Some more about Black Buddhas and Maitreya

Well, I guess I didn't have to knock myself out proving that the Maitreya Buddha is black. Here's a site about Black Buddhas :

It was the opinion of Sir William Jones, that a great nation of Blacks* formerly possessed the dominion of Asia, and held the seat of empire at Sidon. These must have been the people called by Mr. Maurice Cushites or Cuthites, described in Genesis; and the opinion that they were Blacks is corroborated by the translators of the Pentateuch, called the Seventy, constantly rendering the word Cush by Ethiopia.

The religion of Buddha, of India, is well known to have been very ancient. In the most ancient temples scattered throughout Asia, where his worship is yet continued, he is found black as jet, with the flat face, thick lips, and curly hair of the Negro. Several statues of him may be met with the East-India Company. There are two exemplars of him brooding on the face of the deep, upon a coiled serpent. To what time are we to allot this Negro ? He will be proved to have been prior to Cristna. He must have been prior to or contemporaneous with the black empire, supposed by Sir William Jones to have flourished at Sidon.

The religion of this Negro God is found, by the ruins of his temples and other circumstances, to have been spread over an immense extent of country, even to the remotest parts of Britain, and to have been professed by devotees inconceivably numerous. …

Mr. Wilsford, in his treatise on Egypt and the Nile, in the Asiatic Researches, informs us, that many very ancient statues of the God Buddha in India have crisp, curly hair, with flat noses and thick lips; and adds,

"nor can it be reasonably doubted, that a race of Negroes formerly had power and pre-eminence in India."

In my Essay on The Celtic Druids, I have shown, that a great nation called Celtæ, of whom the Druids were the priests, spread themselves almost over the whole earth, and are to be traced in their rude gigantic monuments from India to the extremities of Britain. Who these can have been but the early individuals of the black nation of whom we have been treating I know not, and in this opinion I am not singular. -
Godfrey Higgins.

Of course some of this may be Black History run amok, but much of it seems to be valid. The facial features on the Buddhas at the site are clearly African rather than Asian as the Buddhas I posted yesterday were. AND he makes no mention of Hislop although his research strikingly confirms Hislop's basic idea.

By the way, this same Black Buddha site also points out the wearing of leopard skins by the priests of African and Egyptian religion. Scroll down the page for a series of pictures showing this. Hislop also made much of the leopardskin as an emblem of these priesthoods as well as of Nimrod himself, whose name means "subduer of the leopard". (By the way, at this link, page 3, is a discussion connecting Nimrod with the Antichrist). I had also done a little research into the leopardskin priesthood myself and found it alive and well in Africa, but I couldn't think how it fits into my context here so I've not mentioned it. Since it was brought up in the context of the Black Buddha at least it is another validation of Hislop's study I'd like to mention, since nobody seems to want to give Hislop any credit for making these connections. The Black Buddha site also doesn't mention Nimrod as such, though it traces it all back to Cush or Ethiopia and a huge empire that spread out from Sidon, rather than Babylonia. We need Hislop to make the connection with Nimrod and with Babylonia.

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But I also want to post another Maitreya picture, from a monastery in Thikse, Ladakh, a little country west of Tibet and north of India. What particularly interests me about this Maitreya is the red palm of its hand, and the reason that interests me is that the hands of some of the black Krishna images are also red, while they are not red on lighter-skinned gods and goddesses, suggesting that the redness is conventional for depicting a black god or enlightened one. Since the statue is bronze the skin tone isn't portrayed (but I did find a bronze Maitreya where the face seemed to be darkened by some means or other. The image is so huge I can't post it here but maybe I'll go back and see if I can find a way to link to it at least).

I don't know any of this for sure of course, and I'm still not entirely sure what its importance is, except that of course it is fascinating to track down previously unrecognized connections and to find Alexander Hislop's study apparently borne out in these discoveries.

I did Google for information about the red palm but nothing came up. I find it suggestive nevertheless, and as I say above there is not really much need to keep trying to prove the African identity of the Buddhas after seeing that site anyway.

Here's the Thiksey Maitreya showing just the fingertips of the red palm of the right hand.

The figures on the headdress are also interesting. According to something I read yesterday that I now can't locate (such a great researcher I am), they represent deities, and each has its own skin color.












For comparison, the black Krishna with the red palms:














And for reference, a page of Maitreya information and images:

http://sangha.net/messengers/maitreya.htm