Part 44 (2/2)

”Soon after Crishna's birth he was carried away by night and concealed in a region remote from his natal place, for fear of a tyrant whose destroyer it was foretold he would become; and who had, for that reason, ordered all the male children born at that period to be slain.”[166:3]

Sir William Jones says of Crishna:

”He pa.s.sed a life, according to the Indians, of a most extraordinary and incomprehensible nature. His birth was concealed through fear of the reigning tyrant Kansa, who, at the time of his birth, _ordered all new-born males to be slain, yet this wonderful babe was preserved_.”[166:4]

In the Epic poem Mahabarata, composed more than two thousand years ago, we have the whole story of this incarnate deity, born of a virgin, and miraculously escaping in his infancy from the reigning tyrant of his country, related in its original form.

Representations of this flight with the babe at midnight are sculptured on the walls of ancient Hindoo temples.[167:1]

This story is also the subject of an immense sculpture in the cave-temple at Elephanta, where the children are represented as being slain. The date of this sculpture is lost in the most remote antiquity.

It represents a person holding a drawn sword, surrounded by slaughtered _infant boys_. Figures of men and women are also represented who are supposed to be supplicating for their children.[167:2]

Thomas Maurice, speaking of this sculpture, says:

”The event of Crishna's birth, and the attempt to destroy him, took place by night, and therefore the shadowy mantle of darkness, _upon which mutilated figures of infants are engraved_, darkness (at once congenial with his crime and the season of its perpetration), involves the tyrant's bust; the string of _death heads_ marks the mult.i.tude of infants slain by his savage mandate; and every object in the sculpture ill.u.s.trates the events of that Avatar.”[167:3]

Another feature which connects these stories is the following:

Sir Wm. Jones tells us that when Crishna was taken out of reach of the tyrant Kansa who sought to slay him, he was fostered at _Mathura_ by Nanda, the herdsman;[167:4] and Canon Farrar, speaking of the sojourn of the Holy Family in Egypt, says:

”St. Matthew neither tells us where the Holy Family abode in Egypt, nor how long their exile continued; but ancient legends say that they remained two years absent from Palestine, and lived at Matareeh, a few miles north-east of Cairo.”[167:5]

Chemnitius, out of Stipulensis, who had it from Peter Martyr, Bishop of Alexandria, in the third century, says, that the place in Egypt where Jesus was banished, is now called Matarea, about ten miles beyond Cairo, that the inhabitants constantly burn a lamp in remembrance of it, and that there is a garden of trees yielding a balsam, which was planted by Jesus when a boy.[167:6]

Here is evidently one and the same legend.

_Salivahana_, the virgin-born Saviour, anciently wors.h.i.+ped near Cape Comorin, the southerly part of the Peninsula of India, had the same history. It was attempted to destroy him in infancy by a tyrant who was afterward killed by him. Most of the other circ.u.mstances, with slight variations, are the same as those told of Crishna and Jesus.[167:7]

_Buddha's_ life was also in danger when an infant. In the southern country of Magadha, there lived a king by the name of Bimbasara, who, being fearful of some enemy arising that might overturn his kingdom, frequently a.s.sembled his princ.i.p.al ministers together to hold discussion with them on the subject. On one of these occasions they told him that away to the north there was a respectable tribe of people called the Sakyas, and that belonging to this race there was a youth newly-born, the first-begotten of his mother, &c. This youth, who was Buddha, they said was liable to overturn him, they therefore advised him to ”at once raise an army and destroy the child.”[168:1]

In the chronicles of the East Mongols, the same tale is to be found repeated in the following story:

”A certain king of a people called Patsala, had a son whose peculiar appearance led the Brahmins at court to prophesy that he would bring evil upon his father, and to advise his destruction. Various modes of execution having failed, _the boy was laid in a copper chest and thrown into the Ganges_.

Rescued by an old peasant who brought him up as his son, he, in due time, learned the story of his escape, and returned to seize upon the kingdom destined for him from his birth.”[168:2]

_Hau-ki_, the Chinese hero of supernatural origin, was exposed in infancy, as the ”s.h.i.+h-king” says:

”He was placed in a narrow lane, but the sheep and oxen protected him with loving care. He was placed in a wide forest, where he was met with by the wood-cutters. He was placed on the cold ice, and a bird screened and supported him with its wings,” &c.[168:3]

Mr. Legge draws a comparison with this to the Roman legend of Romulus.

_Horus_, according to the Egyptian story, was born in the winter, and brought up secretly in the Isle of Buto, for fear of Typhon, who sought his life. Typhon at first schemed to prevent his birth and then sought to destroy him when born.[168:4]

Within historical times, _Cyrus_, king of Persia (6th cent. B. C.), is the hero of a similar tale. His grandfather, Astyages, had dreamed certain dreams which were interpreted by the Magi to mean that the offspring of his daughter Mandane would expel him from his kingdom.

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