Note 38 — II. THE ANTE-NICENE CHURCH.

Compare Beal’s “Romantic Legend of Sakhya Buddha from the Chinese Sanscrit,” pp. 33 sqq., with the Protevangelion, the Gospel of the Infancy, the Gospel of Nicodemus, etc.

Somewhat similar to the Buddhist legend is the assertion of the Jainas that their great Tirthankara, Mahavira, selected the womb of Brahamani Devanandi, wife of Rishabha Datta, as his place of birth; but Sakra, indignant that he should be born in the Brahman caste, caused him to be transferred to Trisala, wife of the Kshatriya Siddhartha (Kalpa Sutra, Bk. I. ch. i. Stevenson’s Translation, pp. 24, 38). Concerning the comparative priority of Jainism and Buddhism, see Thomas’s “Jainism, or the early Faith of Asoka,” London, 1877.

In this connection, it is perhaps worth while to note the Mazdean belief in Saoshyans, the future Messiah, who, as in Judaism, is to overcome the evil powers at the end of the world, and preside over the resurrection of mankind, and who is to be born of a virgin, Eredhat Fedri. (Vendidad, Fargard XIX. 18; Bundehesh XXX. XXXII. 8, 9; Haug’s Essays, Ed. 1878, pp. 313-14). The mode of his conception as related in the Bundehesh, may be compared with the less decent speculations of Sanchez as to that of Christ.