Jesus In India — Page 96
96 J e s u s i n I n d i a territory, was fair-skinned. The people of the land where this prophecy was announced, i. e. , the people of Magadh, in which was located Rajagriha, were dark-skinned. Gautama Buddha himself was dark. He had narrated to his followers two conclusive signs regarding the future Buddha. i. He would be ‘Bagwa’ or of fair skin. ii. He would be ‘Metteyya’, a traveller, and that he would come from a foreign land. People, therefore, constantly looked out for these signs till they actually saw Jesus. Every Buddhist must necessarily profess the belief that five hundred years after the Buddha, the Bagwa Metteyya did, in fact, appear in their land. It should not be surprising, therefore, if books of the Buddhist faith should mention the coming of the Metteyya—the Masiha—to their land, and of the fulfilment of Buddha’s prophecy. Supposing there is no such mention, even then, because on the basis of divine revelation, the Buddha had communicated to his disciples the tiding that the Bagwa Metteyya would come to their land, no Buddhist who was cognizant of this prophecy could deny the coming to this land of the Bagwa Metteyya, whose other name was Masiha; because the non-fulfillment of the prophecy would have meant the falsity of the faith itself. If this prophecy, for whose fulfilment a time frame had been fixed, and which Gautama Buddha had communicated to his disciples again and again, had not been fulfilled at its appointed time, his followers would have begun to doubt the truth of his claim that he was the Buddha. Also, it would have been placed on The period of a thousand or five thousand years is incorrect. (Author)