Now for a little while a child, and now
    An amorous youth; then for a season turned
    Into the wealthy householder:  then stripped
    Of all his riches, with decrepit limbs
    And wrinkled frame man creeps towards the end
    Of life’s erratic course and like an actor
    Passes behind Death’s curtain out of view.

The resemblance of this to the well-known lines in As You Like It, “All the world’s a stage,” etc., is obvious, and it is a real resemblance, although the point emphasized by Bhartrihari is that man leaves the world like an actor who at the end of the piece slips behind the curtain, which formed the background of an Indian stage.  But, great as is the resemblance, I imagine that no one would maintain that it has any other origin than that a fairly obvious thought occurred to two writers in different times and countries and suggested similar expressions.

Now many parallels between the Buddhist and Christian scriptures—­the majority as it seems to me of those collected by Edmunds and Anesaki—­belong to this class.[1119] One of the most striking is the passage in the Vinaya relating how the Buddha himself cared for a sick monk who was neglected by his colleagues and said to these latter, “Whosoever would wait upon me let him wait on the sick."[1120] Here the resemblance to Matthew xxv. 40 and 45 is remarkable, but I do not imagine that the writer of the Gospel had ever heard or read of the Buddha’s words.  The sentiment which prompted them, if none too common, is at least widespread and is the same that made Confucius show respect and courtesy to the blind.  The setting of the saying in the Vinaya and in the Gospel is quite different:  the common point is that one whom all are anxious to honour sees that those around him show no consideration to the sick and unhappy and reproves them in the words of the text, words which admit of many interpretations, the simplest perhaps being “I bid you care for the sick:  you neglect me if you neglect those whom I bid you to cherish.”

But many passages in Buddhist and Christian writings have been compared where there is no real parallel but only some word or detail which catches the attention and receives an importance which it does not possess.  An instance of this is the so-called parable of the prodigal son in the Lotus Sutra, Chapter iv, which has often been compared with Luke xv. 11 ff.  But neither in moral nor in plot are the two parables really similar.  The Lotus maintains that there are many varieties of doctrine of which the less profound are not necessarily wrong, and it attempts to illustrate this by not very convincing stories of how a father may withhold the whole truth from his children for their good.  In one story a father and son are separated for fifty years and both move about:  the father becomes very rich, the son poor.  The son in his wanderings comes upon his father’s palace and recognizes no one.  The father, now