be visited on the children, the Jews inquired whether
a “man’s parents did commit sin that he
was born blind?” (John, ix. 3) and in like manner,
in the Rajavali, “the perjury of Wijayo
(who had repudiated his wife after swearing fidelity
to her) was visited on the person of the King Panduwaasa,”
his nephew, who was afflicted with insanity in consequence
(Rajavali, pp. 174-178). The account in
the Rajaratnacari of King Batiya Tissa (B.C.
20), who was enabled to enter the Ruanwelle dagoba
by the secret passage known only to the priests, and
to discover their wealth and treasures deposited within,
has a close resemblance to the descent of Daniel and
King Astyages into the temple of Bel, by the privy
entrance under the table, whereby the priests entered
and consumed the offerings made to the idol (Bel and
the Dragon, Apocryp. ch. i.-xiii.; Rajaratnacari,
p. 45). The inextinguishable fire which was for
ever burning on the altar of God (Leviticus, ch. vi.
13) resembles the lamps which burned for 5000 years
continually in honour of Buddha (Mahawanso,
ch. lxxxi.; Rajaratnacari, p. 49); and these
again had their imitators in the lamp of Minerva, which
was never permitted to go out in the temple at Athens,
and in the [Greek: luchnon asbeston], which was
for ever burning in the temple of Ammon. The
miracle of feeding the multitude by our Saviour upon
a few loaves and fishes, is repeated in the Mahawanso,
where a divinely endowed princess fed Pandukabhaya,
B.C. 437, and five hundred of his followers with the
repast which she was taking to her father and his reapers,
the refreshment being “scarcely diminished in
quantity as if one person only had eaten therefrom.”—Mahawanso,
ch. x. p. 62. The preparation of the high road
for the procession of the sacred bo-tree after its
landing (Mahawanso, ch. xix. p. 116), and the
order to clear a road through the wilderness for the
march of the king at the inauguration of Buddhism,
recall the words of the prophet, “Prepare ye
the way of the Lord, make straight a highway in the
desert.” (Isaiah, xl. 3.) And we are reminded
of the prophecy of Isaiah as to the kingdom of peace,
in which “the leopard shall lie down with the
kid and the calf with the lion, and a young child
shall lead them,” by the Singhalese historians,
in describing the religious repose of the kingdom of
Asoca under the influence of the religion of Buddha,
where “the elk and the wild hog were the guardians
of the gardens and fields, and the tiger led forth
the cattle to graze and reconducted them in safety
to their pens.”—Mahawanso,
ch. v. p. 22. The narrative of the “judgment
of Solomon,” in the matter of the contested
child (1 Kings, ch. iii.), has its parallel in a story
in every respect similar in the Pansyiapanas-jataka.—ROBERT’S
Orient. Illustr. p. 101.]