ptation of Buddha and Christ: (_c_)
their transfiguration: (_d_) the miracle of walking on the water and
its dependence on faith: (_e_) the miracle of feeding a multitude with
a little bread. The first three parallels relate to events directly
concerning the life of a superhuman teacher, Buddha or Christ. In
saying that the two narratives can hardly be independent, I do not
mean that one is necessarily unhistorical or that the writers of the
Gospels had read the Pitakas. That a great man should have a mental
crisis in his early life and feel that the powers of evil are trying
to divert him from his high destiny is eminently likely. But in the
East superhuman teachers were many and there grew up a tradition,
fluctuating indeed but still not entirely without consistency, as to
what they may be expected to do. Angelic voices at their birth and
earthquakes at their death are coincidences in embellishment on which
no stress can be laid, but when we find that Zoroaster, the Buddha and
Christ were all tempted by the Evil One and all at the same period of
their careers, it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that some of
their biographers were influenced by the idea that such an incident
was to be expected at that point, unless indeed we regard these
so-called temptations as mental crises natural in the development of a
religious genius. Similarly it is most remarkable that all accounts of
the transfiguration of the Buddha and of Christ agree not only in
describing the shining body but in adding a reference to impending
death. The resemblance between the stories of Asita and Simeon seems
to me less striking but I think that they owe their place in both
biographies to the tradition that the superman is recognized and
saluted by an aged Saint soon after birth.

The two stories about miracles are of less importance in substance but the
curious coincidences in detail suggest that they are pieces of folklore
which circulated in Asia and Eastern Europe. The Buddhist versions occur in
the introductions to Jatakas 190 and 78, which are of uncertain date,
though they may be very ancient.[1125] The idea that saints can walk on the
water is found in the Majjhima-nikaya,[1126] but the Jataka adds the
following particulars. A disciple desirous of seeing the Buddha begins to
walk across a river in an ecstasy of faith. In the middle, his ecstasy
fails and he feels himself sinking but by an effort of will he regains his
former confidence and