Page:Buddhism in Christendom, or, Jesus, the Essene.djvu/210

This page needs to be proofread.
182
BUDDHISIM IN CHRISTENDOM

They watch the gold. Says one at last,
You guard the cave; but we must eat.
I'll to the town for drink and meat."
One hied him to a leech's stock,
One nursed a dagger by a rock;
Each muttered, Soon 'tis all mine own!"
One perished, stabbed without a groan;
The other seized his drink and meat
And soon was writhing at his feet.


DRESS

Of the close resemblance between the dress of Buddhist monks and Romish priests we have the best possible evidence,that of the Roman Catholic priests in many lands from the earliest times.

Father Grueber, who visited Tibet in 1661, has recorded that the dress of the lâmas corresponded with that handed down to us in ancient paintings as the dress of the apostles.[1]

Now let us listen to the Abbé Huc—

"If the person of the grand lâma struck us little, I cannot say the same of his dress, which in every detail was that of our own bishops. He wore on his head a yellow mitre. In his right hand was a staff in the form of the crosier. His shoulders were covered with a cloak of violet silk, fastened across the chest with a hook, and resembling our cope. Later on we will point out many similarities between Catholic and Lamanesque rites."[2]

This lâma was not the Delai lâma.

In the "Life of Gabriel Durand" occurs an extract of a letter from Father Ephrem, written in 1883—

"There (in the Bell Pagoda, Pekin) we saw a Chinese priest dressed almost pin for pin like a Benedictine monk."[3]

I copy two Japanese monks from Siebold's " Nippon." (See Plate VI.)

"Much of the costume of the Buddhist priests," says Balfour's "Indian Cyclopædia," "and of the ritual, has a similarity to those of Christians of the Romish and Greek forms;

  1. Cited by Prinsep, "Tibet, Tartary," etc. p. 14
  2. "Voyage dans la Tartarie," etc. vol. ii.
  3. "Gabriel Durand," voL i. p. 493.