“Having repeated the plagiarized story, Diego de Couto, who seems to yield up with reluctance his curious notion that Gautama was Joshua, says:
“To this name (Budao) the Gentiles throughout all India have dedicated great and superb pagodas. With reference to this story, we have been diligent in inquiring if the ancient Gentiles of those parts had in their writings any knowledge of St. Josaphat who was converted by Balaam, and who in his legend is represented as the son of a great king of India, and who had just the same upbringing, with all the same particulars that we have recounted of the life of the Budao. And as I was traveling in the Isle of Salsette, and went to see that rare and admirable pagoda, which we call the Canara Pagoda (Kanhari Caves) made in a mountain, with many halls cut out of one solid rock, and inquiring of an old man about the work, what he thought as to who had made it, he told us that without doubt the work was made by order of the father of St. Josaphat to bring him up in seclusion, as the story tells. And as it informs us that he was the son of a great king in India, it may well be, as we have just said, that he was the Budao, of whom they relate such marvels.”
The Christian legend is taken, moreover, in most of its details, from the Ceylonese tradition. It is on this island that originated the story of young Gautama rejecting his father’s throne, and the king’s erecting a superb palace for him, in which he kept him half prisoner, surrounded by all the temptations of life and wealth. Marco Polo told it as he had it from the Ceylonese, and his version is now found to be a faithful repetition of what is given in the various Buddhist books. As Marco naively expresses it, Buddha led a life of such hardship and sanctity, and kept such great abstinence, “just as if he had been a Christian.” “Indeed”, he adds, “had he but been so, he would have been a great saint of our Lord Jesus Christ, so good and pure was the life he led.” To which pious apothegm his editor very pertinently remarks that “Marco is not the only eminent person who has expressed this view of Sakya-Muni’s life in such words.”
And in his turn, Professor Max Muller says: “And whatever we may think of the sanctity of saints, let those who doubt the right of Buddha to a place among them, read the story of his life as it is told in the Buddhistical canon. If he lived the life which is there described, few saints have a better claim to the title than Buddha; and no one either in the Greek or the Roman Church need be ashamed of having paid to his memory the honor that was intended for St. Josaphat, the prince, the hermit, and the saint.”
The Roman Catholic Church has never had so good a chance to Christianize all China, Tibet, and Tartary, as in the thirteenth century, during the reign of Kublai-Khan. It seems strange that they did not embrace the opportunity when Kublai was hesitating at one time between the four religions of the world, and, perhaps through the eloquence of Marco Polo, favored Christianity more than either Mahometanism, Judaism, or Buddhism. Marco Polo and Ramusio, one of his interpreters, tell us why. It seems that, unfortunately for Rome, the embassy of Marco’s father and uncle failed, because Clement IV., happened to die just at that very time. There was no Pope for several months to receive the friendly overtures of Kublai-Khan; and thus the one hundred Christian missionaries, invited by him, could not be sent to Tibet and Tartary.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 