Note 11 — Chapter V

The design of the small chambers in the Pyramids of Egypt has been variously explained; some considering them as sepulchral depositories, and others as the adyta of the more sacred and retired mysteries. The truth possibly may be that each conjecture is correct, and that in the office of a sepulchral shrine, as well as in form, the Pyramid and the Dagoba exactly coincide.

Among the Mackenzie collection in the Library of the Honourable East India Company, is a volume of drawings representing the ruins of Amarawati, an ancient city on the Kishna river, in which the form of the interior of the Dagoba, or sepulchre of Buddha is amply illustrated.

Several circumstances and ceremonies in the religion of Buddha would seem to identify its origin, in a great measure, with that of ancient Egypt. The physiognomy, the form, and the stature of Buddha are as distinctly Ethiopic as they are different from those which characterize the various tribes which inhabit either the western or eastern parts of the Asiatic continent. That it is a religion foreign to Asia, the uncertainty which still exists with regard to the country or district which gave it birth would seem to render probable. The proofs which have been brought forward in favour of Ceylon, and of Magadha, would seem to rest upon very slender foundations. Several festivals in this religion bear a strong resemblance to the ceremonies performed by the ancient Egyptians on the rising of the Nile. That called Periharah is of this nature. The Pyramids of Egypt, are they not the prototype of the Dagobah, or Pra-cha-di? Instead of considering these stupendous monuments of human labour as the tombs of earthly kings, ought we not rather to regard them as owing their origin to religious motives? It is scarcely possible to believe that any other motive could induce men to undertake or to execute works of such magnitude. The small chambers found in the interior of some of them might have contained, or at least had been intended to contain relics, such as bones of their deity. This conjecture receives confirmation from Sir Everard Home’s account of those bones which he examined at the desire of Lieutenant-Colonel Fitzclarence, and which, when compared with the skeletons in the Hunterian Museum, were decidedly those of the Bos genus. These bones were found in the sarcophagus of the pyramid of Cephrenes. See Fitzclarence’s Route through India and Egypt to England, page 499. In addition it may be remarked, that Mnevis and Apis, the sacred bulls, were considered as emblems of the God of Justice, and that Dharma Rajah, or the King of Justice, is a very common appellative of Buddha.—Editor.