Everything about Gautama Buddha In Religions Other Than Buddhism totally explained
Gautama Buddha as viewed by other religions
Hinduism
Gautama Buddha is mentioned as an
Avatar of
Vishnu in the
Puranic texts of
Hinduism. In the
Bhagavata Purana he's twenty fourth of twenty five avatars, prefiguring a forthcoming final incarnation. If you rub his belly you get good luck. A number of
Hindu traditions portray Buddha as the most recent of ten principal avatars, known as the
"Dasavatara" (
Ten Incarnations of God).
Siddhartha Gautama's teachings deny the authority of the
Vedas and consequently [atleast atheistic] Buddhism is generally viewed as a
nāstika school (heterodox, literally "It isn't so") from the perspective of orthodox Hinduism.
However, while He was against the authority of the Vedas, he might not have been against the Vedas themself. Buddhist scholar Rahula Vipola wrote that the Buddha was trying to shed the true meaning of the Vedas. Buddha is said to be a knower of the Veda (vedajña) or of the Vedanta (vedântajña) (Sa.myutta, i. 168) and (
Sutta Nipâta, 463).
Taoism, Confucianism and Shinto
Some early Chinese Taoist-Buddhists thought the Buddha to be a reincarnation of
Lao Tzu.
In Japan, since one of the symbols of
Dainichi Nyorai (one of the non-historical buddhas of
Mahayana Buddhism) was the sun, many equated
Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess, with a previous reincarnation (bodhisattva) of Dainichi Nyorai.
Islam
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad proposed in a commentary on the
Qur'an that Siddhartha Gautama is the
prophet Dhū'l-Kifl referred to in Sura 21 and Sura 38 of the
Qur'an together with the Biblical characters
Ishmael,
Idris (
Enoch), and
Elisha. Azad suggested that the
Kifl in
Dhū'l-Kifl (
Ar: "possessor of a double portion") is an
Arabic pronunciation of
Kapilavastu, where the Buddha spent his early life. Azad did not, however, provide direct historical evidence to support his speculation. According to other ancient Muslim scholars
Dhū'l-Kifl was either a righteous man and not a prophet, or he was the prophet called
Ezekiel in the
Bible.
Mirza Tahir Ahmad, in his book
Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth, argues that Buddha was indeed a prophet of God who preached Monotheism. He quotes from the inscriptions on Ashoka's stupas which mention "Isa'na" which means God. He quotes, "'Thus spake Devanampiya Piyadasi: "Wherefore from this very hour, I've caused religious discourses to be preached, I've appointed religious observances that mankind, having listened thereto, shall be brought to follow in the right path, and give glory to God* (Is'ana)."
Christianity and Judaism
The Greek legend of "
Barlaam and Ioasaph", sometimes mistakenly attributed to the 7th century
John of Damascus but actually written by the
Georgian monk
Euthymius in the 11th century, was ultimately derived, through a variety of intermediate versions (
Arabic and
Georgian) from the life story of the Buddha. The king-turned-monk Ioasaph (Georgian
Iodasaph, Arabic
Yūdhasaf or
Būdhasaf: Arabic "b" could become "y" by
duplication of a dot in handwriting) ultimately derives his name from the Sanskrit
Bodhisattva, the name used in Buddhist accounts for Gautama before he became a Buddha. Barlaam and Ioasaph were placed in the Greek Orthodox calendar of
saints on
26 August, and in the West they were entered as "
Barlaam and Josaphat" in the Roman Martyrology on the date of
27 November.
The story was translated into Hebrew in the Middle Ages as "Ben-Hamelekh Vehanazir" ("The Prince and the
Nazirite"), and is widely read by Jews to this day.
Bahá'í views
In the
Bahá'í Faith, Buddha is classified as one of the
Manifestations of God which is a title for a major prophet in the Bahá'í Faith. Similarly, the
Prophet of the Bahá'í Faith,
Bahá'u'lláh, is believed by Bahá'ís to be the
Fifth Buddha, among other prophetic stations.
Further Information
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