this inscription contain many Buddhist
phrases (such as Seng and Ssu for Christian priests and monasteries)
but it deliberately omits all mention of the crucifixion and merely
says in speaking of the creation that God arranged the cardinal points
in the shape of a cross. This can hardly be explained as due to
incomplete statement for it reviews in some detail the life of Christ
and its results. The motive of omission must be the feeling that
redemption by his death was not an acceptable doctrine.[537] It is
interesting to find that King-Tsing consorted with Buddhist priests
and even set about translating a sutra from the Hu language. Takakusu
quotes a passage from one of the catalogues of the Japanese
Tripitaka[538] which states that he was a Persian and collaborated
with a monk of Kapisa called Prajna.

We have thus clear evidence not only of the co-existence of Buddhism
and Christianity but of friendly relations between Buddhist and
Christian priests. The Emperor's objection to such commixture of
religions was unusual and probably due to zeal for pure Buddhism. It
is possible that in western China and Central Asia Buddhism, Taoism,
Manichaeism, Nestorianism and Zoroastrianism all borrowed from one
another just as the first two do in China to-day and Buddhism may have
become modified by this contact. But proof of it is necessary. In most
places Buddhism was in strength and numbers the most important of
all these religions and older than all except Zoroastrianism. Its
contact with Manichaeism may possibly date from the life of Mani, but
apparently the earliest Christian manuscripts found in Central Asia
are to be assigned to the fifth century.

On the other hand the Chinese Tripitaka contains many translations
which bear an earlier date than this and are ascribed to translators
connected with the Yueh-chih. I see no reason to doubt the statements
that the Happy Land sutra and Prajna-paramita (Nanjio, 25, 5) were
translated before 200 A.D. and portions of the Avatamsaka and Lotus
(Nanjio, 100, 103, 138) before 300 A.D. But if so, the principal
doctrines of Mahayanist Buddhism must have been known in Khotan[539]
and the lands of Oxus before we have definite evidence for the
presence of Christianity there.

Zoroastrianism may however have contributed to the development and
transformation of Buddhism for the two were certainly in contact. Thus
the coins of Kanishka bear figures of Persian deities[540] more
frequently th