] See Rhys David's Buddhism, p. 25.

[159:6] See Cox: Aryan Myths, vol. ii. p. 31.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE GENEALOGY OF CHRIST JESUS.

The biographers of Jesus, although they have placed him in a position
the most humiliating in his infancy, and although they have given him
poor and humble parents, have notwithstanding made him to be of _royal
descent_. The reasons for doing this were twofold. First, because,
according to the Old Testament, the expected Messiah was to be of the
seed of Abraham,[160:1] and second, because the Angel-Messiahs who had
previously been on earth to redeem and save mankind had been of _royal
descent_, therefore Christ Jesus must be so.

The following story, taken from Colebrooke's "_Miscellaneous
Essays_,"[160:2] clearly shows that this idea was general:

"The last of the Jinas, Vardhamana, was _at first_ conceived
by Devananda, a Brahmana. The conception was announced to
her by a dream. Sekra, being apprised of his incarnation,
prostrated himself and worshiped the future saint (who was in
the womb of Devananda); but reflecting that _no great saint
was ever born in an indigent or mendicant family_, as that of
a Brahmana, Sekra commanded his chief attendant to remove the
child from the womb of Devananda to that of Trisala, wife of
Siddhartha, _a prince of the race of Jeswaca_, of the Kasyapa
family."

In their attempts to accomplish their object, the biographers of Jesus
have made such poor work of it, that all the ingenuity Christianity has
yet produced, has not been able to repair their blunders.

The genealogies are contained in the first and third Gospels, and
although they do not agree, yet, if either is right, then Jesus was
_not_ the son of God, engendered by the "Holy Ghost," but the legitimate
son of Joseph and Mary. In any other sense they amount to nothing. That
Jesus can be of royal descent, and yet be the Son of God, in the sense
in which these words are used, is a conclusion which can be acceptable
to those only who believe in _alleged_ historical narratives on no other
ground than that they wish them to be true, and dare not call them into
question.

The _Matthew_ narrator states that _all_ the generations from Abraham to
David are _fourteen_, from David until the carrying away into Babylon
are _fourteen_, and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Jesus are
_fourteen_ generations.[161:1] Surely nothing can have a