Connected with the XIIth. Conference of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, held at Lausanne, August 23-28, 1999, a registered letter, dated February 1, 1999, addressed to Prof. Christian Lindtner read:
“Dr. Lindtner, Taking into account serious problems and reservations connected with your planned participation in the forthcoming congress of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (Aug. 23-28, 1999, Lausanne), the Congress Organizing Committee, with the support of the Board of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, has decided that your presence at the congress is unacceptable. Please note that you will not be allowed to register for this congress or participate in it in any way.”
The letter was signed by Tom J.F. Tillemans, President of the Congress Organizing Committee, and Vice-dean of the Faculty of Letters, and by Oskar v. Hinüber, General Secretary of the International Association of Buddhist Studies.
I have no idea what this letter had in mind as the proposed grounds for rejecting Lindtner's participation, but the few excerpts I have posted below cannot have helped matters any.
I have, so to speak, nothing much to say about this. Only to say that it leaves me speechless. Not quite as amusing, I think, as I initially thought I might find it. I keep thinking of the fine edition of Bhavaviveka's verse text that I use, an edition prepared by Lindtner.
I provide, from a report favorable to Lindtner, a rough sketch of what the philologist is upto:
>>Lindtner pointed out how virtually each word and sentence found in the Greek text could be traced back to two independent texts belonging to the same corpus of Buddhist scripture, namely the Mûlasarvâstivinaya. One text provides the legend of Gautama, the eponymous progenitor of Gautama the Buddha. The other text is the Mahâparinirvânasûtra, first edited in Sanskrit, Pâli, Tibetan with a translation from the Chinese, by the late German scholar Ernst Waldschmidt.
It could then be shown how “Matthew” first had cut these two sources to little pieces and then pasted them together anew. In this way he had preserved nearly all the original words but created a new whole, a collage, a mosaic. The result therefore, was purely fictitious. “Matthew” displays a most artificial way of “translating” - a fact that has lead to much confusion. Sometimes he translated the sense of the words or sentences, sometimes he translated the sound of words and sentences, and sometimes he tried to combine the sound and sense of the original Sanskrit in the Greek. Nearly all the motives had been taken over from the two Sanskrit sources - e.g. the crucifixion and the Eucharist - but combined anew.
Lindtner also pointed out how the names of the four evangelists could be traced back to the original Sanskrit. For instance, the evangelist Mark is in Greek called Markos. The Sanskrit word is Kumâras, a name for the Buddha as a child. As can easily be seen, the consonants are the same in both languages, namely m-r-k-s. Each of these four consonants has a given numerical value, in this case 40+100+20+200. The numerical value, of course, remains the same, even if the original order of the individual consonants is changed. This rule is technically known as gematria, and gematria was extremely common in ancient Hebrew writings. Gematria also allows the use of anagramas, of course. And thus it can easily bee seen that San. Kumâras has the same value as Greek Markos, namely 360. Hence it is formally perfectly correct to “translate” Sanskrit Kumâras by Greek Markos. Such examples are extremely numerous, providing us with cumulative evidence to establish the direct historical relationship. For instance, the first disciple of the Buddha is called Putras. In Greek this person becomes the first disciple of “Jesus”, namely Petros. Here, as often, not only are the original consonants retained, but their original order is likewise retained. Nearly all personal names and names of places in the Gospels can be accounted for in this way.<<
What follows are Lindtner's words, adulterated only to the extent of ellipses: and trust me, this is one instance where context elision does not weaken his argument.
>>Here I would like to draw the reader´s attention to some cases of “Sanskritisms”, where old and still unsolved difficulties in the Greek of the Gospels are convincingly solved once it is recognized that they are translated from the Sanskrit.
The main Buddhist source of the NT Gospels is the Mûlasarvâstvâda-vinaya (MSV), a huge collection of texts which also include the celebrated Catusparisatsutra (CPS) and the Mahâparinirvânasûtra (MPS). CPS and MPS were edited in Sanskrit and Tibetan by the German scholar Ernst Waldschmidt, Berlin 1952-1962 & 1950-1951, respectively. The CPS also forms a part of the Samghabhedavastu (SBV), the Sanskrit text of which (from Gilgit) was edited by Raniero Gnoli, Rome 1977-1978. Full references to these and other relevant sources may be found in the indispensable Sanskrit-Wörterbuch der buddhistischen Texte aus den Turfan-Funden, Göttingen 1973
...
Matthew 16:17. Again, no satisfactory explanation has been given why Simon Peter is called Bar-Iôna. Now, Simon Petros is, as a rule, no other than Sâri-Putras. Sâri-Putras is often addressed in Buddhist sources (Mahâyâna only?) as a jina-putras, “son of Jina”. Bar-Iôna means son (bar) of Iôna, and so it is easy to see that bar translates putras whereas Iôna imitates the sound of Jina(s). So Bar-Iôna was simply Sâri-Putras. Puns on the name of this important disciple - in both sources - are quite frequent. In Matthew 16:18 Jesus says: sy ei Petros, “You are Peter”. The Gr. sy ei contains a pun on Sâri. The “missing r” can, according to a general rule, be taken from putras. In John 1:47 the noun Israelite, Gr. Israêlitês - the disciple in whom there is no guile - contains another pun on Sâri-putras. The word means “son of Israel”, which means that first the s-r represent the original two consonants of Sâri, whereas putras is represented by its original meaning in Israelite as a whole. By means of a simple pun, Sâri-Putras has become a son of Israel In the Gospels “Israelite” only occurs here. To be sure, the other disciples mentioned by John 1 can all be traced back to the Buddhist sources. As I point out in my forthcoming book, Aniruddhas thus becomes Andreas, Pippalas becomes Philippos, and Nâlandâ becomes Nathanael. The Gospels always try to retain the number and nature of the consonants (guttural, palatal, lingual, dental, labial, semivowel, sibilant) of the names of persons and places in the Sanskrit original. 4.
Matthew 14:34 & 15:39. Jesus, who has just been addressed as “son of God”, Gr. theou huios - which of course is a direct translation of San. deva-putras, as is the hybrid “son of David (Gr. huios Daueid)”- now “ and crossing over came to land Gennesaret”.
Here the Greek kai diaperasantes êlthon epi tên gên (eis) Gennêsaret is a direct rendering of San. (mâgadhakâ manusyâ) nadîm Gangâm uttaranty api pratyuttaranti, MPS 7:5. Some editors of the NT add an eis, “to”, to avoid the difficult reading gên Gennêsaret, “to land G.”. But wrongly so, for Gr. gên Gen- is an attempt to render the Gangâm of the original, retaining all the original consonants (viz. g-n-g-m=n). The San. uttaranty api has been inverted so as to become Gr. kai (=api) diaperasantes (= uttaranti), the sense being thus preserved. The second San. verb, pratyuttaranti, is represented by the five syllables, and consonants, of êlthon epi tên (NB:l counts as r, as often).
For San. mâgadhakâ, meaning “(men) form the land of Magadha” (cf. Tib.: yul ma ga dha´i mi rnams, “men of Magadha land”), we have to consult Matthew 15:39, which says that Jesus went into the boat and came “into the borders of Magadha”, Gr. eis to oria Magadan.
All modern commentators agree that this strange location “Magadan” is quite unknown from other sources. Equally puzzling is the variant given in Mark 8:10: “to the parts Dalmanutha”, Gr. eis ta merê Dalmanoutha. Neither “Magadan” nor “Dalmanu(o)tha” are to be found on the map.
In the light of the original source, MPS 7:5, all the old problems are now finally solved. One only has to look at a map of Buddhist India!
It was originally the Buddha who crossed the Ganges in the land of Magadha. This famous episode is not only known from MPS, but even from Buddhist art. The earliest artistic representation of this episode is already to be found in Sanchi, see Dieter Schlingloff, “Die wunderbare Überquerung der Gangâ”, in N. Balbir & J.K.Bautze (eds.), Festschrift Klaus Bruhn zur Vollendung des 65. Lebensjahres, Reinbek 1994, pp.571-584. To be sure, this proves the chronological priority of the Buddhist source.
MPS 7:5 also provides us with the clue to the mysterious location “Dalmanoutha”. Immediately after the words uttaranty api, the San. says that some of the Magadha people crossed the river (nadî) Gangâ in salmani-phalesu (Tib. sin sal ma la´i span leb, “boards of the salmani tree”), i.e. on rafts. Here there can hardly be any doubt that dalman imitates salman. In all likelihood, the Gr. outha is intended to imitate San. atha, the first word in the following sentence, MPS 7:6.
Speaking of atha, this common word is usually translated by Gr. eutheôs or euthus, in all the four Gospels. This literal translation creates confusion, because the Gr. words means “at once”, “immediately”, whereas San. atha simply means, “(and) then”. By translating Gr. eutheôs or euthus in the sense of San. atha the reader can suddenly make natural sense of virtually all the passages in the Gospels where atha occurs in Greek disguise.
A similar observation applies to Gr. apo tote in Matthew 4:17 and 16:21. Some scholars have suggested that this strange expression “from then on” may mark a turning point in the life of Jesus. The reader familiar with the style of SBV, however, will have no problems in recognizing the Gr. apo tote as an inverted translation of San. tato ´pi, “and then”. As a rule, Gr. tote likewise translates San. tato/tatah/tatas, a synonym of atha.
In other words: To understand the Greek one must know the Sanskrit behind it. This is a general rule that - so I maintain - applies to all the “Sanskritisms” of the four Gospels as a whole.
These are just a few typical examples of how the unknown authors of the Gospels “translated” the Sanskrit into Greek. The puns on the sounds of the original Sanskrit are sufficient to show that there was no “Aramaic” (or any other) intermediate.
The strange way of “translating” may come as a surprise to modern readers. But if things are seen in their proper historical context there is but little cause for surprise. Indian readers familiar with the norms of alamkârasâstra - the sabda- and the arthâlamkâras - will easily recognize the various kinds of puns on the sound and meaning of the original.
Jewish readers familiar with the rules (middoth) that are employed in the exegesis of their sacred scriptures, will have even less cause for surprise. A convenient survey of rabbinic hermenetics is provided by Hermann L. Strack, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, New York 1959.
The Gospels, with odd results, have been translated “according to the book”. The main rules (Hebrew middoth) at work when the Sanskrit was translated into Greek, were: 1. Neged, corresponding significant number, as when the seven days of the original become six, six, and about eight. 2. Ma´al, paronomasia, a playing on words which sound alike, San. anuprâsa, alliteration, or yamaka, as in the case of Nâlandâ and Gangâm becoming Nathanael and gên Gên-. 3. Gematria, from Gr. grammateia, computation of the numeric value of letters, and metathesis of the letters, e.g. when putras and Tripusa(s) both become Petros. 4. Notarikon, when a word is broken into two or more, as when ganikâ becomes gynê ekh- or gynê êtis.
Gematria is often seen as a subdivision of Notarikon. 5. Mukdam shehu´meúhar ba-´inyan, when something that precedes is palaced second, hysteron proteron, as when the shelters are mentioned before the a-kâla-megha, though they should have been mentioned after the rainy cloud. These and many other middoth are extremely common in Haggadah litterature, i.e. in Hebrew stories of the Passover.<<
Also, in a review on a book on Jesus and Buddha, Christian Lindtner is upset that the following "philological" facts are not addressed:
>>I. The two founders. Jesus is called Son of God and Son of David etc. In both cases the original Sanskrit is deva-putra, “Son of Deva”, where deva becomes “god” or “David”. In Sanskrit the bodhi-sattva lives in a world of deva-putras, from which he descends. There are many deva-putras, which is also the case in Mt 5:9.
In Luke we find puns on bodhi-sattva, viz. Greek to paidi-on, “young boy”. The bodhi becomes paidi, and the to on translates San. sattva. Such puns, anything but serious, are typical of Buddhist scriptures, and they prove the Buddhist source. Now and then Jesus is identified with John the Baptist. Apparently a strange identification! But not so when we see that ho bap-ti-tês is supposed to contain a pun on bo-dhi-sat-tvas. Here the bo-dhi becomes bap-ti, and the ho and tês “translates” sattvas. The Greek abstract suffix - tês, with ho, replaces the san. -tva(s).
Puns on tathâgata(s) are frequent, e.g. the synonym and homonym kathêgêtês, Mt 23:10; or the katheudete in Lk 22:46; or the tês diathêkês, Mt 26:28. The direct source is MPS 42:10. The New Testament, in other words, is simply Tathâgatasya kâyam. I first pointed this out at the Hesbjerg Seminar on New Testament Revisionism in 2001 (see http://hometown.aol.com/eaglerevisionist).
The Greek ho Khristos is an excellent rendering of San. ksatriyas. The genitive is ksatriyasya, which in Mt 1:1 becomes ´Iêsou Khristou. Excellent!
II. Jesus preaches the Kingdom of God, hê basileia tou theou.
So did the Buddha. There are several Sanskrit originals, one of which is deva-parisad. Here the deva- (= devasya or devânâm) correctly becomes tou theou, and the parisat becomes basileia. The learned Luz claims (p. 47) that basileia translates the Hebrew-Aramaic malkut - and thereby reveals his historical naivite. The truth is that basileia translates parisat and is assimilated to malkut, familiar to the Jews. The plural devânâm becomes ouranôn, in the Kingdom of the Heavens .It has always puzzled theologians why Mark and Luke prefer the phrase hê basileia tou theou as opposed to Matthew, who prefers hê basileia tôn ouranôn (see e.g. Paul Feine, Theologie des neuen Testaments, Berlin 1953, p. 69, with numerous references). The Sanskrit gives the simple answer: two different versions of deva-parisat (devasya or devânâm). The PaRiSaT becomes BaSiLeia Tou (p-r-s-t = b-s-l-t).
The odd ta tou theou in Mt 15:23, translates San. deva-tâ. The -tâ becomes Greek ta, and the deva- is taken as devasya = tou theou.
III. Ethics, love etc. The Buddha did not teach love to the same extent that Jesus did so, it is often claimed.
One thereby overlooks the fact that Buddhists are expected to preach the Dharma sattvasattvahitâya etc.
Then we have the obscure word of Jesus about saying raka and môre, Mt 5:22 (quoted p. 81). One has to consult the source, the section on Pârâjika in the Prâtimoksa, to understand their sense: Behind the Greek eipê môre we find Sanskrit mrsâ-vâda etc. (see e.g. W. Pachow, A Comparative Study of the Prâtimoksa, Delhi 2000, pp. 71-75). The samgha is assimilated to the obscure synedrion, and the bhiksu of the original invariably becomes an adelphos. These are fine examples of what the Chinese called “ concept-matching” (ko-i). The stange Greek expression to de perisson, Mt 5:37, is a direct translation of the Sanskrit tata uttaram (to-de imitates ta-ta). It makes sense in the original (e.g. Georg von Simson (ed.), Prâtimoksasûtra der Sarvâstivâdins, Göttingen 2000, p. 184), but nok in Matthew. In Mt 5:40 the khitôna translates Sanskrit kathina; in 5:41, the one and the two “miles” reflect the tri-yojana of the Sanskrit original (von Simson, pp. 341 and 347 for the ref.), etc.
Interestingly, the Buddhists themselves had no claer idea of the historical background of kathina = khitôna, Latin tunica.
IV. Suffering, crucifixion.
The disciples of Jesus are asked to take their “cross”, Greek stavron - which is absurd. Imagine all his disciples running around as “crucifers”, or clad in crosses! The Buddha expects his disciples to put on vastrâni - which makes sense. So VaSTRaNi translates STaVRoN (v-s-t-r-n = s-t-v-r-n).
The crucifixion of Jesus is totally dependent on Buddhist sources. In the Mûlasarvâstivâdavinaya (ed. Gnoli, Roma 1977, pp. 21-26 ) one can read how the innocent Gautama was crucified on a sûla, and the details about the sculls, etc. are also there. Most of the remaining details about the two robbers, the supernatural phenomena etc. are to be found at the end of the Mahâparinirvânasûtra and the Saddharmapundarîkasûtra. One merely has to compare the Sanskrit and the Greek carefully. A phenomenological comparison based on mere translations is bound to lead to a scientific parinirvâna. There is hardly anything in the gospels that cannot be traced back to these Buddhist sources.
V. Christology. Here the title “Son of Man” is absolutely crucial. The double nature of Jesus - or Jesus and Christ - is as Buddhist as can be. A Tathâgata appears to be mortal, but is in fact immortal. This is the fundamental doctrine of the MPS,SDP etc. - and the fundamental doctrine of the NT.
The secrets of the term “Son of Man” I shall reveal on a later occasion. As a rule, the title that Jesus uses to refer to himself, simply translates the San. Tathâgata, that the Buddha employs in the same manner, i.e. in the third person singular. According to the confused account of the gospels, Jesus was a devaputra born of a parthenos, of wind (ek pneumatos); he was the son of anthrôpos; as a babe he was in a phatne, manger, etc. According to our Buddhist sources, a bodhisattva (to paidi-on)comes from and even travels in a lotus, Sanskrit padma, padmini, pundarîka (playfully as if from pundar- plus i-ka). So a bodhisattva is the son of a pundar-. It is now easy to see that being born from (i.e. the son of) a parthenos is the same as being the son of anthrôpos, for p-r-th-n-s = n-th-r-p-s. The “from” is ek, and means that he is a son. And so it is clear that to be a son of man is the same as being born of a virgin, which again is the same as being born from (ek) or in a pundarîka- (p-n-d-r-k-s, as an adj.). To be born from pneumatos hagiou again leads us back to the lotus. The baby in the phat-ne is the bodhisattva in the pad-me etc. When Jesus travels “in wind”, pneumati (from padmini), the bodhisattva originally travelled through the air in a lotus.
So, not being aware of the Lotus, one cannot understand how Jesus was born.
The gospels surely confirm the lotus origin of the son of man!
The Greek ho huios tou anthrôpou is also an imitation/translation of the seven syllables of the term Saddharmapundarîka, i.e. the Tathâgata as a lotus of the true dharma etc.
VI. Prayer and meditation. This includes the Paternoster, the main sources of which are to be found in the Catusparisatsûtra, and the Mahâparinirvânasûtra. For instance, the mê...eis peirasmon, Mt 6:13, is a direct translation of the a-sam-pramosâya, MPS 10:10, where it makes perfect sense. The a- correctly becomes mê, and the sam-pramosâya correctly becomes eis peirasmon (s-m-p-r-m-s = s-p-r-s-m-n).
VII. The Church. The word ekklêsia only occurs twice in the Gospels. The opinio communis of theologians is (with a few exceptions) that the crucial passage, Mt 16:18, cannot possibly be an authentic word of Jesus.
But the rejection of this passage merely shows the subjectivity of theologians. It is as “authentic” - i.e. Buddhist - as any other passage. A philologist familiar with the Sanskrit text of the SDP can easily point out the original passage (SDP, ed. Kern, p. 69) . The Lord reveals his secret to Sâri-putra(s), and this means that he has now again, for the second time, put in motion this (idam) supreme wheel (cakram) of the Dharma. Likewise, Jesus reveals his secret to Petros (p-t-r-s = p-t-r-s), and thereby he will build his ekklêsian (accusative). So, behind the six syllables of mou tên ekklêsian of Mt 16:18 we find the six syllables of idam dharma-cakram. Note the odd mou, which is explained by the desire to represent the idam of the original.
Sâri-putras, to be sure, is called Jina-putra, which explains the mysterious Bar-Jôna in Mt 16:17. Bar, “son”, translates putras, and Jôna is a homonym of Jina. The Sankrit âyuSMâN, of course. becomes SiMôN (s-m-n = s-m-n). It is, at the same time, a homonym and a synonym. These examples - they could easily be multiplied almost ad infinitum - show how absurd and superficial it is to compare Jesus and Buddha, their life , their teachings, their disciples etc. etc. - without first comparing the original Sanskrit and Greek. (In the beginning was the word, if I may be forgiven for saying so!)<<
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