true history of
the Founder of Christianity, if at this late date it were possible to
write it, would be very different from the narratives that pass current?
We must not forget that Jerusalem was at that time a Roman dependency,
just as Ceylon is now a British, and that the silence of contemporary
Roman historians about any such violent disturbances of the equilibrium
of nature is deeply significant.

I have cited this example for the sole and simple purpose of bringing
home to the non-Buḍḍhistic portion of my present audience the
conviction that, in considering the life of Sākya Muni and the
lessons it teaches, they must not make his followers of to-day
responsible for any extravagant exuberances of past biographers. The
doctrine of Buḍḍha and its effects are to be judged quite apart
from the man, just as the doctrine ascribed to Jesus and its effects
are to be considered quite irrespectively of his personal history.
And--as I hope I have shown--the actual doings and sayings of every
founder of a Faith or a school of philosophy must be sought for under
a heap of tinsel and rubbish contributed by successive generations of
followers.