Note 1 — CHAP. XI.

: See ante, p. 326. So ample are the materials offered by Buddhism for antiquarian research, that its doctrines have been sought to be identified at once with the Asiatic philosophy and with the myths of the Scandinavians. Buddha has been at one time conjectured to be the Woden of the Scythians; at another the prophet Daniel, whom Nebuchadnezzar had created master of the astrologers, or chief priest of the Magi, as the title is rendered in the Septuagint—[Greek: Archonta Magôi]. An antiquarian of Wales, in devising a pedigree for the Oymri, has imported ancestors for the ancient Britons from Ceylon; and a writer in the Asiatic Researches, in 1807, as a preamble to the proof that the binomial theorem was familiar to the Hindus, has traced Western civilisation to an irruption of philosophers from India, identified the Druids with the Brahmans, and declared Stonehenge to be "one of the temples of Boodh." (Asiat. Res., vol. ii. p. 448.) A still more recent investigator, M. MAUPIED, has collected, in his Essai sur l'Origine des Peoples Anciens, what he considers to be the evidence that Buddhism may be indebted for its appearance in India to the captivity of the Jews by Salmanasar, 729 B.C.; to their dispersion by Assar-Addon at a still more recent period; to their captivity in Babylon, 606 B.C.: their diffusion over Media and the East, Persia, Bactria, Thibet, and China, and the communication of their sacred book to the nations amongst whom they thus became sojourners. He ventures even to suggest a possible identity between the names Jehovah and Buddha: "Les voyelles du mot Buddha sont les mêmes que celles du mot Jéhovah, qu'on prononce aussi Jouva; mais d'ailleurs le nom de Boudda a bien pu être tiré du mot Jeoudda Juda, le dieu de Joudda Boudda."—Chap. ix. p. 235. To account for the purer morals of Buddhism, MAUPIED has recourse to the conjecture that they may have been influenced by the preaching of St. Thomas at Ceylon, and Bartholomew on the continent of India. "Or il nous semble logique de conclure de teus ces faits que le Bouddhisme, dans ses doctrines essentielles, est d'origine Juire et Chrétienne; conséquence inattendue pour la plus de nos lecteurs sans doute."—MAUPIED, ch. ix. p. 257; ch. x. p. 263.