“The common arguments adduced against the Jaïna claim, of having been the source of the restoration of ancient Buddhism, that the principle tenet of the latter religion is opposed to the belief of the Jaïnas is not a sound one. Buddhists, say our Orientalists, deny the existence of a Supreme Being; that Jaïnas admit one, but protest against the assumption that the “He” can ever interfere in the regulation of the universe. We have shown in the preceding chapter that the Buddhist do not deny any such thing. But if any disinterested scholar could study carefully the Jaïna literature, in their thousands of books preserved – or shall we say hidden – in Rajpootana, Jusselmere, at Patun, and other places; and especially if he could but gain access to the oldest of their sacred volumes, he would find a perfect identity of philosophical thought, if not of popular rites, between the Jaïnas and the Buddhists. The Adi-Buddha and Adinatha (or Adiswara) are identical in essence and purpose.
And now, if we trace the Jaïnas back, with their claims to the ownership of the oldest cave-temples (those superb specimens of Indian architecture and sculpture), and their records of an almost incredible antiquity, we can hardly refuse to view them in the light which they claim for themselves. We must admit, that in all probability they are the only true descendants of the primitive owners of old India, dispossessed by those conquering and mysterious hordes of white-skinned Brahmans whom, in the twilight of history, we see appearing at the first as wanderers in the valleys of Jumna and Ganges.
The books of the Srawacs – the only descendants of the Arhatas of earliest Jaïnas, the naked forest-hermits of the days of old, might throw some light, perhaps, on many a puzzling question. But will our European scholars, so long as they pursue their own policy, ever have access to the right volumes? We have our doubts about this. Ask any trustworthy Hindu how the missionaries have dealt with those manuscripts which unluckily fell into their hands, and then see if we can blame the natives for trying to save from desecration the “gods of their fathers”.
To maintain their ground Irenaeus and his school had to fight hard with the Gnostics. Such, also, was the lot of Eusebius, who found himself hopelessly perplexed to know how the Essenes should be disposed of. The ways and customs of Jesus and his apostles exhibited too close a resemblance to this sect to allow the fact to pass unexplained. Eusebius tried to make people believe that the Essenes were the first Christians. His efforts were thwarted by Philo Judeaeus, who wrote his historical account of the Essenes and described them with the minutest care, long before there had been appeared a single Christian in Palestine. But if there were no Christians, there were Christians long before the era of Christianity, and the Essenes belonged to the latter as well as to all other initiated brotherhoods, without even mentioning the Christnites of India. Lepsius shows that the word Nofre means Chrestos, “good”, and that one of the titles of Osiris, “Onnofre”, must be translated “the goodness of God made manifest.”
The worship of Christ was not universal at this early date”, explains Mackenzie, “by which I mean that Christolatry had not been introduced; but the worship of Chrestos – the Good Principle – had preceded it by many centuries, and even survived the general adoption of Christianity, as shown on monuments still in existence. Again, we have an inscription which is pre-Christian on an epitaphial tablet.
The meritorious strategems of the untrustworthy Eusebius thus proved lost labor. He was triumphantly detected by Basnage, who, says Gibbon, “examined with the utmost critical accuracy the curious treatise of Philo, which describes the Therapeutae”, and found that “by proving it was composed as early as the time of Augustus, he has demonstrated, in spite of Eusebius and a crowd of modern Catholics, that the Therapeutae, were neither Christians nor monks.””
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 