[Sidenote:  Parallels in Christian and Hindu theology.]

When Christian doctrine was presented to India in modern times, the Christian Trinity and the Hindu Triad at once suggested a correspondence, which seemed to be confirmed by the coincidence of a Creator and Preserver in the Triad with the Creator and the Son, Our Saviour, in the Trinity.  The historical Christ and the avatars of Vishnu would thus present themselves as at least striking theological and religious parallels.  “On the one hand, learned brahmans have been found quite willing to regard Christ himself as an incarnation of Vishnu for the benefit of the Western world."[90] On the other, Christian missionaries in India have often preached Christ as the one true avatar.[91] The idea and the word avatar are always recurring in the hymns sung in Christian churches in India.  Missionaries have also sought to graft the doctrine of Christ’s atonement upon Hinduism, through one of the avatars.  A common name of Vishnu, the second member of the Triad, as also of Krishna, his avatar, is Hari.  Accepting the common etymology of Hari as meaning the taker away, Christian preachers have found an idea analogous to that of Christ, the Redeemer of men.  Then the similarity of the names, Christ and Krishna, chief avatar of Vishnu, could not escape notice, especially since Krishna, Christ-like, is the object of the enthusiastic devotion of the Hindu multitude.  In familiar speech, Krishna’s name is still further approximated to that of Christ, being frequently pronounced Krishta or Kishta.  In the middle of the nineteenth century the common opinion was that there was some historical connection between Krishna and Christ, and the idea lingers in the minds of both Hindus and Christians.  One is surprised to find it in a recent European writer, formerly a member of the Indian Civil Service.  “Surely there is something more,” he says, “than an analogy between Christianity and Krishna worship."[92]

Much has been made by the late Dr. K.M.  Banerjea, the most learned member of the Indian Christian Church of the nineteenth century, and something also by the late Sir M. Monier Williams, of a passage in the Rigveda (x. 90), which seems to point to Christ.  The passage speaks of Purusha (the universal spirit), who is also “Lord of Immortality,” and was “born in the beginning,” as having been “sacrificed by the Gods, Sadyas and Rishis,” and as becoming thereafter the origin of the various castes and of certain gods and animals.  A similar passage in a later book, the T[=a]ndya Br[=a]hmanas, declares that “the Lord of creatures, Prajapati, offered himself a sacrifice for the devas” (emancipated mortals or gods).  Of the parallelism between the self-sacrificing Prajapati, Lord of creatures, and the Second Person in the Christian Trinity, propitiator and agent in creation, we may hear Dr. Banerjea himself:  “The self-sacrificing Prajapati [Lord of creatures] variously described as Purusha, begotten in the beginning, as Viswakarma, the creator of all, is, in the meaning of his name and in his offices, identical with Jesus....  Jesus of Nazareth is the only person who has ever appeared in the world claiming the character and position of Prajapati, at the same time both mortal and immortal."[93]