Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 09-11-2011, 09:10 AM

I ran across this, which may throw some light on the presumed connection between Christ and Krishna.

From a review of HOLY WAR: How Vasco da Gama’s Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations (or via: amazon.co.uk) By Nigel Cliff

Holy War

Quote:

. . . at the time, the Indian Ocean was crisscrossed by Muslim vessels, and it was Muslim merchants, backed up by powerful local rulers, who controlled the trade routes and had done so for centuries. Da Gama sought to break this maritime dominance; even stronger was his ambition to discover the Christians of India and their “long-lost Christian king,” the legendary Prester John, and by forging an alliance with them, to unite Christianity and destroy Islam.

The ambition was not entirely fanciful; there were Christian communities in India, founded according to legend by St. Thomas the Apostle. Da Gama couldn’t tell an Indian Christian from a cassowary, but on this occasion, ignorance was truly bliss. When his ships finally moored at Calicut, near the southern tip of the subcontinent, he and his crew rejoiced to learn that there were indeed many Christians long settled there. As Cliff recounts, the “landing party had assumed that Hindu temples were Christian churches, they had misconstrued the Brahmins’ invocation of a local deity as veneration of the Virgin Mary and they had decided the Hindu figures on the temple walls were outlandish Christian saints.” True, “the temples were also crammed with animal gods and sacred phalluses,” but these surely reflected exotic local Christian practices. What mattered to the Portuguese was that these long-lost Indian Christians permitted images in their “churches.” Thus, whatever their idiosyncrasies, they could not be Muslims. The Portuguese joined in the chants and invocations with gusto. When the Hindu priests chanted “Krishna,” the Portuguese heard it as “Christ.”

premjan · 09-11-2011, 09:15 AM

Jesus is sort of like what Hindus would call an incarnation of Vishnu.

mountainman · 09-12-2011, 06:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by premjan

Jesus is sort of like what Hindus would call an incarnation of Vishnu.

I'd be interested in what Vivekananda thought about this question, since the following appears to be derived from his autobiography ....

Quote:

While travelling from England to India in January 1897, on board the ship Prinz-Regent Luitpold, the venerable sage Vivekananda told Nivedita about his dream of an old bearded man named Therapeutae, (Theraputra - son [putra] of an old monk [thera]) who had asked: "Do ye come to effect our restoration? I am one of the ancient order of Therapeutae The truths preached by us have been given out by Christians as taught by Jesus; but for the matter of that, there was no personality by the name of Jesus ever born".

- Extracted from Vivekananda's autobiography. Cited by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy; and Narasingha Prosad Sil

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09-11-2011, 09:15 AM	#2
premjan Obsessed Contributor Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: NJ Posts: 61,538	Jesus is sort of like what Hindus would call an incarnation of Vishnu.

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