Buddhist etymology of our word "God"

[Daniel Hopkins]

Those who dispute the Buddhist etymology of God should be required to argue why their copied etymology jibes.



"The name of the Thautawar temple near Picarra is called Godimana, which may be read God-i-mund, or Got-i-mund, i.e. the place of God or Got; mund being the Thautawar name of a village or place, Godimana or Gotimana, a name of Buddha, was probably carried by the Goths into Europe, and from it they derived the name of the deity—Got or God.�

Here is another quote taken from the work of Reverend Henry Scadding:
“The same writer [Max Muller] says, ‘God was most likely an old heathen name of the Deity.’ Now we are acquainted with the old heathen names of the Deity among the northern peoples who make use of this word; and the nearest to it of these names is that of the Lombard and Westphalia Guodan. In the Germanic languages, the name appears in such forms as to show either that the initial g is not an essential part of the root, or that it marks the original presence of a letter similar to the Hebrew letter which might be retained as a broad vowel, a simple breathing, or a guttural. I hold to the latter opinion, and find the rendering by the broad vowel in Odin, Oden of the Scandinavian. Grimm connects Gwydion, son of Don, of the Welsh mythology, with Odin, making them the same person. It is hard to distinguish this personage from Aeddon, who is Buddwas, and who came from the region of Gwydion. Aeddon presents us with the same form of the root as Odin, while Gwydion is guttural, like Guodan. The prefix of the Coptic article to the vowel form would give some such word as Bodan or Boudan; but, with the aspirate, it would make the Maesogothic Vodans and the old Saxon Wuodan or Wodan, which the old High German, strictly in accordance with Grimm’s law, changes to Woutan. Then the final n, which so far has appeared in every form of our word, is an essential part of it. The Frisian Weda drops it, and it is wanting in the Welsh Aedd, in which we see the Danish Gud and the German Gott. Now this is the same as the Choda of the Persian, a language that has many remarkable points of resemblance to the Germanic tongues. The same word is found in the Sanskrit, and survives in the Hindustani Khuda. But the names of Buddha, which are by no means well understood, are simply names for God with the termination restored, not as n, but as m. These are Codam, Godama, or Gautama; and give us back again the Gotan and Goutan of the Teutonic dialects. A link of great importance is furnished by a name of Woden, Wegtam, the Wanderer, which preserves the initial g along with the softened form of the Coptic article, and gives the termination of Gautama. Buddha, different as it appears in every respect from the word with which it is often ignorantly joined, is in reality the same, having doubtless come into the Sanskrit through some other channel then that by which Gautama entered. In it, we find the final liquid wanting, the German w, in plain disregard for Grimm’s law, changed to b, and the Frisian Weda reproduced. In confirmation of this I may refer to the case of identity already established between the Germanic wot or wout and the Sanskrit budh, to perceive or know, of which the Welsh form is by no accidental coincidence gwyddoni. Thus in Buddha, Wotan and Gwydion we find not only the supreme god of the northern families of the Aryan stock, but also the symbol of knowledge among those different peoples.�
Others, such as Professor George Faber, suggested even a broader spread of the Buddha’s name and suggests that the Cuthites were Buddhists who returned home with the Jews after their Babylonian exile;

“In short, Cadmus, [also known as Etam] or Buddha was venerated from the extremity of Siam to the remote western isle of Ireland; for the Codom of Pegu, the Gautam of Ceylon, the Cadam of Phoenicia and Egypt, the Cadmus and Cadmilus of Boetia and Samothrace, and the Chadmel of the ancient Irish, were all one and the same character. I might mention various other places, where Cadmus was thought to have come in the course of his wanderings, such as Rhodes, Thera, Thasus, Eubea, Sparta, Attica, Lesbos, and Ionia: but I must not neglect to observe, that, while some bring him from Egypt or Phoenicia; others, preserving genuine tradition with greater accuracy, represent him as coming from Babylonia, the region whence also in their progress westward, the Phoenicians or Pali migrated into Palestine. This was the seat of the first empire of the Chasas or Cuthites under Nimrod, the centre whence the two primeval superstitions branched off in every direction. Here the worship of Cadam or Buddha commenced: and, in each country where they afterwards settled, the enterprising Shepherds of the Scuthic stock were always peculiarly devoted to it.�
The Historian Godfrey Higgins agreed with the previous, and added;
“But we must remember that the British Taranis, and the Gothic Woden, were both names of Buddha. In my Celtic Druids I have shown that the worship of Buddha is everywhere to be found—in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Hu, the great God of the Welsh, is called Buddwas; and they call their God Budd, the God of victory, the king who rises in light and ascends the sky.�—Before Jesus claimed to be “the light� and to return to the sky, the Buddhists record that the Buddha is a being of light that can fly through the air.

Others claim that the Buddha was a god to Greeks and Egyptians, among others:
“There was a Butus, or Buto of Egypt, a Battus of Cyrene, and a Boeotus of Greece�—James Mill, History of British India

Herodotus says that Battus received that name, or title, only after he became king of Cyrene. Cyrene is said to be the name of a mystical mountain consecrated by Apollo but appears to be a rendering of Cyrus-yan; the Greek form of the Sanskrit –yan is –ean.


“Who would leave the softer abodes of Asia for Germany, where nature yields nothing but deformity?�—Tacitus on the Goths, or Guthans, Jats, Geates, etc..