INDEX. (continued 2)

[112] Chap. iv. p. 48.

[113] Syncellus accordingly spells Budh, even in the singular number, with an F; and Josephus, from the Scriptures, additionally commutes the final d into t. We shall see more inflections anon.

“φουδ εξ ου τρωρλοδιται.”—Syncellus, p. 47.

“Fut was the founder of the nations in Libya (Africa), and the people were from him called Futi” (Josephus, Ant. lib. i. c. 7).

[114] Vide Plutarch, de Isi et Osiri.

[115] Eas, in Irish, also means the moon.

[116] Literally the Son of the Sun, and should properly be written O’Siris, like any of our Irish names, such as O’Brien—and meaning sprung from.

[117] These are the indexes for which Mr. O’Connor could find no other use than that of dials!

[118] “Les mystères de l’antiquité nous sont demeurés presqu’interdicts; les vestiges de ses monuments manquent le plus souvent de sens pour nous, parceque, de siècle en siècle, les savants ont voulu leur attribuer un sens” (De Sacy).

[119] To this declaration of Mr. Heeren, as I cannot now bestow upon it a separate inquiry, I must be allowed briefly to intimate that if such be all that he “knows with certainty” on the topic, he had better not know it at all, for, with the exception of that part which avows the general ignorance concerning its rise and progress, as well as its expulsion by the Brahmins from the East, all the rest is inaccurate. In the first place it does not “flourish” at present in Ceylon. It has sunk and degenerated there into an unmeaning tissue of hideous demonology, if we may judge by a reference to a large work published here some time ago, by Mr. Upham, which is as opposite from real Budhism as truth is from falsehood. In the second place its tenets were not “in direct opposition to those of the Brahmins,” any more than those of the Catholics are from the tenets of the Protestants; yet have the latter contrived to oust the Catholics, their predecessors, as the Brahmins did the still more antecedent Budhists. And this will be sufficient to neutralise that insinuation which would imply that Budha was an innovator and a sectarian, until I show by and by that the reverse was the fact.

[120] The Jews themselves, so early as the time of Moses, adopted the practice as an act of thanksgiving.

“And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her, with timbrels, and with dances.

“And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea” (Exod. xv. 20, 21).

[121] The origin of this word shall be explained hereafter.

[122] “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John xii. 24).

[123] We are told—says Sir John Malcolm, in a Persian work of celebrity, the Attash Kuddah—that a person dreamt he saw Ferdosi composing, and an angel was guiding his pen: he looked near, and discovered that he had just written the above couplet, in which he so emphatically pleads for humanity to the smallest insect of the creation.

[124] Another Almoner was an epithet they assigned to God, which even the Brahmins retained after they had seceded from them, as may be seen in Wilkins’ translation of a Sanscrit inscription on a pillar near Buddal, published in the first volume of the Asiatic Researches. This inscription, I must observe, as it escaped that learned Orientalist to perceive it, as it equally did the acumen of the president, his annotator, is, with the column on which it appears, nothing else than a record of the triumphs obtained by a hero of the Brahminical party in exterminating the Budhists. The frequent allusion to the “lustful elephants,”—such as “whose piles of rocks reek with the juice exuding from the heads of intoxicated elephants,”—and “Although the prospect hidden by the dust arising from the multitude of marching force was rendered clear from the earth being watered by constant and abundant streams flowing from the heads of lustful elephants of various breeds,”—and still more that beautiful and pathetic sentiment which occurs in the original of the preceding paper, omitted by Mr. Wilkins, but supplied by the president, viz. “by whom having conquered the earth as far as the ocean, it was left as being unprofitably seized—so he declared; and his elephants weeping saw again in the forests their kindred whose eyes were full of tears,”—make this a demonstration: yet would the beauty of the image be lost to some of my readers, were I not to explain that the Budhists treated with a sort of deified reverence the tribe of elephants, which now bewailed their extermination as above described.

[125] From Bavana was named the village of Banaven, in Scotland, whither some of the Tuath-de-danaans had repaired after their retreat from Ireland—a very appropriate commemoration of their recent subversion; and a particular locality within its district, where St. Patrick was born, was called Nemph-Thur, that is, the holy tower, corresponding to Budh-Nemph, i.e. the holy Lingam, from the circumstance of there having been erected on it one of those temples which time has since effaced. Tor-Boileh upon the Indus, which means the Tower of Baal, is in exact consonance with Nemph-Thur and with Budh-Nemph; and there can be no question but that there also stood one of those edifices, as the ruins even of a city are perceptible in the neighbourhood. Mr. Wilford, however, would translate this last name, Tor-Boileh, by Black Beilam: and, to keep this colour in countenance, he invents a new name for a place called Peleiam, “which,” he says, “appears to have been transposed from Ac Beilam, or the White Beilam, sands or shores and now called ‘Hazren.’” I am not surprised at the discredit brought upon etymology.

[126] And this, too, after he had admitted that “the name is certainly of the pure Iberno-Celtic dialect, and must have had some meaning founded in the nature of things in its original and radical formation.”

[127] All our ancient swords were made of brass.

[128] Gibbon, vol. ii. p. 527, 4to, 1781.

[129] Histoire d’Irelande, vol. i. cap. 7.

[130] Avienus lived in the fourth century.

[131] “Melius (Hiberniæ quam Britanniæ) aditus—portusque per commercia et negociatores cogniti” (Tacit. vit. Agricol. 499).

[132] “Plus in metum quan in spem.”

[133] “ὥσπερ και των Βρεττανων τους οικοντας την ονομαζομενην Ιριν.” Diod Sic. lib. v.

[134] In proof of this, I aver that I could go through the whole range of their language, and prove that in its fabrication, so punctilious was their regard to euphony, they scrupled not to cancel or otherwise obnebulate the essential and significant letters of the primitive words; so that, in a few generations, their descendants were unable to trace the true roots of their compounds. Hence that lamentable imperfection which pervades all our lexicons and dictionaries, and which can never be rectified but by the revisal of the whole system, and that by a thorough adept in the language of the Irish.

[135] I say strangled, because Irin is a compound word embracing within its compass two distinct parts, of which Iris could give but the spirit of one.

[136] “Iren perrexit ut et aliorum Doctorum sententias in philosophicis atque divinis litteris investigator curiosus exquireret” (Vita Gildæ, cap. 6).

[137] Lib. x. Anno 1098.

[138] Modern writers upon Persia, who would refine upon the matter, have perverted this word to Pehlivi; but look you into the early numbers of the Asiatic Researches, and there you will find it spelled as above.

[139] Besides, to speak accurately, this is not a western country at all, or only so relatively to Britain, Gaul, and that particular line.

[140] Collect. de Reb. Hib. vol. iv.

[141] Antiq. Research. Pers. vol. i. p. 137.

[142] If I have taken a wrong view of the professor’s phraseology, I shall feel most happy to be set right; but I submit to the critic whether I am not justified in understanding him as I do.

[143] To be met with at a place called Tauk-e-Bostan. Silvestre de Sacy, a member of the Institute at Paris, had made the following translation of it, which is divided into two parts.

The first:—“This figure is that of a worshipper of Hormuzd, or God; the excellent Shahpoor; king of kings; of Iran and An-Iran; a celestial germ of a heavenly race; the son of the adorer of God; the excellent Hormuzd; a king of kings; of Iran and An-Iran; a celestial germ of a heavenly race; grandson of the excellent Narses; king of kings.”

The second:—“This figure is that of a worshipper of Hormuzd, or God; the excellent Varaham; king of kings; king of Iran and An-Iran; a celestial germ of a heavenly race; son of the adorer of God; the excellent Shapoor; king of kings; of Iran and An-Iran; a celestial germ of a heavenly race; grandson of the excellent Hormuzd; king of kings.”

[144] This An, the original name for country, was modified afterwards, according to clime and dialect, into tan, as in Aqui-tan-ia, Brit-tan-ia, Mauri-tan-ia, etc.; and into stan, as in Curdi-stan, Fardi-stan, Hindu-stan, etc.

[145] From this was formed the English word tower, the very idea remaining unchanged. As was also the English word bud, meaning the first shoot of a plant, a germ, from the Irish budh, i.e. the organ of male energy.

[146] The present bleak and sterile aspect of this region militates nothing against this view, when we consider the thousand alterations which it has undergone, under the thousand different tribes that have consecutively possessed it.

[147] From Ir or Eer, sacred, and an, a land.

[148] From Ir or Eer, sacred, and in, an island.

[149] Iran or Irin, i.e. Eeran or Eerin.

[150] Each of these three preceding words means religion or revelation. And from them Era, denoting a period of time,—which with the ancients was a sacred reckoning,—has been so denominated; as well as Eric, which, in law phraseology, indicates a certain penalty attachable to certain crimes, and equivalent to Deodand, or a religious restitution—all Irish.

[151] I mean the “Græci vetustissimi,” not the “Græculi esurientes.”

[152] Namely, Ivernia:—u, v, and b are commutable.

[153] Should you hesitate as to this mode of accounting for the letter b, I can show you that the Greeks spelled Albion indifferently with or without a b; as they indifferently used b or v in one of the above names for Ireland; for instance—

Ἄι Βρετανιδες ειϛι δυο νησοι, Ουερνία και Αλουιον, ητοι Βερνια καὶ Αλβιων Eustath. ad Dion. Perieg.

[154] It is only the date, however, that I will share with any one. The derivation of the word and its true exposition are exclusively my own.

[155] “Quod nomen ob beati solum ingenium, in quo nullum animal venenosum vitale, facile assentior attributum” (Ogyg. pt. i. c. 21). So gratifying, however, has this been to the obsequious wisdom of subsequent historians (?), as to be echoed from one to the other with the most commendable fidelity. “O imitatores, servum pecus!”

[156] Pronounced Fiodhvadh—copied literally from the old manuscripts.

[157] This corresponds to Ir-an, the Sacred Land.

[158] This answers to Ir-in, the Sacred Island.

[159] The reader will see that, in quoting Dr. Keating, I do so from no respect for his discrimination or sagacity. Whenever he has attempted to exert either, in the way of comment or deduction, he has invariably erred: fortunately he has offered none in this instance. Yet is his book a most valuable compilation; and I now cull out of it those three names, as one would a casket of jewels from a lumber-room.

[160] This Farragh, otherwise Phearragh, is the Peor of the Scriptures, and the Priapus of the Greeks.

[161] “Priapus, si physice consideretur idem est ac sol; ejusque lux primogenia unde vis omnis seminatrix” (Diod. Sic. lib. i.). See also Num. xxv. 4, where you will see that “Peor” remotely meant the sun.

[162] I shall not trouble myself in reciting the absurd attempts that have been heretofore made to expound this word: it is enough to say that they were all wrong.

[163] The motto, also, of this family, viz., Lamh laider a-Boo, i.e. “The strong arm from Boo,” now changed to Vigueur du dessus, is in keeping with the same idea.

[164] This is the mere utterance of an historical transaction without reference to sect, creed, party, or politics. No feelings of bitterness mingle therein. The author disclaims all such, as much as he would depreciate them in others.

[165] In the library of Trinity College, Dublin, are several such, collected in the beginning of last century, by Lhuyd, author of the Archæologia, and restored by Sir John Seabright, at the instigation of Edmund Burke. I am credibly informed also, that there have been lately discovered in the Library at Copenhagen certain documents relating to our antiquities, taken away by the Danes after their memorable defeat at Clontarf, by King Brian, A.D. 1014. Lombard has already asserted the same; and that the King of Denmark entreated Queen Elizabeth to send him some Irishman, who could transcribe them; that Donatus O’Daly, a learned antiquarian, was selected for the purpose, but that his appointment was afterwards countermanded, for political reasons.

There are, besides, in mostly all the public libraries of Europe—without adverting to those which are detained in the Tower of London—divers Irish manuscripts, presented by the various emigrants, who from time to time have been obliged to fly their country, to seek among strangers that shelter which they were denied at home; taking with them, as religious heirlooms, those hereditary relics of their pedigree and race.

One of the most beautiful and pathetic pieces of Irish poetry remaining, written by Macleog, private secretary to Brian, after the demise of that monarch, and beginning with this expression of his sorrow: “Oh! Cencoradh (the name of his patron’s favourite palace), where is Brian?” was picked up in the Netherlands, in 1650, by Fergar O’Gara, an Augustinian friar, who fled from Ireland in the iron days of Cromwell.

[166] I rejoice to state, that the present administration, under the benign direction of our patriot King, have resolved, so far as in them lies, to atone for former depredators. There is now a vigorous revisal of those documents going on, with a view, as I understand, to their immediate publication.

[167] The antiquarian luminaries of the Royal Irish Academy would fain make out that this was a Christian warrior. Their high priest has lately proclaimed the fact, in their “collective wisdom.” It is astonishing how fond they have suddenly become for the memory of the monks; they would now father everything like culture in the country upon them. It used not to have been so!

[168] This image was found under the root of a tree dug up in Roscommon. It is about the size of the drawing; is made of brass, once gilt; the gilding, however, now almost worn off; and may be seen in the Museum of Trinity College, Dublin.

[169] Major Archer’s Travels in Upper India, vol. i. pp. 383, 384. Lond. 1833.

[170] So the “collective wisdom,” in the true spirit of Christian restitution and penitential contrition, have lately pronounced him! It is delightful to see this solicitous zeal with which, when it suits a private purpose, they cherish the memory of the monks, being no longer in the way of their secular perquisites: but if the poor monks could speak, or send a voice from the tomb, it would be to say that they did not choose to be encumbered with such meretricious flattery; and that, having laid no claim to those relics, or to the towers which they decorated, during their lifetime, they now in death must repudiate the ascription. “Timeo Danaas et dona ferentes,” would be their answer.

[171] Asiatic Researches, vol. vi.; where it will be observed that the Doctor was not writing for me. He did not even suspect the existence of this figure. It is, like the preceding one, of bronze.

[172] The Egyptian sovereign assumed this title, as the highest that language and imagination could bestow. It signifies literally the act of copulation, of which it would represent him as presiding genius—the source whence all pleasure and happiness can flow—and is but faintly re-echoed in the Macedo-Syriac regal epithet of Ευεργετης, “Benefactor,” or even that by which we designate our king as the fountain of goodness. There being no such letter as ph in the ancient alphabets, all those words, viz. Pheor, Pharaoh, and Pharagh, should properly be spelled Feor, Faraoh, and Faragh.

[173] Gen. xlvi. 34.

[174] “On the fifteenth day of the first month every year. Every person is obliged, on the evening of that day, to set out a lantern before his door, and these are of various sizes and prices, according to the different circumstances of those to whom they belong. During this festival, they have all sorts of entertainments, such as plays, balls, assemblies, music, dancing, and the lanterns are filled with a vast number of wax candles, and surrounded with bonfires.”

[175] Barker.—The same is mentioned by Captain Burr, in reference to the Indian followers who had attended him to the temple of Isis.

[176] Mr. Greaves’s diagonal, in proportion to his base of 694 feet, is 991 feet nearly; the half of which is 495½ feet, for the height of the Pyramid; for as the radius is to the tangent of 45°, so is half the diameter to half the diagonal, or 7 to 10, or 706 to 1000. Say, 7 : 10 :: 694 : ⁹⁹¹⁄2 = 495½.—Dissertation upon the Pyramids.

[177] Schindl.

[178] Gen. xlvii.

[179] Hist. Christ. des Indes, p. 429.

[180] Lib. ii. p. 4.

[181] πυρ, generally rendered fire, is not so, however, in the true import of the word, but the Sun; fire is only a secondary sense of it.

[182] Barker.

[183] Ibid.

[184] Gen. xlvi. 34.

[185] Ex. vii. 11, etc., and 2 Tim. iii. 8.

[186] America also has had her ancient pageantry. Antonio de Solis gives the following description of the Mexican shrine:—“The site of that temple devoted to the worship of the Sun, and its altar for human sacrifices, was a large square environed by walls, cloisters, and gates; in the centre was raised a high tower of a pyramidical form, broad at the base, and narrowed towards the top, having four equal sides in a sloping direction; in one of which was a flight of one hundred and fifty steps to the top, covered with the finest marble, with a square marble pavement, guarded with a balustrade: in the centre stood a large black stone, in manner of an altar, placed near the idol. In the front of this tower, and at a convenient distance from its base, stood a high altar of solid masonry, ascended by thirty steps: in the middle of it was placed a large stone, on which they slaughtered the numerous human victims devoted for sacrifice; the outside being set with stakes and bars, on which were fixed human sculls.”

[187] The regular pyramid is a section of the cube, whose altitude is equal to half the diameter of the base, and is contained within a semicircle. The great pyramid is not of this precise order; its height or altitude being found more than half the diameter of its base. A second order is that whose altitude is equal to half the diagonal of the base, and is also bounded and contained within a semicircle; and consequently, if the diagonal be given at 1000, the altitude will be 500: but the true height of the Egyptian pyramid being determined at less than half its diagonal, is therefore found to be not exactly of this order, but nearly approaching to it, and probably aimed at in the original design, though failing in the execution.—Dissertation upon the Pyramids.

[188] Astronomy began very early to be cultivated among the Egyptians; and to them is attributed the discovery of the magnitude of the solar year, or, as it is distinguished, the Egyptian year of 365 days; which discovery appears to be noticeable, and memorialised in the construction of their Great Pyramid. The ancient measure of length being the cubit, and that measure being determined common with the Hebrews and Egyptians, as nearly as Dr. Cumberland could determine it, and reduced to English measure, a certain standard is obtained: but we find also another, called the longer cubit, to have obtained, on which we may with equal propriety calculate the measures of the Egyptian Pyramid, on which to infer the number of days contained in the solar year; the measures of the base of the Great Pyramid being found, if not exactly, yet nearly approximating to it.—Dissertation upon the Pyramids.

[189] I have not the least doubt but the ancient Egyptians measured by the cubit, whatever it then was; that the number of cubits was designedly fixed upon by them in laying the base of the Pyramid; and that if we divide the ascertained sum of 752 feet by 2, the quotient will be 376, which is a number exceeding 365 by 11: consequently, if we estimate their ancient cubit at 2 feet ⁷⁄10 of an inch, that measure will be ascertained, and found to approximate nearly to the longer Hebrew cubit; and so will the measures of the Pyramid be found to agree with the number of days in the solar year.—Dissertation upon the Pyramids.

[190] Then Major Fitzclarence, March 2, 1818.

[191] Asiatic Researches.

[192] Scientific Tourist through Ireland, p. 33.

[193] Usher’s Primord, c. xvii. p. 846.

[194] Journal, pp. 21, 23.

[195] Neither can I, with him, restrict their object to Tombs alone; their Phallic shape bespeaks another allusion; as does the style of architecture indicate an affinity of descent, though not an identity of design with that of our Towers.

[196] In his treatise, De Deâ Syriâ.

[197] Of this distant adoration we may still see traces in the practice of the Irish peasantry, almost preferring to say their prayers outside the precincts of the chapel, or mass-house, than within it, unconsciously derived from this service of the Afrion, or benediction-house, i.e. the Round Towers.

[198] The Ghabres to this day chew a leaf of it in their mouths, while performing their religious duties round the sacred fire.

[199] Those are what Montmorency would fain make out to have been roses imported from the Vatican.

[200] A similar sacrifice is described by Major Archer as still practised in the mountains of Upper India, which he himself witnessed. “An unfortunate goat,” says he, “lean and emaciated, was brought as an offering to the deities; but so poor in flesh was he that no crow would have waited his death in hopes of a meal from his carcass.”

[201] “Round the tie or umbrella at the top (of the Dagobs at Ceylon) are suspended a number of small bells, which with these form tees of a great quantity of smaller pagodas that surround the quatine, being set in motion by the wind, keep up a constant tinkling, but not unpleasing sound” (Coleman).

The temples of Budh in the Burmese empire are also pyramidical, the top always crowned with a gilt umbrella of iron filagree, hung round with bells.—“The tie or umbrella is to be seen on every sacred building that is of a spiral form; the rising and consecration of this last and indispensable appendage is an act of high religious solemnity, and a season of festivity and relaxation. The present king bestowed the tie that covers Shoemadoo: it was made at the capital. Many of the principal nobility came down from Ummerapoora to be present at the ceremony of its elevation. The circumference of the tie is fifty-six feet; it rests on an iron axis fixed in the building, and is further secured by large chains strongly riveted to the spire. Round the lower rim of the tie are appended a number of bells, which agitated by the wind make a continual jingling” (Symes).

[202] “It is remarked that in China they have no pyramids, but pagodas raised by galleries, one above another, to the top: the most celebrated of these is that called the Porcelain Tower, in Nankin, said to be two hundred feet high, and forty feet at the base, built in an octagonal form. These pagodas seem to have been designed for altars of incense, raised to their aërial deities, with which to appease them; and their hanging bells, with their tintillations to drive away the demons lest they should, by noxious and malignant winds and tempests, disturb their serene atmosphere and afflict their country” (Dissertations upon the Pyramids).

[203] The reason of this will appear hereafter; while in the interim I must observe that this new appropriation of them to Christian purposes was what occasioned that error on the part of a writer some centuries after, who opined that it was Sanctus Patricius who first presented one to Sancto Kierano. I make no question of the present; but does presentation imply invention?

[204] Cambrensis tells rather a curious story about St. Finnan’s bell:—“There is,” says he, “in the district of Mactalewi, in Leinster, a certain bell which, unless it is adjured by its possessor every night in a particular form of exorcism shaped for the purpose, and tied with a cord (no matter how slight), it would be found in the morning at the church of St. Finnan, at Clunarech, in Meath, from whence it was brought; and,” adds he, “this sometimes happened.”

[205] A communication from Mr. Hall himself, just imparted, assures me that, as far as he could judge, the aperture was coeval with the instrument, and by no means accidental.

[206] “This word is generally supposed to be derived from Fars or Pars, a division of the empire of Iran, and applied by Europeans to the whole of that kingdom. It is certainly a word unknown, in the sense we use it, to the present natives of Iran, though some Arabic writers contend that Pars formerly meant the whole kingdom. In proof of this assertion, a passage of the Koran is quoted, in which one of Mohammed’s companions who came from a village near Isfahan is called Telman of Fars or Pars. We have also the authority of the Scripture for the name of this kingdom being Paras or Phars. The authors of the Universal History, on what authority I know not, state that the word Iran is not a general name of Persia, but of a part of the country. This is certainly erroneous: Iran has, from the most ancient times to the present day, been the term by which the Persians call their country; and it includes, in the sense they understand it, all the provinces to the east of the Tigris; Assyria Proper, Media, Parthia, Persia, and Hyrcania or Mazenderan” (Sir John Malcolm).

[207] These quotations from the professor’s book are not given consecutively as he wrote them, but brought together from detached sections and chapters.

[208] Pars is the Persian, Fars the Arabic, pronunciation of the word.

[209] I should have observed, that Plato also, speaking of those modern Persians, says: “They were originally a nation of shepherds and herdsmen, occupying a rude country, such as naturally fosters a hardy race of people, capable of supporting both cold and watching, and when needful, of enduring the toils of war” (Plato, De Leg. iii. op. ii. p. 695).

[210] Επεκτεινεται δε τ’ οὔνομα της Αριανης μεχρι μερους τινος καὶ Περσων καὶ Μηδων και ετι των προσαρκτον Βακτριον και Σογδιανῶν. εισι γαρ τως και ὁμωγλωττοι παρα μικρομ (Strabo, p. 1094).

[211] All the other variations are thus similarly accounted for; being but offshoots of the same radix, such as I have already shown (p. 128) in reference to Ireland—while the careful reader will of himself see that the name of that lake in Persia, of which the Greeks and Romans conjointly manufactured Aria Palus, corresponds to our Lough Erne, and must doubtless have been so called in Persia also, for palus is evidently but the translation of lough.

[212] Zendavesta, i. 14.

[213] “And what would hardly appear possible, as we cannot discover what purpose such a finished fable of idolatrous superstition would be meant to answer” (Sir John Malcolm’s History of Persia, vol. i. p. 191).

[214] Yet in Hindoostan, also, as we learn from Major Archer, “an astrologer is a constituted authority in all the villages, and nothing pertaining to life and its concerns is commenced without his sanction.”

[215] “Tout, dans le systême primitif de la religion des Grecs, atteste la transposition des traditions comme des principes; tout y est vague, sombre et confus” (De Sacy).

[216] “The Sabians themselves boasting the origin of their religion from Seth, and pretending to have been denominated from a son of his called Sabius, as also of having among them a book, which they called the Book of Seth” (Prideaux, part i. book iii.).

[217] This is only a corruption from the Irish word Ercol, the sun.

[218] Wisdom of Solomon, xiv. 16, 17.

[219] To this exactly corresponds, as well in import as in appropriation, the name of one of the hills upon which Rome was built, that is Palatinus, which—no doubt, to the amazement of etymological empirics—is nothing less than a compound of Baal and tinne; that is Baal’s fire—the initial B and P being always commutable. And Aven-tinus, the epithet of another of the Seven Mounts, is derived from Avan, a river; and tinne, fire, meaning the fire-hill, near the river. And as the former was devoted to the sun, so the latter was to the moon; in confirmation of which it got another name, namely, Re-monius, of which the component parts are Re, the moon, and moin, an elevation.

The Pru-taneion, also amongst the Greeks, was what? A fire-hill. Startle not, it is a literal truth. But the dictionaries and lexicons say nothing about these matters? nay, offer other explanations? mystifications, Sir, if you please, whereby they implicate, as well themselves as their readers, in absurdities; which could not be expected to be otherwise uninstructed, as their authors necessarily were, in the elements of that language whence all those words have diverged.

Pru-taneion, then, is compounded of Bri, a mount, and tinne, fire; the B, as before observed, being commutable with P, particularly amongst the Greeks, who indifferently called Britain Βρετανικη and Πρετανικη (νησος being understood). Every community had, of old, one of those Britennes, or fire mounts, natural or artificial. The guardian of the sacred element therein was called, Bri-ses; and the dwelling assigned him, hard by, Astu. The number of those latter Cecrops reduced, in Attica from one hundred and sixty, to twelve. Of these, Theseus appointed the principal station at Cecropia, the name of which he changed, by way of eminence, to Astu; and hence this latter word, which originally but represented the abode of the Sacerdos, came ultimately to signify a city at large; as Prutaneion did a Common Council Hall.

[220] To this day, the most kindly wish, and ordinary salutation, of the Irish peasant, continues to be Bal dhia duit, Bal dhia ort, that is the god Baal to you, or the god Baal upon you.

[221] The Irish mode of expressing it is Slan fuar tu sin, agus slan adfaga tu sin. The Caffres who reside all round the Cape, pay their adoration to the moon, by dancing to her honour when she changes, or when she is at the full. They prostrate themselves on the ground, then rise up again, and, gazing at her orb, with loud acclamations, make the following address:—“We, thy servants, salute thee. Give us store of milk and honey; increase our flocks and herds, and we will worship thee.”

[222] The word is more mysterious, as I shall explain elsewhere.

[223] Hannah More.

[224] Byron.

[225] “One superstition of the pagans never fails to assert its influence upon spots like this—the genius loci is always ascendant” (Deane).

[226] Ab-roch also, the official title of Joseph, when appointed regent of Egypt, signifies father of the king.

[227] “The Himalaya are the peculiar abodes of the gods of the Hindoos; the rivers, issuing from the eternal snows, are goddesses, and are sacred in the eyes of all. Shrines, of the most holy and awful sanctity, are at the fountain-heads of the Ganges and Jumna; and on the summit of Kedar Nauth, Cali, that goddess of bloody rites, is supposed to have taken up her residence. One among the numerous proceedings of her votaries, is to scramble as high up the mountain as they can attain, taking with them a goat for an offering: the animal is turned loose with a knife tied round his neck; the belief is, that the goddess will find the victim, and immolate it with her own hand” (Archer).

[228] This adjective I apply indiscriminately to Persia or to Ireland.

[229] It lies in the district of Ins-oin, which means the abode of Magicians; corrupted now to Inis-owen, which would import Eugene’s island. An aggravated blunder—the place being in the very centre of the country, with which such an imaginary chevalier was never associated.

[230]

[231] “Granem dixere priores.”—Ovid.

Although those heaps are now but signals of accidental or violent death, for which each passenger bespeaks his sorrow by adding a small stone, yet we see that in their origin they were more religiously designed; and while this latter practice is observed also in India, it appears that they have retained there more correctly the primitive idea, as may be inferred from these words of Major Archer:—“On the right and left are several cairns of stones, erected by parties of travellers as they cross, in acknowledgment to the deities or presiding spirits for their protection.”

[232] Ogyg. seu Rer. Iber. Chron. part i. p. 16.

[233] One of the ancient names of Ireland is Inis Algan, that is, the Noble Island.

[234] “The children gathered the wood, the fathers kindled the fire, and the women kneaded the dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven” (Jer. vii. 18).

[235] Lettres sur les Sciences, p. 202.

[236] Hist. du Calendrier, Pref. p. 14.

[237] “Obeliscum Deo soli, speciali munere, dedicatum fuisse” (Ammianus).

[238] “Chinenses et Indi, præter imagines in pagodis et delubris, prægrandes aliquando etiam integras rupes, presertim si naturâ in pyramidalem formam vergebant, in idola formari solebant” (Hyde).

[239] Is it not pitiable, therefore, to hear Mr. Deane, in the last volume of the Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries, London, ascribe the erection of those obelisks which he met in Britanny, to the following text? namely, “Behold Saul lay sleeping within the trench, and his spear stuck in the ground at his bolster” (1 Sam. xxvi. 7).

When Captain Pyke landed in the island of Elephanta, near Bombay, he found in the midst of a Gentoo temple a low altar, on which was placed a large polished stone, of a cylindrical form, standing on its base, the top rounded, or convex: they called it Mahody,—that the name of the inconceivable God was placed under it aloof from profanation.

Launder, in his Voyage to India, p. 81, saw one erected in a tank of water. Herodian tells us he saw a similar stone, round at the bottom, diminishing towards the top in a conical form, at Emessa, in Phœnicia, and that the name they gave it was Heliogabalus (Vallancey).

[240] I.e. the Good-Baal-Peor.

[241] Wilford, in like manner, after a more mature acquaintance with the system, says, “I beg leave here to retract what I said in a former essay on Egypt, concerning the followers of Buddha.”

[242] Observations on Drakontia, London, 1833.

[243] The Mexican hierogram is formed by the intersecting of two great serpents, which describe the circle with their bodies, and have each a human head in its mouth.

[244] Ovid.

[245] Gen. xi. 31.

[246] See pages 503-506 for the explication of the serpent and the rest of the allegory.

[247] The Betula, or Birch tree.

[248] Were additional proof required that this is the true solution of the Mosaic myth, respecting the forbidden apple, it is irresistibly offered to anyone who will see that relic of Eastern idolatry, presented by Lieutenant-Colonel Ogg to the Museum of the East India Company, London, which consists of a tabular frame of white marble, furnished with a fountain, and emblematically stored with religious devices; the most extraordinary of which is a representation of the Lingam and Yoni in conjunction, around the bottom of which, in symbolical suggestion, is coiled a serpent; while the top of another Lingam, placed underneath, is embossed towards the termination, which is conical and sunny, with four heads, facing the cardinal points, and exactly corresponding with those which grace the preputial apex of the Round Tower of Devenish. Those four heads represent the four gods of the Budhist theology, who have appeared in the present world, and already obtained the perfect state of Nirwana, viz. Charchasan, Gonagon, Gaspa, and Goutama. And the entire coincidence between this Lingam and the characteristics of our Round Towers is such as to convince the most obdurate sceptics, even had I not put the question beyond dispute before, that they were uniform in design, and identical in purpose.

[249] Venus preferred a cestus, or a talisman of her own sex, as we are told in the fourteenth book of the Iliad, where it is said, that

[250] The offerings made at the present day are precisely of the same kind. “Boiled rice, fruits, especially the cocoa-nut, flowers, natural, and artificial, and a variety of curious figures made of paper, gold leaf, and the cuttings of the cocoa-nut kernel, are the most common” (Symes).

[251] Gen. iv. 7.

[252] Methinks I hear some wiseacre start up here and say this cannot be, because man in an uncivilised state occupies more space than when restricted by social usages. Pray, sir, who told you that man was then uncivilised? Then, in fact, it was that he may be called truly civilised, as more recent from the converse of his Creator.

[253] In fig. 1, plate 33, of Mr. Coleman’s book, “is a four-headed Linga of white marble, on a stand of the same, surrounded by Parvati, Durga, Ganes, and the Bull Nandi, in adoration. The size of the stand or tablet is about two feet square, and the whole is richly painted and gilt. On the crown of the Linga is a refulgent sun.” In fig. 2 of same “is a Panch Muckti, or five-headed Linga, of basalt, of which the fifth head rises above the other four, surmounted by the hooded snake. Each of the heads has also a snake wreathed around it, as well as around the Argha. The Bull Nandi is kneeling in adoration before the spout of the Yoni.”

[254] And Bacchus, in reality, was but another name for one of the various Budhas. Even under the name of Dionysos we find him, to this hour, amongst ourselves. “On Sliabh Grian, or the Hill of the Sun” says Tighe, “otherwise called Tory Hill, in the county Kilkenny, is a circular space, sixty-four yards in circumference, covered with stones. In this stands a very large one, and on the east side another, reared on three supporters, and containing an inscription, which in Roman letter would exhibit “Beli Dinose.”

[255] “There are in India (also) public women, called women of the idol, and the origin of this custom is this: when a woman has made a vow for the purpose of having children, if she brings into the world a pretty daughter, she carries it to Bod,—so they call the idol which they adore, and leaves it with him” (Renaudot’s Anc. Rel. p. 109).

[256] “It is generally known, that the religion of Boudhou is the religion of the people of Ceylon, but no one is acquainted with its forms and precepts” (Joinville).

[257] Goldsmith.

[258] That is, “above reason.”

[259] Gen. vi. 2.

[260] Ibid. iv. 26.

[261] Job xxxviii.

[262] “In the beginning God created” (Gen. i. 1).

[263] Gen. vi. 4.

[264] Dr. Gill, very innocently, would account for it otherwise, viz. “either because they made their fear fall upon men, or men through fear to fall before them, because of their height and strength—or rather because they fell and rushed on men with great violence, and oppressed them in a cruel and tyrannical manner”!!!

[265] Philosophers will ultimately repose in the belief that Asia has been the principal foundry of the human kind; and Iran or Persia will be considered as one of the cradles from which the species took their departure to people the various regions of the earth (Dr. Barton, Trans Phil. Soc. Philad. vi. p. 1).

“It follows that Iran or Persia (I contend for the meaning, not the name) was the central country which we sought” (Sir W. Jones, Asiatic Researches).

[266] An edifice of this kind, in which the relics of Budha were kept, near Benares, is described by Wilford as about fifty feet high, of a cylindrical form, with its top shaped like a dome.

[267]

That is,

I would point your attention to this stanza, not only as confirmatory of the solution above given for the word Tuatha, but as furnishing another link in that great chain of analogy which I have traced between the names of Ireland and ancient Persia. Haran, in Mesopotamia, is but the prefixing of an aspirate to Eran, the Pahlavi variation for Iran, the original name for that Sacred Land.

[268] General Vallancey was equally ignorant as to the meaning of the additional words De-danaan.

[269] The Lotos was the most sacred plant of the ancients, and typified the two principles of the earth’s fecundation combined—the germ standing for the Lingam; the filaments and petals for the Yoni.

[270] This Puzza is nothing more than our Irish Pish: and, what is miraculously coincident, the title of the enthusiast who annually kills somebody in honour of her, under the name of the goddess Manepa, at Tancput, is Phut, or Buth; that is, the Budh of the Irish!

[271] “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh” (Gen. xi. 24).

[272] “There is a sect of Hindus, by far the most numerous of any, who, attempting to reconcile the two systems, tell us, in their allegorical style, that Parvati and Mahadeva found their concurrence essential to the perfection of their offspring, and that Vishnu, at the request of the goddess, effected a reconciliation between them; hence the navel of Vishnu, by which they mean the os tincæ, is worshipped as one and the same with the sacred Yoni.”

[273] She “made use of the same artifice the old woman, called Baubo, did to put Ceres in good humour, and showed him the prototype of the Lotos. Mahadeva smiled and relented; but on the condition that they should instantly leave the country.”

[274] “But such is the confusion and uncertainty of the Hindu records, that one is really afraid of forming any opinion whatever” (Wilford).

[275] Sir John Malcolm, vol. i. p. 270.

[276] Thomson.

[277] “When history fails in accounting for foreign extraction of any people, or where it is manifestly mistaken, how can this extraction be more rationally inferred and determined, or that mistake rectified, than from the analogy of languages? And is not this at once sufficiently conclusive, if nothing else was left them?” (Eugene Aram).

[278] “The merchants of Magadha formed not only a particular class, but also a particular tribe. It seems that they were bold, enterprising, and, at the same time, cautious and circumspect; hence they are said to be merchants by the fathers’, and warriors by the mothers’ side, according to Mr. Colebrook’s account of the Hindu classes” (Asiat. Res. ix. p. 79).

[279] See A Dissertation on the Antiquity, Origin, and Design of the principal Pyramids of Egypt, etc. etc.

[280] Mersennus writes thus:—“I find that the cubit (upon which a learned Jewish writer, which I received by the favour of the illustrious Hugenius, Knight of the Order of St. Michael, supposes the dimensions of the temple were formed) answers to 23¼ of our inches; so that it wants ¾ of an inch of two of our feet, and contains two Roman feet and two digits, and a grain, which is ¼ of a digit.” The Paris foot, with which Mersennus compared this cubit, is equal to 1⁶⁸⁄1000 of the English foot, according to Mr. Greaves; and consequently is to the Roman foot as 1068 to 967. In the same proportion, reciprocally, are 23¼ and 25⁶⁸⁄100. That cubit, therefore, is equal to 25⁶⁸⁄100 unciæ of the Roman foot, and consequently falls within the middle of the limits 25⁵⁷⁄100 and ⁷⁹⁄100, with which we have just circumscribed the sacred cubit: so that I suspect this cubit was taken from some authentic model, preserved in a secret manner from the knowledge of the Christians (Sir Isaac Newton).

[281] “And he brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold a hole in the wall. Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall; and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door: and he said unto me, Go in and behold the wicked abominations that they do here. So I went in, and saw; and, behold, every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, pourtrayed upon the wall round about” (Ezekiel).

[282] “Inter omnes eos, non constat à quibus factæ sint, justissimo casu obliteratis tantæ vanitatis authoribus” (Plin).

[283]

עשהלך תבת עצי גפר קנים תעשה את התבה וכפרתאתה מבית ומחוץ בכפר וזה אשר תעשה אתה שלש מאות אמה ארך התבה חמשים אמה רחבה ושלשים אמה קומתה Gen. vi. 14.

[284] Exod. ii. 3.

[285] The Septuagint translators, not perceiving any difference, rendered all, similarly, by the word κιβωτός!

[286] As does also Tha, To, Ti, Tho, Thu, with their several commutables, derivatives, formatives, etc.

[287] And the Valley of To-phith, in which human victims were sacrificed, thus discloses, in the symbolic secret of its shape, that the propitiation of this instrument was the grand object of the sacrificers.

[288] Virgil.

[289] Gen. vi. 9.

[290] Gen. vi. 12.

[291] Rom. i. 20-24.

[292] Gen. vi. 8.

[293] The-bith.

[294] Gen. ix. 1.

[295] “This king is stated to have reclaimed his subjects from a state of the most savage barbarity. He was, we are told by our author, the son of Yussan-Ajum, while others call him the grandson of Noah; all agree in acknowledging him as the founder of a dynasty, which are known in history as that of the Paishdadian” (Sir John Malcolm).

[296] The Irish name for a boat is baudh, which is only a formative of pith.

[297] Gen. v. 29.

[298] If the reader will now turn to p. 223, will he not think it probable that the symbol contained on the broken-off portion of the stone, there represented, must have been the phallus?

[299] Who can forget the fable in Ovid, de jactibus lapidibus?

[300] “But as his descendants gave him his right as to the title of Deva, and decreed divine honours to be paid to him, we shall henceforth call him Deva-cala-Yavana; or, according to the vulgar mode of pronouncing this compound word, Deo-cal-Yun, which sounds exactly like Deucalion in Greek” (Wilford).

[301] Fielding.

[302] Isa. viii. 7, 8.

[303] Gen. vii. 2.

[304] Gen. viii. 10, 11.

[305] The following is an abstract of the Hindoo version of this allegory, as copied from their Puranas:—“Satyavrata, having built the ark, and the flood increasing, it was made fast to the peak of Nau-baudha, with a cable of a prodigious length. During the flood, Brahma, or the creating power, was asleep at the bottom of the abyss: the generative powers of nature, both male and female, were reduced to their simplest elements, the Linga and the Yoni. The Yoni assumed the shape of the hull of a ship, since typified by the Argha, whilst the Linga became the mast. In this manner they were wafted over the deep, under the care and protection of Vishnu. When the waters had retired, the female power of nature appeared immediately in the character of Capoteswari, or the dove, and she was soon joined by her consort, in the shape of Capoteswara.”

[306] See p. 63.

[307] Acts vii. 22.

[308] The date of those Uksi was not the only misconception this historian has committed. He was equally in the dark as to the place whence they came, and, for want of a better name, called them, at a venture, Arabians!

[309] See p. 64.

[310] Most of the oracles in the ancient world were but personifications of this influence—the goddess invariably being the sacred Yoni. And the priestesses so far prevailed upon the credulous worshippers as to make them believe that she actually spoke! The oracle of Delphi, the most venerable in all Greece, obtained its name from the very thing—the first syllable De, signifying divine or sacred; and the second phi, i.e. phith, yoni: the letter l having been inserted only for euphony. Even in the Greek language this import is not yet lost.

[311] As Noah was himself named from the symbolical boat, so was his eldest son Japheth, from its sanctified prototype. Ja-Phith signifies consecrated to Pith, or the Yoni. And again, his son’s name, Ja-van, means consecrated to woman.

[312] “In the city of Babylon there is a temple with brazen gates, consecrated to Jupiter Belus, being four square; and each side being two furlongs in length. In the midst of this holy place there is a solid tower, of the thickness and height of a furlong; upon which there is another tower placed, and upon that another; and so on, one upon another, insomuch that there are eight in all. On the outside of these there are steps or stairs placed, by which men go up from one tower to another. In the middle of these steps there are resting-places; and rooms were made for the purpose, that they who go to the top may have conveniences to sit down and rest themselves” (Herodotus).

“’Tis a tower exactly round, in form of a cone, or round pyramid; the diameter, or thickness at the base, being 81 feet; the circumference, or way round, 254½ feet; the height perpendicular likewise 81 feet, equal to the diameter; the height likewise, oblique, 90½ feet; and the angles of the sides equal to those of the former design: the whole likewise a mass of brick and bitumen work, amounting to 140,589 cubic feet, upon 5207 square” (Mark Gregory).

[313] Gen. xi. 4.

[314] Spenser’s Faërie Queene.

[315] Shiloh is an Irish word, literally meaning seed, and additionally showing that it was in our sacred language all those occurrences were originally named.

[316] Both words equally signify the happy country or the sacred land.

[317] Gen. iii. 15.

[318] See chap. xvii. p. 229.

[319] Gen. iii. 15.

[320] Gen. xix. 31-34.

[321] Asiatic Researches.

[322] Job xix. 25.

[323] John viii. 56.

[324] Rev. xiii. 8.

[325] Appeal to Common Sense, p. 45.

[326] See chap. xvi. p. 224.

[327] De Morib. German. xxiv.

[328] Western Islands, vol. i. p. 184, etc.

[329] Highlands, vol. iii. p. 236.

[330] “I inquired,” says Mr. Martin, “of the inhabitants, what tradition they had concerning these stones; and they told me, it was a place appointed for worship in the time of heathenism; and that the chief Druid stood near the big stone in the centre, from whence he addressed himself to the people that surrounded him.”

[331] United at the feet in this manner . The jewel in the freemasons’ royal arch is thus formed. Noah was a freemason; and being the inventor of that mysterious and sacredly-religious ceremony, called the Deluge, we may be satisfied that all the secrets of that body bear reference to my developments. I look upon their institution as most solemn and majestically sublime.

[332] In the accounts transmitted to us of the various Buddhas, no term occurs more commonly as descriptive of their innocence and their meekness than that of lamb.

[333] Gen. iii. 15.

[334] Luke iii. 39.

[335] See p. 132.

[336] Indian Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 361.

[337] See chap. xvi. p. 221.

[338] Matt. xxii. 29.

[339] Vol. i. p. 308, on the article “Fine Arts.”

[340] The initial subscribed to the article.

[341] See Appendix.

[342] Like the two former effigies, at pp. 138 and 140, it is made of bronze, and found in Ireland after the Tuath-de-danaans. Those found after their brethren in the East are made of the same metal. “Sometimes,” says Archer, “the images are of wood or stone, but these, unless possessing the rarity of some monkish legend, are not in such repute as their brothers of brass.”

[343] This is the only peculiar monogram of Jesus Christ—I. H. S. belonging originally to Budha, though appropriated afterwards to him, Υ Η Σ was its proper form, and it comprehended a mysterious number, as follows:—

Υ 400

Η 8

Σ 200

608

Another monogram of Budha was Φ Ρ Η. It composed the same numerical enigma, viz.—

Φ 500

Ρ 100

Η 8

608

[344] Arch. Soc. Ant. Lond. vol. ii. p. 83.

[345] Asiatic Researches.

[346] “He has a separate apartment, shrouded from vulgar eyes by a black velvet curtain, richly embossed with gold, in a splendid palace at Ummerapoor: and his whole residence is as dazzling and sumptuous as gold and silver can make it. He is furnished with a silk bed, adorned with gold tapestry, hangings, and jewellery, and has his gold appurtenances. Foreign ministers are introduced to his sacred person, and he ranks before every member of the royal court except the king” (Symes).

[347] It was only as an epithet that the title sacred could apply to Samothrace: and as such, every other locality, wherein those mysteries were commemorated, shared it in common. But in this our island, to which Artemidorus above alludes, and where superior solemnity attended the celebration, the name of sacred was no adventitious clause, but, par excellence, the constituent essence of its proper appellation (see pp. 128, 129).

[348] Μυστηρια δε δυο τελειται του ενιαυτου; Δημητοι Κορη; τα μικρα και τα μεγαλα· και εστι τα μικρα ωσπερ προκαθαρσις και πραγνέυσις των μεγαλων.

[349] Lib. x. p. 474.

[350] εις την Πολιτ. Πλατ. p. 380.

[351] See the article under her name in the Classical Dictionary, with all the authorities there adduced.

[352] Clem. Alex. Strom. ii.

[353] Mihi cum multa eximia divinaque videntur Athenæ tuæ peperisse—tum nihil melius illis mysteriis quibus agresti immanique vitâ exculti ad humanitatem mitigati sumus: initiaque, ut appellantur, ita revera principia vitæ cognovimus: neque solum cum lætitiâ vivendi rationem accepimus, sed etiam cum spe meliori moriendi (De Legibus, 1. i. c. 24).

[354] Pope.

[355] Luke xix. 20.

[356] “The Bulbul of Iran has a passion for the rose, and when he sees any person pull a rose from the tree he laments and cries” (“Persian Poem,” quoted in Ouseley’s Oriental Collections).

[357] Basnage, bk. iii. ch. xix. s. xix.

[358] That phenomenon in the heavens, called the “Southern Cross,” appears to me so associated with the mystery of redemption, in all ages, that I cannot forbear drawing attention to the sign. The following is Captain Basil Hall’s description of this curious constellation.

“Of all the antarctic constellations, the celebrated Southern Cross is by far the most remarkable; and must in every age continue to arrest the attention of all voyagers and travellers who are fortunate enough to see it. I think it would strike the imagination even of a person who had never heard of the Christian religion; but of this it is difficult to judge, seeing how inextricably our own ideas are mingled up with associations linking this sacred symbol with almost every thought, word, and deed of our lives.

“The three great stars which form the Cross, one at the top, one at the left arm, and one, which is the chief star, called Alpha, at the foot, are so placed as to suggest the idea of a crucifix, even without the help of a small star, which completes the horizontal beam. When on the meridian, it stands nearly upright; and as it sets, we observe it lean over to the westward. I am not sure whether, upon the whole, this is not more striking than its gradually becoming more and more erect, as it rises from the east. In every position, however, it is beautiful to look at, and well calculated, with a little prompting from the fancy, to stir up our thoughts to solemn purposes.

“I know not how others are affected by such things, but for myself I can say with truth, that during the many nights I have watched the Southern Cross, I remember on two occasions, when the spectacle interested me exactly in the same way, nor any one upon which I did not discover the result to be somewhat different, and always more impressive than what I had looked for. This constellation, being about thirty degrees from the South Pole, is seen in its whole revolution, and accordingly, when off the Cape of Good Hope, I have observed it in every stage; from its triumphant erect position, between sixty and seventy degrees above the horizon, to that of complete immersion, with the top beneath, and almost touching the water. This position, by the way, always reminded me of the death of St. Peter, who is said to have deemed it too great an honour to be crucified with his head upwards. In short, I defy the stupidest mortal that ever lived, to watch these changes in the aspect of this splendid constellation, and not to be, in some degree, struck by them” (Fragments of Voyages).

[359] Isa. liii. 4, 5.

[360] Isa. liii. 3.

[361] Asiatic Researches.

[362] Matt. x. 26.

[363] This will explain a text in Scripture never before understood, namely, “Son of Man, when the land sinneth against Me by tresspassing grievously, then will I stretch out Mine hand upon it, and will break the staff of the bread thereof, and will send famine upon it, and cut off man and beast from it” (Ezek. xiv. 13). Fogh is another term equivalent to this.

[364] This will at once appear from Varro, who, in Nonus Marcellinus, is made to say, “We are barbarians, because that we crucify (in gabalum suffigimus) the innocent; are you not barbarians, when you acquit the guilty?” Compare also Selden, Syntagm. ii. c. 1.

[365] Mithra signat illic in frontibus milites suos (Tertullian, de Præscrip. cap. xi.).

[366] Ezek. ix. 4, 5, 6.

[367] John iii. 10. The omission of this cross from the text of our translation may afford some handle to the enemies of religion.

[368] Matt. vi. 27.

[369] Cunni Diaboli.

[370] The rosary was also anterior to Christianity.

[371] John i. 29.

[372] John i. 30.

[373] John i. 31.

[374] Isa. xlii. 9.

[375] Temora.

[376] “And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house” (Gen. xxviii. 22).

[377] It is fit I should advertise that Mr. Hamilton spoke of the individual merely as a figure, without professing to identify him in name or history either with Thot, Budha, or anybody else.

[378] Introduction, p. xciii.

[379] Cowper.

[380] From the Brahma-vawartta, section of the Crishna-janma—c’hand’a.

[381] Much, mugh, mughsaine tra ainm sain delias do dheadh (Cormac’s Glossary).

[382] The locale of that boar, as well as the mystery of its meaning, which Plutarch transmitted in his allegorical war between Osiris and Typhon, is now no longer ambiguous (see p. 327).

[383] I have before explained that the serpent Pyth-on means the seduction of sensuality—Pith itself signifying yoni, the boat, or serpent, the final on being nothing but a Greek termination.

[384] Isa. liii. 7.

[385] “The gods,” said the Budhist priest to the Catholic bishop before alluded to, “who have appeared in the present world, and who have obtained the perfect state, niebau, or deliverance from all the evils of life, are four, Chanchasam, Gonagom, Gaspa, and Godama” (Syme’s Embassy to the Court of Ava).

[386] I shall give you my definition for this word by and by.

[387] 1 Cor. xv. 51.

[388] It will be perceived, that I do not mean this to be an exact copy of the Knockmoy Crucifixion—or vice versâ.—The general idea is, what I mean to substantiate, and the identity of design cannot well be gainsaid. This remark applies also to the kings about to be introduced by and by.

[389] “We saw,” says Colonel Symes, alluding to the imperfect shell of a Budhist temple, in the Burman Empire, “several unfinished figures of animals and men in grotesque attitudes, which were designed as ornaments for different parts of the building” (Embassy to the Court of Ava).

[390] 1 Cor. i. 12.

[391] Asiatic Researches.

[392] The name of Sulivan in Ireland, than which there is no one more common, is unquestionably but the perpetuation of the above Sulivahana. And I can give a proof of the fact, independently of its derivation, which will scare ridicule into defiance. It is that a particular branch of that family called the O’Sulivans, of Tomies, have been ever looked upon with a feeling of reverence by the natives, almost approaching to veneration. I have in vain striven to ascertain from them the origin of this indefinable sense of sanctity. It was like magic upon their minds: they half-worshipped them, and knew not why. There were but two individuals of this stock remaining when I was a schoolboy, a few years ago, at Killarney.

[393] “That is,” says Keating, “the neighbouring country”!!! as if a country would call itself by such a name! Vallancey ridicules, but bungles himself still more. And while reminded by this circumstance, I had best note, that what this last-mentioned writer elsewhere translates as “the topographical names of Ireland” (Ainim abberteach an n’ Eirean), should have been “the appellative names of Ireland”: they are the titles of the island itself, not descriptions of the several localities within it.

[394] Gen. xlix. 10.

[395] Asiatic Researches.

[396] Asiatic Researches.

[397] Isa. xlii. 2, 3.

[398] Retiring into a still more solitary place, Gautama and his disciples sustained triumphantly an argument with two of their bitterest enemies. But a severer trial exhibited his righteousness in a yet clearer light. Four young and beautiful sisters, burning with unholy love, presented themselves naked before him, and besought him to comply with their desires. “Who, O Gautame!” said they, in the rage of their disappointment, “who is the lying witness who dares attest that the virtues of all the former saints are concentrated in thee?” “Behold my witness,” said the sage, striking the ground with his hand, and at the moment Okintôngu, the tutelar genius of the earth, appeared, proclaiming, with a loud voice, “It is I who am the witness of the truth!” The young women then fell upon their faces and adored Gautama, saying, “O pure and perfect countenance, wisdom more precious than gold! majesty impenetrable! honour and adoration to thee, thou source of the faith of the three epochs of the world!” (Abridged from Klaproth).

[399] Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, October 12, 1833.

[400] This is the exact rendering of the name by which they called it: viz. nua vreith, or the being born anew by the operation of grace.

[401] It is still practised in the East.—“For the purpose of regeneration it is directed to make an image of pure gold of the female power of nature, in the shape either of a woman or of a cow. In this statue the person to be regenerated is inclosed, and dragged out through the usual channel. As a statue of pure gold, and of proper dimensions, would be too expensive, it is sufficient to make an image of the sacred Yoni, through which the person to be regenerated is to pass” (Wilford).

[402] See pp. 3-78 and 162.

[403] Be it remembered, that it was in consequence of his ignorance of the principle of regeneration that our Saviour addressed Nicodemus in these cutting words, viz. “Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?” thereby recognising the existence of the doctrine before His own manifestation to that people.

[404] “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat, because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matt. vii. 13, 14).

[405] “The dome [of this, what he calls a cemetery] springs at various unequal heights, from eight to nine and ten feet on different sides, forming at first a coving of eight sides. At the height of fifteen or sixteen feet, the north and south sides of this coving run to a point like a gore, and the coving continues its spring with six sides; the east side coming to a point next, it is reduced to five sides, the west next; and the dome ends and closes with four sides; not tied with a key-stone, but capped with a flag-stone of three feet ten inches, by three feet five. The construction of this dome is not formed by key-stones, whose sides are the radii of a circle, or of an ellipsis converging to a centre. It is combined with great long flat stones, each of the upper stones projecting a little beyond the end of that immediately beneath it; the part projecting, and weight supported by it, bearing so small a proportion to the weight which presses down the part supported; the greater the general weight is which is laid upon such a cove, the firmer it is compacted in all its parts” (Pownall).

[406] “The eight sides of this polygon are thus formed: the aperture which forms the entrance, and the three niches, or tabernacles, make four sides, and the four imposts the other four” (Pownall).

[407] This word I have already derived, after the example of other writers, from peutgeda, or house of idols, so misnamed by Europeans. I must state, however, that another explication is also assigned thereto, and that is, a perversion of the term bhaga-vati, or holy house. But with great respect to the gentlemen who incline to the latter opinion, I have to observe that bhaga-vati, properly signifies the sacred Yoni; and, therefore, that however applicable to a subterraneous temple, or cave, it could by no means represent an erect building.

[408] “The entrance into this temple, which is entirely hewn out of a stone resembling porphyry, is by a spacious front supported by two massy pillars and two pilasters forming three openings, under a thick and steep rock, overhung by brushwood and wild shrubs. The long ranges of columns that appear closing in perspective on every side; the flat roof of solid rock that seems to be prevented from falling only by the massy pillars, whose capitals are pressed down and flattened as if by the superincumbent weight; the darkness that obscures the interior of the temple, which is dimly lighted only by the entrances; and the gloomy appearance of the gigantic stone figures ranged along the wall, and hewn, like the whole temple, out of the living rock,—joined to the strange uncertainty that hangs over the history of this place,—carry the mind back to distant periods, and impress it with that kind of uncertain and religious awe with which the grander works of ages of darkness are generally contemplated” (Erskine).

[409] “This appellation, Caucasus, at least in its present state, is not Sanscrit; and as it is not of Grecian origin, it is probable that the Greeks received it through their intercourse with the Persians” (Wilford).

[410] Darwin.

[411] “If perfection in art consist in affording continued pleasure, its achievements, when contemplating this column, must be deemed insurpassable. A Corinthian capital of 10 feet is poised on a shaft of 67½ feet, the latter resting on a base of 21½ feet; the whole rises to a height of nearly 100 feet” (Head).

[412] “Or the obelisks, commonly called Cleopatra’s Needles, one alone is now standing; the other, lying down, measures seven feet square at the base, and sixty-six feet in length. They are so well known, that it is not necessary to give a very particular description of them” (Clarke).

[413] In confirmation of this, you will find at p. 14 of Seguin’s Thessalonian Coins, the impression of a man with a hammer, as above, in one hand, and a key in the other, and the word Cabeiros as the inscription.

[414] On all public occasions displays of this kind are still indulged in the East. The floralia of the Romans were adopted from the Easterns. “Every person, male and female, had festoons depending from the top of the cap down one side of the head. These were composed of the flowers of the wild rose and hawthorn, and other beautiful kinds, which, while they set off the headpiece of the lieges, literally perfumed the air wherever they went” (Archer).

[415] Sketches of India Field Sports. Dr. Shaw and Mr. Forbes are even more conclusive.

[416] P. 338.

[417] If you examine the Tuath-de-danaan crosses with a minute eye, you will find this exposition irrefutably verified. Though they all have the traces of the Budhist sculpture, they have also the marks of obliteration; and no one of them to a greater extent than this at Finglas, where it is known that St. Patrick principally resided. Yet even this retains indistinct evidence of snakes, etc.

“The body of the snake is not only capable of flexion, but of close and intimate application to every rugged inequality of a tree on the earth; and this faculty is the result of its minute subdivisions. The body of the snake is never bent in acute angles, but always in flowing easy curves or circles. From each of those distant bones, so multitudinous in their number, which form the vertebral column (and in one species of Pythra we have counted 256, exclusive of those composing the tail), a rib arises from each side, and both together form a great portion of a circle, so as to embrace nearly the whole circumference of the body. These ribs are restricted to the vertebræ of the body only; they do not arise from those of the tail.”

[418] Travels in Northern India.

[419] Oliver Cromwell with his army of locusts.

[420] Byron.

[421] Some say he belonged to the fifth century. All agree that it was not later than the ninth.

[422] See p. 61.

[423] July 1833.—This gentleman’s name was Pareira.

[424] Religious Rites and Ceremonies.

[425] The Gaurs themselves did not build those towers, but finding them to their hand, and knowing them to have been formerly reverenced, they converted them to this purpose.

[426] One called Jachen, that is, he shall establish; and the other Boaz, or, in it is strength. This was all emblematical, which, without giving Solomon any participation therein, may be accounted for on the principle that the building was conducted under the superintendence of Hiram, a Sidonian, who naturally had exercised the taste of his own country in the discretion here allowed him. Nor will the circumstance of those pillars having been made of metal oppose any barrier—the design is the thing to be considered, not the material. And besides, we find them of metal elsewhere also.

“An iron pillar,” says Archer, “stands in a sort of courtyard, having the remains of cloisters on the four sides. Its history is veiled in darkest night. There is an inscription on it, which nobody can decipher: nor is there any account, historical or traditional, except we may refer to the latter class, a prevalent idea of all people, that the pillar is on the most sacred spot of the old city, which spot was also its centre. It is also said that as long as the pillar stood, so long would Hindustan flourish. This was the united dictum of the Brahmins and astrologers of the day. The pillar is fifteen or sixteen inches in diameter.”

[427] ανθρωπος εστι των παντων μετρον (Protagoras).

[428] 1 Kings viii. 27.

[429] Antiquities of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 134.

[430] Antiquities of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 129.

[431] Dublin Penny Journal, 20th July 1833.

[432] Dublin Penny Journal, 10th June 1833.

[433] Dublin Penny Journal, 20th July 1833.

[434] Ibid. 5th October 1833.

[435] Colgan.

[436] Melpomene, ch. 46.

[437] “Oppidum vocant Britanni cum silvas impeditas vallo atque fossâ munierunt. The Britons call a town an encumbered wood, fenced in with a rampart and a ditch” (Cæsar’s Comment. lib. 5).

[438] Of whom O’Flaherty gives this character from an Irish poem, writ by one G. Comdeus O’Cormaic, which he thus translates into Latin:—

That is,—

And he quotes this hemistich as another fragment of his poetry—

That is,—

[439] The above stanza, I should observe, belongs to that species of poetry called in Irish con-a-clon, wherein the final word of each line is the initial one of the following.

[440] Or “Tarah,” says the Dinn Seanchas, compiled by Amergen Mac Amalgaid in the year 544, “was so called from its celebrity for melody.”

[441] “Once occupied by a celebrated queen!” (Asiatic Researches).

[442] “Heremon was the first of the Scots who held the dominion over all Ireland” (Psalter of Narran).

[443] “For, in the first place, the general tradition of the old Irish handed down to us by all our historians and other writers, imports that when the Scots arrived in Ireland, they spoke the same language with that of the Tuath-de-danaans” (Preface to O’Brien’s Irish Dictionary).

[444] The Egyptian epithets are not very dissimilar: “Besides these first inhabitants of Sancha-dwipa, who are described by the mythologists, as elephants, demons, and snakes, we find a race called Shand-ha-yana, who are the real Troglodites; they were the descendants of Abri, before named, whose history being closely connected with that of the Sacred Isles in the West, deserves peculiar attention” (Asiatic Researches).

[445] Nearly similar things, we find, have occurred in the East. “The natives of the place (Mavalepuran, in Indian) declared to the writer of this account, that the more aged people among them remembered to have seen the tops of several pagodas far out in the sea; a statement which was verified by the appearance of one on the brink of the sea, already nearly swallowed up by that element” (Asiatic Researches).

[446] Αναθηματα,—things dedicated to the gods.

[447] In March.

[448] In September.

[449] See p. 120.

[450] Trans. Roy. Ir. Acad. vol. xvi. p. 166.

[451] Procopius calls them ανηκοι και αμελιτητοι, that is, heedless and indifferent to all culture.

Bishop Cormac also says that he “cannot sufficiently express his astonishment at the indifference which the Scottish nation evinced in his day to literature.”

Strabo calls them, Αγριων τελεως ανθρωτων, while M‘Pherson asserts of their brethren, that “nothing is more certain than that the British Scots were an illiterate people, and involved in barbarism, even after the Patriarch’s mission to the Scots of Ireland.”

[452] In fact this writer had no other reason for this mistake which he has committed, in describing it as “scarce habitable for cold,” than his knowledge of its Hyperborean situation. “The most remote navigation northward from the Celtic coast in our days,” says he, “is said to be into Ireland (Ierné), which being situated beyond Britain, is scarce habitable for cold, so that what lies beyond that island is thought to be not at all habitable” (Geog. lib. 2, ex vers. Gul. Xylandri).

[453] Orpheus also calls the sea dividing the north of Scotland from Ireland, “Mare Cronium, idem quod mare saturninum et oceanus septentrionalis” (Vallancey).

[454] Gerald. Cambr. Hist. i. cap. 19.

[455] A series of articles written under this head, in the columns of the Dublin Penny Journal, by Mr. Pebrie, antiquarian high-priest to the Royal Irish Academy!

[456] This Tubal-Cain was evidently the person from whom the Greeks manufactured their mythological Vul-can.

[457] “The griffin,” says Shaw, copying Ctesias, “is a quadruped of India, having the claws of a lion, and wings upon his back. His fore parts are red, his wings white, his neck blue, his head and his beak resemble those of the eagle; he makes his nest among the mountains, and haunts the deserts, where he conceals his gold.”

[458] “The ignorance of the European Greeks in geography was extreme in all respects during many ages. They do not even appear to have known the discoveries made in more ancient voyages, which were not absolutely unknown to Homer” (Mr. Gouget, Origin of Arts and Sciences, tom. 7, b. 3).

[459] “L’existence de ce peuple antérieur est prouvée par le tableau qui n’offre que des débris, astronomie oubliée, philosophie mêlée à des absurdités, physique dégénérée en fables, religion épurée, mais cachée dans une idolatrie grossière. Cet ancien peuple a eu des sciences perfectionnées, une philosophie sublime et sage” (Bailly).

[460] Amongst our antiquities also are found nose-rings (nasc-srion), which, stronger than any other demonstration, shows the orientalism of our Tuath-de-danaan ancestors. Their ear-rings, also, are thus defined in Comrac’s Glossary: “Arc nasc—vel, a-naisc, bid im cluas—aibh na saoreland,” i.e. a ring worn in the ears of our gentry.

[461] Dublin Penny Journal.

[462] “Si j’ai bien prouvé que Butta, Thoth, et Mercure ne sont également que le même inventeur des sciences et des arts” (Bailly).

“The Buddhists insist that the religion of Buddha existed from the beginning” (Asiatic Researches).

[463] Gentleman’s Magazine, Nov. 1822.

[464] In the entire land of Phœnicia there was but one, and that comparatively a modern one, erected no doubt after their intercourse with the Tuath-de-danaans.

[465] The play above alluded to is that of the Pænulus, or Carthaginian, in which Haono is introduced in quest of his two daughters, who, with their nurse, had been stolen by pirates, and conveyed to Calydon, in Ætolia. Thither the father repairs on receiving intelligence of the fact, and addresses a supplication to the presiding deity of the country, to restore to him his children unstained by pollution. He is made to speak in his vernacular tongue, just as natives of France are represented in our drama by Shakespeare: and so interesting is the whole—independently of the curiosity attaching to so rare a production—that I shall subjoin a portion of it for the reader.

N.B.—The first line in each of these triplets is Phœnician, the second Irish, and the third, their import, in English.

[466] “How comes it then that they are so unlearned—still, being so old scholars? for learning (as the poet saith) emollit mores nec sinit esse feros; whence, then, I pray you, could they have those letters?” He answers, “It is hard to say, for whether they at the first coming into the land, or afterwards by trading with other nations, learned them of them, or devised them amongst themselves, is very doubtful, but that they had letters anciently is nothing doubtful, for the Saxons of England are said to have their letters and learning, and learned men, from the Irish. And that also appeareth from the likeness of the character, for the Saxon’s character is the same with the Irish” (Spenser).

[467] “Having been always free and independent of the empire of the Romans, they were unacquainted with the Roman language and its characters: there were, therefore, but two courses to adopt; either to translate the holy books into the language of the country, and celebrate the divine mysteries in it, which would have been contrary to the custom of the Church, or to teach the characters of the Roman language to those who were to instruct others; the holy apostle adopted the latter course” (Abbé Mac Geohigan).

[468] Book of Cashel.

[469] Job viii. 8, and xix. 23.

[470] There is no Mohammedan of learning in Persia or India who is not an astrologer: rare works upon that science are more valued than any other; and it is remarkable that on the most trivial occasions, when calculating nativities and foretelling events, they deem it essential to describe the planets in terms not unsuited to the account which the author of the Dabistan has given of these deities (Sir John Malcolm).

[471] Job xix. 23, 24.

[472] Job viii. 8.

[473] Since I have commenced this work, a very ancient manuscript of the abbey of Icolmkill has fallen into my hands; it was written by Cairbre-Liffeachair, who lived six generations before St. Patrick, and about the time of our Saviour; an exact account is given in it of Irish kings, from whence I infer, that as the Irish had manuscripts at that period, we must certainly have possessed them likewise.

[474] Æschylus would seem to refer to this, when he makes Prometheus say, “I invented for them the array of letters, and fixed the memory, the mother of knowledge, and the soul of life” (Bloomfield’s edition, v. 469).

[475] Τον Ἑρακλεα ὁι Κελτοι ΟΓΜΙΟΝ ονομαζουσι φωνη τη επιχωριῳ. Lucian.

[476] Whittaker’s, Manchester.

[477] See p. 332.

[478] An allegory, by the way, which I could explain satisfactorily, were it not that it would detain me.

[479] O Richard of Cirencester, oh! what pleasure it affords me to see the moderns running after the chariot wheels of the monks, whenever they can pick out amongst their lucubrations any stray sentences to support their own fantasies!

[480] “Near the road (at a place called Margan) is an old cross, bearing an inscription, which has been doomed to serve as a bridge for foot passengers over a little rivulet; and in the village are fragments of a most beautiful cross richly decorated with fretwork.”—Cambrensis.

[481] Some copies read Scoto, the meaning, however, is the same; the only difference being that the latter partakes of the modern enunciations of the word, as Scots, instead of Scuits or Scythians.

[482] In the anxiety with which my translation of “Phœnician Ireland” was hurried through the press, it inadvertently escaped me that the Scythians had only touched at Spain. The above will correct the oversight; to which I shall add that, “as for entitling the Spanish-Irish Scots, there wants no authority, the Irish authors having constantly called the Spanish colony Kin-Scuit, or the Scottish nation.”—Lhuydh.

[483] “Every argument of the origin of emigrant nations must, after all, be referred to language.”—Camden.

[484] The derivation of those two terms is not exclusively mine. It is but the repetition of the received interpretation of all men of letters.

[485] “For it is to be thought, that the use of all England was in the raigne of Henry the Second, when Ireland was planted with English, very rude and barbarous, so as if the same should be now used in England by any, it would seem worthy of sharpe correction, and of new lawes for reformation, for it is but even the other day since England grew civill” (Spenser).

[486] The name of Arran was given to this island as expressive of the land of the unfaithful, in opposition to our Iran, or the land of the faithful: both corresponding to the Iran and An-Iran of the Persians.

[487] This, however, did not happen at first; for the name of Ireland was not yet generally used among strangers, as Adam de Breme, who lived in the eleventh century, and Nubigensis, in the twelfth, were the first who mentioned it: the name of Scotland was by degrees appropriated to Albania, which was for some time called Little Scotland, “Scotia Minor,” to distinguish it from Ireland, which was called “Scotia Major,” whose inhabitants did not lose all of a sudden the name of Scots: they are so called in the eleventh century by Herman, in the first book of his chronicle; by Marianus Scotus, Florentius Wigorniensis, in his annals, in which, having inserted the chronicle of Marianus, in mentioning the year 1028, he says, “In this year was born Marianus, probably a Scot from Ireland, by whose care this excellent chronicle has been compiled from several histories.” We discover the same thing in a chronicle in the Cottonian library (Abbé Mac Geoghegan).

[488] The Picts, confiding in the happy omen of future friendship from the Scots, obtained wives from them, and thereby contracted so close an alliance, that they seemed to form but one people; so that the passage between the two countries being free, a number of Scots came and settled amongst the Picts, who received them with joy (Buchanan).

Britannia post Britones et Pictos tertiam Scotorum nationem in Pictorum parte, recepit, qui, duce Reuda, de Hibernia progressi, vel amicitiâ vel ferro, sibimet inter eos sedes quas hactenus habent, vindicârunt, à quo scilicet duce usque hodiè Dalreundini vocantur (Beda, Hist. Eccles. lib. i. cap. 1).

Cambrensis says, that in the reign of Niall the Great in Ireland, the six sons of Muredus, King of Ulster, with a considerable fleet, seized on the northern part of Britain, and founded a nation, called Scotia (Topog. Hib. dist. 3, cap. 16).

“It is certain,” says Camden, “that the Scots went from Ireland into Britain. Orosius, Bede, and Eginard, bear indisputable testimony that Ireland was inhabited by the Scots.” Elsewhere he calls the Irish the ancestors of the Scotch. “Hiberni Scotorum atavi.”

[489] Author of the New Analysis of Chronology, and late Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin.

[490] See p. 376.

[491] This should have been Scythians.

[492] “Origin and Purity of the Primitive Churches of the British Isles.”

[493] Various colonies of the Tuath-de-danaans had settled here: but I talk now of the last one, immediately preceding the Scythians.

[494] See pp. 259, 264, 265.

[495] See pp. 385, 282, and 259.

[496] Euseb. Præpar. Evang. 1. ii. 4.

[497] Πανταχοῦ δὲ καὶ ἀνθρωπομορθον Οσιρίδος ἄγαλμαδεικνύουσιν ἐξορθιαζον τῶ’ αἰδοιω, διὰ το γόνιμον καὶ τὸ τρόφιμον.—Plut. de Isid. et Osirid.

[498] See p. 265.

[499] De facie in orbe lunæ. Slatyr, also, an English poet, in his “Pale Albeone,” calls our island Ogygia. Rhodoganus explains the propriety of the word when he says, “Ogygium appellant poetæ tanquam pervatis dixeres.”

[500] The original, in fact, of the Feodal System.

[501] An act of daring impiety (not requiring to be added) disgusted Jemsheed’s subjects, and encouraged the Syrian prince, Zohauk, to invade Persia. The unfortunate Jemsheed fled before a conqueror, who was deemed by all, the instrument of divine vengeance. The wanderings of the exiled monarch are wrought into a tale, which is among the most popular in Persian romance. His first adventure was in the neighbouring province of Seistan, where the only daughter of the ruling prince was led, by a prophecy of her nurse, to fall in love with him, and to contract a secret marriage; but the unfortunate Jemsheed was pursued through Seistan, India, and China, by the agents of the implacable Zohauk, by whom he was at last seized, and carried before his cruel enemy, like a common malefactor. Here his miseries closed; for after enduring all that proud scorn could inflict upon fallen greatness, he was placed between two boards, and sawn asunder with a bone of a fish (Sir John Malcolm).

[502] Clio, chap. 130.

[503] “Now these heathens in India, believe that an atonement has been made for their sins,” says Dr. Hurd, in his Religious Rites and Ceremonies. Had the Doctor, or whoever he was that assumed his name, known that this was their reliance upon the expiation “of the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world,” he would have spared his heathens, and spoken less irreverently.

[504] Clio, chap. 193.

[505] Cambrensis, in the twelfth century, says, the Irish then musically expressed their griefs; that is, they applied the musical art, in which they excelled all others, to the ordinary celebration of funeral obsequies, by dividing the mourners into two bodies, each alternately singing their part, and the whole, at times, joining in full chorus.

“The body of the deceased, dressed in graveclothes, and ornamented with flowers, was placed on a bier, or some elevated spot. The relations and keeners (singing mourners) then ranged themselves in two divisions, one at the head, and the other at the foot of the corpse. The bards and croteries had before prepared the funeral caoinan. The chief bard of the head chorus began by singing the first stanza in a low doleful tone, which was softly accompanied by the harp: at the conclusion, the foot semichorus began the lamentation, or ullaloo, from the final note of the preceding stanza, in which they were answered by the head semichorus; then both united in one general chorus. The chorus of the first stanza being ended, the chief bard of the foot semichorus began the second gol, or lamentation, in which they were answered by that of the head, and, as before, both united in the full chorus. Thus, alternately, were the song and the choruses performed during the night. The genealogy, rank, possessions, the virtues and vices of the dead were rehearsed, and a number of interrogations were addressed to the deceased: as, Why did he die? If married, whether his wife was faithful to him, his sons dutiful, or good hunters or warriors? If a woman, whether her daughters were fair or chaste? If a young man, whether he had been crossed in love? or if the blue-eyed maids of Erin had treated him with scorn?” (Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. iv. note 9).

[506] Baillie.

[507] A particular anecdote in the Persian history has such claims upon the feelings, and is otherwise so interesting, as being, in fact, the elucidation of the origin and era of the Tyrrhenians, Etrurians, or Tuscans, in Italy, that I am forced to transcribe it here at full length.

“Feridoon was the son of Ablen, an immediate descendant of Tahamurs. He had escaped, in almost a miraculous manner, from Zohauk, when that prince had seized and murdered his father. At the age of sixteen he joined Kâwâh, who had collected a large body of his countrymen: these fought with enthusiasm under the standard of the blacksmith’s apron, which continually reminded them of the just cause of their revolt; and the presence of their young prince made them invincible. Zohauk, after numerous defeats, was made prisoner, and put to a slow and painful death, as some punishment for his great crimes.

“Feridoon’s first act was to convert the celebrated apron into the royal standard of Persia. As such, it was richly ornamented with jewels, to which every king, from Feridoon to the last of the Pehlivi monarchs added. It was called the Derush-e-Kawanee, the Standard of Kawa, and continued to be the royal standard of Persia, till the Mohammedan conquest, when it was taken in battle by Saed-e-Wukass, and sent to the Caliph Omar.

“A Persian poet, alluding to the victories which the youthful Feridoon obtained over Zohauk, and to those enchantments by which the latter was guarded, and the manner in which they were overcome by his virtuous antagonist, beautifully exclaims, ‘The happy Feridoon was not an angel; he was not formed of musk or of amber; it was by his justice and mercy that he gained good and great ends. Be then just and merciful, and thou shalt be a Feridoon.’

“The crimes of his elder sons, which embittered the latter years of Feridoon, have given rise to one of the most affecting tales in Persian romance; and it is, indeed, only in that form that there remains any trace of these events. This virtuous monarch had, we are told, three sons, Selm, Toor, and Erii. The two former were by one mother, the daughter of Zohauk; the latter by a princess of Persia. All these three princes had been united in marriage to three daughters of a king of Arabia. Feridoon determined to divide his wide dominions among them. To Selm he gave the countries comprehended in modern Turkey; to Toor, Tartary and part of China; and to Erii, Persia. The princes departed for their respective governments, but the two elder were displeased that Persia, the fairest of lands, and the seat of royalty, should have been given to their junior, and they combined to effect the ruin of their envied brother. They first sent to their father to reproach him with his partiality and injustice, and to demand a revision of his act, threatening an immediate attack if their request was refused. The old king was greatly distressed; he represented to them that his days were drawing to a close, and entreated that he might be allowed to depart in peace. Erii discovered what was passing, and resolved to go to his brothers and to lay his crown at their feet, rather than continue to be the cause of a dissension that afflicted his father. He prevailed upon the old king to consent to this measure, and carried a letter from their common parent to Selm and Toor, the purport of which was, that they should live together in peace. This appeal had no effect, and the unfortunate Erii was slain by his brothers who had the hardihood to embalm his head and send it to Feridoon. The old man is said to have fainted at the sight. When he recovered, he seized with frantic grief the head of his beloved son, and, holding it in his raised hands, he called upon heaven to punish the base perpetrators of so unnatural and cruel a deed. ‘May they never more,’ he exclaimed, ‘enjoy one bright day! May the demon remorse tear their savage bosoms, till they excite compassion even in the wild beasts of the forest! As for me,’ said the afflicted old man, ‘I only desire from the God that gave me life, that he will continue it till a descendant shall arise from the race of Erii to avenge his death: and then this head will repose with joy on any spot that is appointed to receive it.’