TEE GREAT BUDDHA.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11669, 8 April 1916, Page 8

TEE GREAT BUDDHA.

WAS HE A PERSIAN?

An American explorer in the employ of tho Archaeological Department of the Government of India propounds tho theory that the Buddha, who is worshipped by 135,031,000 persons in all parts of tho world, was a' Porsian, and not a Hindu, as is the prevailing belief. Tho savant in question, Dr David Brain&rd Spooner, already has to nis credit the unearthing of Buddha's bones from a mound near Peshawur, in northwestern India. Ho has arrived at tbis conclusion as tho result of the extensivo excavation work that ho has boen carrying on in the province of Behar, where the founder of Buddhism passed tho greater part of his life. Hero is a quotation front a report _ of Dr Spooner's recent lecture at Simla, contained in "New India" (Madras): — "Dr Spooner's lecture . . . proves that Pataliputra (Bohar). was built 2400 years ago by tho Persian # invaders, who overran all northern and "western India and founded the Mauryau dynasty, bringing with them from Persia not only tho architecture but also the fait>li and customs of tho Zoroastrian fireworshippers of Persepolis. Dr Spooner tells the fascinating story of how_ he traced out tho remains of the ancient Patna Palace of Cliandragupta, built upon the precise plan of tho great palace of Darius Hystaspes, at Persepolis, and with ceilings supported upon the upraised hands of colossal stone figures of Persian sculpture. Dr Spooner goes on to point out Zoroastrian associations not only in connection with Chandragupta and his grandson, Asoka, who followed the matriarchal system in the Court, where women were used as royal guards in accordance with Magian customs, but also with the Budda, whose ancestors practised the Llagian rite of sister-marriage, which explains the Ceylonese tradition that Asoka and the Buddha were of _ the same race. Buddha, Dr Spooner thinks, was not 'a renegade from Hindu teaching, as -the modern world has thought; but rather a renegade from Zoroastrianism,' which also explains a reference to Buddha in the ancient Parsee scriptures as a heretic, a term which' could not have been used had ho not been connected originally with Zoroastrianism. A similar argumen applies to Asoka, of whom it is said in the ' Avesta 1 (Bible of Zoroastrianism) that 'those who do the worst things are called of the Devas (Hindu gods),' a phrase which Dr Spooner explains as duo to tho interesting 5 fact that Asoka was an apostate from thfe Parsee faith."