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is an improvement upon earlier Hinduism seems to be allowed on all hands. Its approach to some of the central thoughts of Christianity is emphatically noted by Sir Monier Williams. Must not this change of religious thought and practice which is at the root of Vaishnavism have come from without? This will be found to be always the case in great religious changes; just as Rammohun Roy and Keshub Chander Sen were indebted for their innovations to Western lore. I cannot believe that, as one of my critics seems to suggest, God was witnessing" to India by revelations to the writer of the Bhagavad-Gîtâ of some wonderful but disjointed truths, to be put into the mouth of the Krishna of the Mahâbhârata. But I can believe that some echoes of the Christian story, such as recommended themselves to the mind of the Brahman teacher of the period, should find their way into the religious mind of India. I know of no really valid reason against the Bhagavad-Gîtâ having been written long after the third century, though I know that this is not the popular view of the case. And with regard to the probable early influence of Christianity in India, it is a subject that has received too little attention, especially in the matter of search for remains, because it has not been believed. There is no evidence that Pantænus visited only the west coast of India, where the Syrian Christians remain to-day. There is the Christian cross, with Pahlavi inscription, like those on the western coast, at St. Thomas, near Madras, indicating an early Christian settlement on the eastern coast also. Some of, the first Roman Catholic missionaries describe other Christian crosses, though unknown at the present time, probably destroyed. Early Christian crosses have also been found in the Nizam's territory. That there is no body of Christians there now is not in evidence. It has been the same in China. In Shensi, in China, there is the now well-known stone with Christian inscription, but no vestige of Christianity around. It is said to have been erected in 781 A.D.,-that is the date, according to Chinese chronology, on the stone itself,—and it records an Imperial proclamation in 638 A.D. authorising the dissemination of Christianity through the Empire. It is a fair inference that this Imperial edict was not issued in the very infancy of Christian preaching in China. The Persian and Syrian Christians were early about in the world. At the Council of Nicæa, A.D. 325, a Bishop signed himself "Metropolitan of Persia and the Great India." Here, again, it has been doubted whether "India" may not have meant Arabia, or any portion of, or the whole of the East ; but Megasthenes, 600 years before, must have known that the world would understand him when he named his book Indica.

There is, surely, very strong presumption, amounting, I should say to demonstration, that Syrian and Persian Christians (often called Nestorians, though I doubt whether that term is always correctly applied) were busy in the farther East during the very early centuries after the Christian era. Pantænus, in the second century, was not the first preacher in that part of India, wherever it was, that he visited, for he found a Hebrew, or Syro-Chaldee, gospel of St. Matthew, which had already been brought there: this being the version used by what has been called the "Hebrew party in the Church, as distinguished from the "Hellenic party"; and is the version which we should suppose, if one of the Twelve, or any of their immediate disciples, visited India, they would be likely to bring with them.

With regard to the date of the document called the "Teaching of the Apostles," it was brought to light by Dr. Cureton, and placed by him in the Ante-Nicene period. I regret that I cannot here give his reasons for assigning this early date to it, as I have not been in possession of the book since my return to England. The document, annotated if I remember rightly, is to be found in the Ante-Nicene Library, vol. xx.

In particular, I should wish to emphasise most strongly the fact, already stated, that I do not quote mere casual coincidences or similarities,—though all such, wherever found, must have some explanation if it can be reached,—but similarities which are parts, and integral parts, of two great wholes, two great systems, both aiming at approach to God, and that by a new phase of religious faith, the one by steps of absolute perfection, the other by steps exactly similar in their main design and intention, but coarse and imperfect in their work, laid in rubbish, and running into inaccessibility.

A great deal might be written upon similarities in other directions; but in a brief paper it is not possible to touch other than salient points. Take the instance given by Mr. Boscawen of Merodach, the “healer,” "who goes between the gods and men.” I should be disposed to claim this as on my side of the question. Why should not Merodach be an echo of an earlier revelation? in which, for my part, I most firmly believe. So, with regard to the expressions in the document from the Temple of Ammon, which are the same with some of the clauses of the Nicene Creed; they may be vestiges of an early Divine worship, some of the very expressions of which may have become traditional, and embodied in early Christian teaching; just as the first clause of the Lord's Prayer had been common among the Jews for ages. Christ came

not to destroy, but to fulfil the Law, or earlier revelation. It is just the case of the rebuilder of a ruined house using some of the old material.

The ancient heathen systems are degradations of what was once the worship of God by Divine appointment, and cannot but contain some recognisable vestiges, degraded though perhaps the vestiges themselves may have become. In the same way, when a new revelation was added in confirmation and expansion of the old, its echoes may be expected to be found when they are properly sought for (as, for instance, they are found in the Koran), perhaps in wider tracks than even those traced by the inventors of Krishna's and the embellishers of Buddha's histories. A man who believes in the evolution of religions from man's inner consciousness will not care to see this; but for others, my own belief is that this light will become more and more evident.

I am not able to believe that the Hindu could sit down and deliberately think out a true antidote to some of the deepest religious needs of his nature, namely, a human manifestation of the Deity, all-comprehensive in his acceptance of those who should offer him the homage of entire acknowledgment, devotion, faith, and love; these are foundation-stones in Christ's revelation of Himself; and in their connexion with a human manifestation of God absolutely new to Hinduism, as, indeed, to the rest of the heathen world. The picture in itself would be perfect, were it not spoiled by the person of Krishna himself. However historical the original of Krishna may have been, he (the historical Krishna) did not shine as a thousand suns, or exhibit the universe in his body, or go through the cities healing the infirm, raising the dead, restoring deformed women, receiving harlots on their confession of faith, and preaching forgiveness of sin to all who sought it from him, he himself the grossest picture the Hindu has ever drawn of human weakness and immorality. The beauties of the picture do not belong to it. They belong only to the perfect God-man. Even a knowledge, however supposed to have possibly reached the Hindu, of the previous prophecies as to the Messiah could not have suggested such individuality in the features of the picture. I cannot avoid the conviction that the original is only to be found in the veritable history of Christ. And on chronological grounds I fail, I confess, to see the difficulty that some express. In point of fact, there is, after much study by many minds, no reliable evidence for giving the Bhagavad-Gîtâ an earlier date than that of a possible communication of the Christian story in India. So far as the argument founded on supposed quotations from the Gîtâ in other early

194 REV. R. COLLINS, M.A., ON KRISHNA AND SOLAR MYTHS.

documents has gone, there is not a single instance that appears to me conclusive. One instance I have discussed in an early part of the paper.

One word may be said as to the unfairness of denying to the Jewish race, during their captivity at Babylon and dispersion elsewhere, any influence in a religious sense on surrounding nations. This is too long a subject to be dwelt upon here, and I do not at all think myself that it would explain anything in the BhagavadGîtâ; but it may, perhaps, ultimately be found to explain a good deal in other directions.

I would venture upon the suggestion, that the doctrines of the Gîtâ may indicate a possible attempt at a compromise with Buddhism in some of its most attractive features, with the object of defeating it by setting up a rival system containing some of those features even more vividly portrayed, as gleaned from Christian doctrines.

I may add that I do not think that sufficient notice has been taken of the very artificial way in which Krishna's history and the intricacies of his genealogy, indicating a design on the part of the writer in preparation for the "mysteries " of the BhagavadGîtâ, is introduced into the Mahâbhârata.

ORDINARY MEETING, APRIL 4, 1887.

H. CADMAN JONES, ESQ., IN THE CHAIR.

The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed, and the following Elections were announced :—

ASSOCIATES:-Rev. J. S. Phillips, D.D., United States; Rev. H. M. M. Hackett, India; Miss E. S. Mitchell, England.

HỌN. CORRESPONDING MEMBER :-W. Johnson, Esq., England.

Mr. S. R. PATTISON, F.G.S.-Before reading my paper I will take the liberty of prefacing what I have to put before the Institute, by a few geological details, which may tend to a better appreciation of the facts hereafter dealt with. The geological facts I wish to submit, relate simply to the successive strata in which fossil coral-reefs are found in this country. It may be a matter of surprise to those who were not previously acquainted with the circumstance, that such things as coral-reefs are to be found in England-I mean inland, and not upon the coast-and in order to show where they are to be found, for the benefit of those who have not previously thought about the matter, I must refer to the geology of the country. Starting from London we will take a straight line towards the west, but from that straight line we must diverge as occasion may demand; nevertheless, the general direction will be due west towards the Welsh coast. We first of all travel over a good deal of that which we are upon now, namely, the London clay, which occupies what is pretty much in the nature of a plain, resting on a kind of basin and having some gravel spots here and there, at different intervals. When we get below Reading we lose the tertiary strata and come to the chalk, of which the cuttings of the railway lines soon furnish evidence. The chalk rises from under the clay, beneath which it runs in a sloping direction, and, having come to the surface, it forms moderate hills and valleys, until we come to the neighbourhood of Swindon, at which point we find, rising from beneath the chalk, a formation that is known as the oolite, and which begins with Portland stone and ends with that troublesome Box tunnel, which is cut through Bath stone. These are the oolites. Then we come to the blue limestone-the hard limestone-which is found in the neighbourhood of Clifton, Bristol, and elsewhere, which forms a saucer, so to speak, whereon the coal formation rests. This is the carboniferous limestone, which still slants towards London, underneath the other formations. Then we must