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'Lord, fearest thou not death?' But he drove her away. The two others also he drove away as they had no charm of sufficient power to entice him. Then Mara assembled his generals, and said, 'Listen, ye Maras, that know not sorrow! Now shall I make war on the Prince, that man without equal. I dare not attack him in face, but I will circumvent him by approaching on the north side. Assume then all manner of shapes, and use your mightiest powers, that he may flee in terror.'

Having taken on fearful shapes, raising awful sounds, headed by Mara himself, who had assumed immense size, and mounted his elephant Girimaga, a thousand miles in height, they advanced; but they dare not enter beneath the shade of the holy Bo-tree. They frightened away, however, the Lord's guardian angels, and he was left alone. Then seeing the army approaching from the north, he reflected, Long have I devoted myself to a life of mortification, and now I am alone, without a friend to aid me in this contest. Yet may I escape the Maras, for the virtue of my transcendent merits will be my army.' 'Help me,' he cried, 'ye thirty Barami! ye powers of accumulated merit, ye powers of Almsgiving, Morality, Relinquishment, Wisdom, Fortitude, Patience, Truth, Determination, Charity, and Equanimity, help me in my fight with Mara!' The Lord was seated on his jewelled throne (the same that had been formed of the grass on which he sat), and Mara with his army exhausted every resource of terror-monstrous beasts, rain of missiles and burning ashes, gales that blew down mountain peaks-to inspire him with fear; but all in vain! Nay, the burning ashes were changed to flowers as they fell.

'Come down from thy throne,' shouted the evil-formed one; come down, or I will cut thine heart into atoms!' The Lord replied, 'This jewelled throne was created by

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the power of my merits, for I am he who will teach all men the remedy for death, who will redeem all beings, and set them free from the sorrows of circling existence.'

Mara then claimed that the throne belonged to himself, and had been created by his own merits; and on this armed himself with the Chakkra, the irresistible weapon of Indra, and Wheel of the Law. Yet Buddha answered, 'By the thirty virtues of transcendent merits, and the five alms, I have obtained the throne. Thou, in saying that this throne was created by thy merits, tellest an untruth, for indeed there is no throne for a sinful, horrible being such as thou art.'

Then furious Mara hurled the Chakkra, which clove mountains in its course, but could not pass a canopy of flowers which rose over the Lord's head.

And now the great Being asked Mara for the witnesses. of his acts of merit by virtue of which he claimed the throne. In response, Mara's generals all bore him witness. Then Mara challenged him, 'Tell me now, where is the man that can bear witness for thee?' The Lord reflected, Truly here is no man to bear me witness, but I will call on the earth itself, though it has neither spirit nor understanding, and it shall be my witness. Stretching forth his hand, he thus invoked the earth: 'O holy Earth! I who have attained the thirty powers of virtue, and performed the five great alms, each time that I have performed a great act have not failed to pour water on thee. Now that I have no other witness, I call upon thee to give thy testimony!'

The angel of the earth appeared in shape of a lovely woman, and answered, 'O Being more excellent than angels or men! it is true that, when you performed your great works, you ever poured water on my hair.' And with these words she wrung her long hair, and from it

184

AHRIMAN TEMPTS ZOROASTER.

issued a stream, a torrent, a flood, in which Mara and his hosts were overturned, their insignia destroyed, and King Mara put to flight, amid the loud rejoicings of angels.

Then the evil one and his generals were conquered not only in power but in heart; and Mara, raising his thousand arms, paid reverence, saying, 'Homage to the Lord, who has subdued his body even as a charioteer breaks his horses to his use! The Lord will become the omniscient Buddha, the Teacher of angels, and Brahmas, and Yakkhas (demons), and men. He will confound all Maras, and rescue men from the whirl of transmigration!'

The menacing powers depicted as assailing Sakya Muni appear only around the infancy of Zoroaster. The interview of the latter with Ahriman hardly amounts to a severe trial, but still the accent of the chief temptation both of Buddha and Christ is in it, namely, the promise of worldly empire. It was on one of those midnight journeys through Heaven and Hell that Zoroaster saw Ahriman, and delivered from his power 'one who had done both good and evil.'1 When Ahriman met Zoroaster's gaze, he cried, 'Quit thou the pure law; cast it to the ground; thou wilt then be in the world all that thou canst desire. Be not anxious about thy end. At least, do not destroy my subjects, O pure Zoroaster, son of Poroscharp, who art born of her thou hast borne!' Zoroaster answered, 'Wicked Majesty it is for thee and thy worshippers that Hell is prepared, but by the mercy of God I shall bury your work with shame and ignominy.'

In the account of Matthew, Satan begins his temptation of Jesus in the same way and amid similar circumstances to those we find in the Siamese legends of Buddha. It occurs in a wilderness, and the appeal is to hunger. The

1 Some say Djemschid, others Guenschesp, a warrior sent to hell for beating the fire.

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temptation of Buddha, in which Mara promises the empire of the world, is also repeated in the case of Satan and Jesus (Fig. 6). The menaces, however, in this case, are

Fig. 6.-TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (Lucas van Leyden).

relegated to the infancy, and the lustful temptation is absent altogether. Mark has an allusion to his being in

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CRITICISM OF STRAUSS.

the wilderness forty days with the beasts,' which may mean that Satan 'drove' him into a region of danger to inspire fear. In Luke we have the remarkable claim of Satan that the authority over the world has been delivered to himself, and he gives it to whom he will; which Jesus does not deny, as Buddha did the similar claim of Mara. As in the case of Buddha, the temptation of Jesus ends his fasting; angels bring him food (diŋkóvovv avт probably means that), and thenceforth he eats and drinks, to the scandal of the ascetics.

The essential addition in the case of Jesus is the notable temptation to try and perform a crucial act. Satan quotes an accredited messianic prophecy, and invites Jesus to test his claim to be the predicted deliverer by casting himself from the pinnacle of the Temple, and testing the promise that angels should protect the true Son of God. Strauss,1 as it appears to me, has not considered the importance of this in connection with the general situation. 'Assent,' he says, 'cannot be withheld from the canon that, to be credible, the narrative must ascribe nothing to the devil inconsistent with his established cunning. Now, the first temptation, appealing to hunger, we grant, is not ill-conceived; if this were ineffectual, the devil, as an artful tactician, should have had a yet more alluring temptation at hand; but instead of this, we find him, in Matthew, proposing to Jesus the neck-breaking feat of casting himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple-a far less inviting miracle than the metamorphosis of the stones. This proposition finding no acceptance, there follows, as a crowning effort, a suggestion which, whatever might be the bribe, every true Israelite would instantly reject with abhorrence-to fall down and worship the devil.'

1 Leben Jesu, ii. 54.

The close resemblance between the trial of Israel in the wilderness and this of Jesus is drawn in his own masterly way.