Jesus In India — Page 92
92 J e s u s i n I n d i a Buddhistic records also show that Gautama Buddha prophesied the coming of a second Buddha who would be named Metteyya. This prophecy is contained in Laggavatti Suttatta , 41 a Buddhist record to which reference is made on page 142 of Oldenberg’s book. The prophecy reads thus: He will be the leader of a band of disciples numbering hundreds of thousands, as I am now the leader of bands of disciples, numbering hundreds. 42 It may be noticed here that the Hebrew word, Mashiha , is the same as the Pali, Metteyya. It is a matter of common knowledge that when a word is transferred from one language to another, it very often undergoes a phonetic change. An English word, too, when imported into another language, undergoes change: for example, Max Muller, in a list given on page 318 of Volume 11 of Sacred Books of the East , says: the th of the English alphabet becomes s in Persian or Arabic. Keeping these changes in view, one can readily understand that the word Messiah became Metteyya in the Pali language, which means that the future Metteyya prophesied by the Buddha is in reality the Messiah and no one else. This view is supported by the strong evidence of Buddha’s own prophecy that the Faith he had founded would not endure in the world for more than five hundred years; that at the time of the decline of the faith and its teachings, the Metteyya would come to this land and re- establish the faith and its teachings in the world. Now we find that Jesus appeared five hundred years after the 41 According to Oldenberg it is spelled Cakkavatti Suttanta. See Appendix, extract 5. (Translator) 42 See Appendix, extract 5. (Translator)