Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/362

338 apart from the Indian writings, the dates of which are so difficult to fix, the testimony of Megasthenes (the Historian of Seleucus Nicanor, who wrote B.C. 300) is quoted in proof that at his time such incarnations were already held. But the passages in Megasthenes, by the very fact that he identifies Vishnu with Hercules, tend only to demonstrate a belief in a different kind of manifestation of Divine power. Those who labour most to prove that the Brahmanical idea of incarnation preceded the Christian have to allow that it was only subsequently to the spread of Christian teaching that it was fully developed. Thus Lassen writes, "I have, therefore (i. e. in consequence of the allusions in Megasthenes), no hesitation in maintaining that the dogma of Vishnu's incarnations was in existence 300 years before the birth of Christ; still, however, it only received its full development at a subsequent period ." And in another place, speaking of the Avatâra (incarnations) of Vishnu, in the persons of the heroes of the epic poems, he adds, "this dogma is unknown (fremd) to the Vêda, and the few allusions to such an idea existing in some of its myths, and which were later reckoned among the incarnations of Vishnu, show that in the earliest ages the recurring appearance in man's nature of 'the preserving god' for the destruction of evil was not yet invented ." And even of the early epic poems he writes, that though such ideas are introduced, yet the heroes still maintain their individuality. They are actuated and indwelt by Vishnu, but they are not he. This, it will be seen, is very different from the Christian dogma of the Incarnation.

Whether the extremely interesting and ancient tradition be genuine (as maintained by Tillemont) or not, that Abgarus, king of Edessa, sent messengers to our Lord in Judæa, begging Him to come and visit him and heal him of his sickness, and that our Lord in reply sent him word that He must do the work of Him Who sent Him and then return to Him above, but that after His Ascension He would send an Apostle to him, and that in consequence of this promise St. Thomas received the far East for the field of his labours—and, however much be chronologically correct of the mass of records and traditions which tell that this Apostle travelled over the whole Asian continent, from Edessa to Tibet, and perhaps China—it would appear to be intrinsically probable and as well attested as most facts of equally remote date, that both this Apostle and Thaddæus, one of the seventy-two disciples, preached the Gospel in countries east of Syria, and that his successors, more or less immediate, extended their travels farther and farther east. It is mentioned in