India in Primitive Christianity (Annotated) E-Book

Arthur Lillie

• Herausgeber: ePembaBooks
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

In his book “Indian in Primitive Christianity” published in 1909, Arthur Lillie presents an interesting angle to the subject of comparative religions, with the underlying implication that there might have been a historic connection between the religions of India and primitive Christianity and the latter had many parallels with Buddhism. Lillie also suggests that the Biblical God of Judaism and Christianity might be a variation of Shiva. 
While scholars may agree or disagree with his arguments and evidence, “Indian in Primitive Christianity” is a valuable source of information for anyone interested in the competitive studies of Christianity with the religions of India, especially with Hinduism and Buddhism.
 

Leseprobe

Arthur Lillie

Table of contents

INDIA IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY

Introduction

Chapter 1. S’iva

Chapter 2. Baal

Chapter 3. Buddha

Chapter 4. "The Wisdom Of The Other Bank"

Chapter 5. King Asoka

Chapter 6. The Mahâyâna

Chapter 7. Avalokitishwara

Chapter 8. The Cave Temple And Its Mysteries

Chapter 9. Architecture

Chapter 10. The Essenes

Chapter 11. The Essene Jesus

Chapter 12. More Coincidences

Chapter 13. Rites

Chapter 14. Paulinism

Chapter 15. Transubstantiation

Chapter 16. Ceylon

Chapter 17. Alexandria

Chapter 18. Ophis And The Serpents

Chapter 19. Descent Into Hell

Notes

INDIA IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY

Arthur Lillie

THE RATHAS OF MAHÂBÂLIPUR.

Introduction

THE first edition of this work, issued in 1893, had an unexpected success, especially abroad. In France, the eminent Sanskrit scholar, M. Léon de Rosny, reviewed it very favourably in the "XXme Siêcle" in a long article that gave a digest of the subject.

He said: "The astonishing points of contact (ressemblances étonnantes) between the popular legend of Buddha and that of Christ, the almost absolute similarity of the moral lessons given to the world, at five centuries’ interval, between these two peerless teachers of the human race, the striking affinities between the customs of the Buddhists and of the Essenes, of whom Christ must have been a disciple, suggest at once an Indian origin to Primitive Christianity."

And in Germany the eminent scientist, Ludwig Büchner, also reviewed it in one of the periodicals summing up thus: "There is no longer any question of the close relationship, in form and contents, of the two greatest and most successful religions of the world." This article has been reproduced in the volume entitled "Last Words on Materialism."

But the subject had already been ventilated on the continent.

In the "Revue des Deux Mondes," 15th July, 1888, M. Émile Burnouf has an article entitled "Le Bouddhisme en Occident." M. Burnouf holds that the Christianity of the Council of Nice was due to a conflict between the Aryan and the Semite, between Buddhism and Mosaism:

"History and comparative mythology are teaching every day more plainly that creeds grow slowly up. None come into the world ready-made, and as if by magic. The origin of events is lost in the infinite. A great Indian poet has said, 'The beginning of things evades us; their end evades us also. We see only the middle.'"

M. Burnouf asserts that the Indian origin of Christianity is no longer contested: "It has been placed in full light by the researches of scholars, and notably English scholars, and by the publication of the original texts. . . . In point of fact for a long time folks had been struck with the resemblances, or rather the identical elements, contained in Christianity and Buddhism. Writers of the firmest faith and most sincere piety have admitted them.

"In the last century these analogies were set down to the Nestorians, but since then the science of Oriental chronology has come into being, and proved that Buddha is many years anterior to Nestorius and Jesus. Thus the Nestorian theory had to be given up. But a thing may be posterior to another without proving derivation. So the problem remained unsolved until recently, when the pathway that Buddhism followed was traced step by step from India to Jerusalem."

A small work that had such a reception would by-and-by require a second edition, but intermediately an obstacle had come in the way, a very serious obstacle. Looking over the "Buddhist Records of the Western World," by the Reverend Samuel Beal, I came across a passage in which he declares that there was a complete union between Buddhism and the followers of S’iva, brought about by Nâgarjuna about A.D. 100. I had been partially on this track myself. Mr Beal asserts that Quan Yin in Chinese means Avalokitisvara (S’iva looking down), and Mr. Beal asserts that in China Quan Yin is an Hermaphrodite God.

At first I did not attach much weight to the theory. But when I thought of bringing out a second edition to my work, the "Influence of Buddhism in Primitive Christianity," I found that it complicated my task. The main postulate of my work was that the monks and mystics in Egypt and Palestine were in close touch with the Buddhist monks in India. How did S’iva-Buddhism affect them? Immensely. The task at first appeared too much for me. But I found a great difficulty in throwing over the matter altogether, and I subsequently got leisure to take it up in earnest. One flash of light quickly came to corroborate Mr. Beal.

I found that the Left-handed Tântrika rites, the devil-dancing, and the worship of S’iva as Bhairava, were in every Buddhist kingdom. This did not seem so very important at first. The worship was accounted for everywhere locally. In Tibet it was due to the Bons, in China to Dragon-Worshippers, in Ceylon to the aboriginal Nâgas. These were mere remains of local superstitions, mere barnacles outside the ship. I accepted the interpretation.

But soon many points suggested themselves to completely overthrow it. In each Buddhist kingdom was a hierarchy as strongly organised and as persistent as the hierarchy at Rome. That is the testimony of the Roman Catholic bishop, Bigandet. Now a hierarchy is an institution specially framed to resist all change instead of effecting changes. Why should all these hierarchies accept radical changes suddenly and simultaneously. One writer suggests that Buddhism desired to gain over the poorer classes of India by bringing Durgâ into their Pantheon. But Buddhism was already the religion of the poorer classes. It was the religion of the Yellow races and the low caste Sûdras. It gave to these peace, honesty, prosperity instead of Eastern slavery and interminable Indian warfare. It changed wastes into waving rice fields. It established the first hospital for healing the sick instead of handing them over to the interested sorceries of greedy devil dancers. It revealed to the Sûdra the spiritual life which the haughty Aryan had steadily kept from him. Plainly the great change called Mahâyâna could not have come from the outside.

But it might have come from a Supreme Curia like the Court of Rome. The Dalai Lâma claims to be the head of the Buddhist hierarchies. In ancient days he bore sway in the splendid monastery of Nalanda near Buddha Gaya. He was called the Âcharya (Teacher). He is alluded to in the Mahâwanso as the "High Priest of all the World." When the Buddhists were turned out of India at the revival of Brahminism, it is alleged that the great Buddhist establishment from Nalanda took refuge first in Kashmir and then in Tibet. Avalokitishvara (S’iva) guided them on their journey. And Avalokitishvara, becoming incarnate in the Dalai Lâma, still inspires Buddhism: China, Nepal, and I believe Burma, still treat him as their Pope. Such a supreme Authority coerced by a monarch so powerful as Kanis’ka, might have forced a change as revolutionary as the Mahâyâna upon the minor churches. The task was quite beyond a few ignorant devil-dancers working separately and at far distances one from the other.

Many other points tend to the same conclusion. Avalokitishvara and his wife Durgâ have the chief place in the litanies and prayers of the Viharas.

The great seven days’ festival of India the Durgâ Pûjah, under various names "Perahar," the "Festival of the She-devil Devî," etc., is the chief festival of most Buddhist countries.

The healing of the sick by the casting out of devils which was the chief outside function of the Buddhist monks, has now in Buddhist countries been taken from them and handed over to the unadulterated followers of Bhairava. The vow to worship the Chaitya is the chief solemn promise exacted from the Buddhist postulant at his baptism, or Abhisheka.

This Chaitya is a sham relic-dome made purposely like S’iva's Lingam. A model of it is given to the postulant with his beads and alms bowl.

Now it must be remembered that the main subject of this book is the question of the influence of Buddhism on primitive Christianity. The first edition was directed chiefly to an attempt to show the many points of resemblance between the water-drinking vegetarian celibates of Galilee who had for their main point of attack the superstition of the bloody altar, and the water-drinking vegetarian celibates of India, who had for their main point of attack the same superstition. It was suggested that the analogy was so close between them that they must have been in close communication. This at once suggests enormous difficulties. If there was this close communication, evidences of the great change which brought back to India the reeking altar and Bacchantic intoxicants would soon find their way to Alexandria and the West. This was the difficulty that faced me when I thought of preparing a new edition of this work. I saw that I would have to make an elaborate study of the religion of Serapis and of the gnostic and early Christian sects. I saw that I must get clearer ideas of the channel by which India was in communication with the West. The result is now before the reader.

I soon found strong evidence that Ceylon was the high road along which Buddhism had come. The early Christian controversies might be said to be a battle between Persian Dualism, the philosophy of the authors of the later Jewish scriptures, and the pantheism of S’iva. In the following pages the reader may gain some knowledge of how it affected the doctrine of eternal rewards and punishments, the rite of Transubstantiation, the destruction of the Kosmos by the advent of the great Judge, the Trinity and Logos ideas. As in Ceylon the Western World in those days believed themselves to be a prey to millions and billions of evil spirits, who everywhere and at all times sought their destruction. Cures could only be effected by charms and spells and the "casting out" of these devils.

And the gods of S’iva-Buddhism seemed really to have invaded Alexandria. Serapis was a servile copy of Sakkraia, a god, half man, half stone; and Kattragam had analogies with the Logos of Philo and Abrasax, the Time-god, sacrificed at the end of the year.

But a more startling discovery was behind, which, if authenticated, would place my theory of a S’iva-Buddha union on a basis that cannot be easily shaken.

I came across a passage in the writings of the Orientalist, Horace Hayman Wilson, showing that he was much struck with the close analogy between certain gross rites amongst the Vâmâcharîs, or left-handed Tântrika rites of the followers of S’iva as detailed in the Devi Rashya and the alleged improprieties of the Agapæ, as described by Gibbon. I give these rites as described in the Indian work, and also in the Kâlî Ka Purâna.

But this discovery led to others. In Nepal, according to Mr. Brian Hodgson, and in Ceylon, according to Spence Hardy, the Buddhists are very reticent about their esoteric mysteries, as Mr. Hodgson calls them, and initiatory rites; but a Miracle Play from Tibet, entitled the "Sacrificial Body of the Dead Year," when read side by side with the Kâlî Ka Purâna, quite opened my eyes. In a word, it was quite plain that the slaughter of a victim to represent the dying year, had been part of the mysteries which the followers of S’iva had forced upon the blameless water-drinking ascetics, who hailed Buddha for a teacher. The records of Ceylon told much the same story. The initiatory rite there is called the "Inebriating Festival of the Buddha," and to bring in the Bacchantic element, a version of Buddha's descent into hell has been invented, detailing how he took part in this festival as a man named Mâga; and how he made the Nâgas drunk, and cleared hell both of its victims and its fiends. This might of course only be a Sinhalese fable, but I have discovered five bas reliefs amongst the Amarâvatî marbles on the staircase of the British Museum which tell the same story in stone. This shows that at an early date it was current in the Buddhism on the mainland of India. Brian Hodgson shows that the worship of Bhairava or S’iva in his aspect as the God of Evil was part of the baptismal initiation as detailed in the esoteric Sûtras, which were sent for safety from Magadha to Nepal. These Tântras, setting forth the worship of the Left-handed gods, the Târâ Tântra or Worship of Durgâ, the Mahâkâla Tântra or worship of S’iva as Time, the terrible Kâla Chakra Tântra, the Nâga Pûjah (Worship of Serpents), etc., amount to seventy-four in the Buddhist library of Nepal alone. 1

S’iva-Buddhism reached Alexandria, and it may be asked how it affected the religion of Christ. I answer, In no way, if by Religion of Christ something distinct is understood from what is now called Christianity. The Nazarine water-drinkers of the Church founded at Jerusalem by Christ's genuine apostles to the last refused to adopt the Bacchantic Change which Tatian summed up in the terse indictment: "Ye gave the Nazarite wine to drink, and commanded the prophet, saying, 'Prophecy not.'"

The Church of Rome boasts that their sacramental rites picture in brief the life of Christ. I examine this theory and show that it certainly does not apply to the Jesus of the first three Gospels whatever it may do to the "Mystery" of the Gnostic Year God. Tertullian tells us that the followers of Valentinus called some of their rites "left-handed."

Chapter 1. S’iva

His legends being older, and not in Sanskrit, he has been neglected.—Found in India by the Aryans when they crossed the mountains—S’iva as the Cobra, and Durgâ as the Tree (pestilential Indian jungle) probably the oldest gods in the world.—S’iva as the Phenician Baal.—Esoterically a noble Pantheism fighting with the Polytheisms around.—The S’iva-Durgâ Cultus rises everywhere far above other religions, and also sinks lower. Invents the Yogi—and the Yoga philosophy.—Invents the Hypostases.—Great importance of Gaṇes’a in the history of civilisation.

As the Indian god S’iva has much to do with our present inquiry, first of all we must try to get a better knowledge of him. Professor Horace Hayman Wilson tells us that Saiva literature has been very little presented to the Hindus. The legends are not in Sanskrit.

From the earliest times the thunderstorm has been used to image God's voice and God's anger. We see Thor with his "hammer" knock down the enormous cloud-giant, Hrungner. In the First Book of Samuel, Yahve "thunders with a great thunder" and defeats the Philistine enemies of the chosen race. In Hesiod the "vaulted sky, the Mount Olympus, flashed with the terrible bolts" of Zeus in the Titan warfare. This symbolism naturally suggests itself when we look up to the "vaulted sky"; but in the Rig Veda it takes a different turn. Indra the Thunderer vanquishes his enemy Vritra, but often he seeks him in a "Cavern," a bottomless pit.

"He (Indra) has burst in the doors of that cavern where Vritra detained the waters shut up in his power. Indra has torn to pieces Suchna (Drought viewed as God) with his horns of menace."

"By him has been opened the bosom of that vault, yea, that vault without boundaries. Armed with the thunderbolt, Indra, the greatest of the Angiras, has forced the stable of the Celestial Cows." 2

That the chief god inimical to the Aryans was S’iva there can be no doubt. His special symbol is the Mahâdeo, and Dr. Muir has unearthed two passages of the Rig Veda that blurt out this truth brutally.

"May the glorious Indra triumph over hostile beings. Let not those whose god is the S’is’na approach our sacred ceremony."

"Desiring to bestow strength on the struggle that warrior (Indra) has besieged inaccessible places at the time when irresistibly slaying those whose god is the S’is’na he by his force conquered the riches of the City with a hundred gates." 3

The S’is’na is the Mahâdeo, sex worship in puris naturalibus.

Another symbol under which S’iva is attacked is that of a serpent. He is "Ahi," of the Rig Veda. Serpents even in modern times kill about 24,000 people every year in India. It is most probable that S’iva and Durgâ as two snakes were the earliest of Indian gods. Every year Durgâ figures as a snake at the Nâgapanchami Festival, and is prayed to to preserve her votaries against snake bites.

"He (Indra) has struck Ahi, who was hiding in the body of a mountain. He has struck him with that resounding weapon forged by Twashtri (the Vulcan of the Vedas), and the waters like cows ran towards their stable He has struck the first born of the Ahis." 4

But Ahi or Vritra has a wicked wife, "Nirriti the insurmountable." This is plainly S’iva's wife, Durgâ (the Tower of Strength).

"May Nirriti whose force is so formidable never come near to smite us, Nirriti the insurmountable. May she perish with the thirst that she herself instils."

A French Orientalist thinks that she was a personification of the terrible Indian fever. This is, of course, the basis of the tree worship in an Indian jungle.

PLATE 1. DURGÂ AS THE SERPENT MANASÂ

But another name, a very important one, was rendered prominent by that active Orientalist, Colonel Tod, namely Bal. When he was staying in Saurashtra he noticed this name in many temples. There was Balpur (the City of Bala), Balnath (the Lord Bal), and the plateau of the Sahyadri mountains was called Mahâbaleshwar (the Great Ishwara, Bala or S’iva).

Colonel Tod believed that this God, Bala, was the Baal of the Phenicians, and through them the Bal, Sit, or Typhon, the earliest god of Memphis and lower Egypt. In Babylon he was Bel with his wife Ashtoreth. The names Bala and Bali are philologically the same, being based on the word Balishwara. In the Râmâyana Sîva is termed Bali, and in the Rig Veda he is named Bala.

"God who wieldest the Thunderbolt, thou hast burst in the cavern where Bala kept the celestial cows."

"The Maruts support Indra when that God armed with the lightning and strengthened by our offerings, smites the soldiers of Bala, as Trita dispersed the guards."

Inscriptions dating as early as 4,000 B.C. have induced Professor Sayce and others to claim for Assyria the lead in early religious ideas. But Colonel Tod believes that the religion of S’iva was spread abroad at a very early age, before the Phenicians came in with their Baal worship. Recent discoveries have confirmed Colonel Tod.

It has been discovered that Indian teak was used for building purposes in Babylon, and Indian muslin was known there, and called "Sindhu," the early name for India.

Another singularly able Orientalist, Mr. Paterson, wrote thus in the "Asiatic Researches" 5

"The doctrines of the Saivas seem to have extended themselves over the greatest portion of mankind. They spread amongst remote nations, who were ignorant of the origin and meaning of the rites they adopted, and this ignorance may be considered as the cause of the mixture and confusion of images and ideas which characterised the mythology of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

"In fact, foreign nations could only copy the outward signs and ceremonies. They could not be admitted beyond the threshold of the temple. The adytum was impenetrable to them.

"Kal and Kâlî assumed various names. Kal became Kronos, Moloch, Saturn, Dis, Pluto, and Typhon. Kâlî became Hecate, Proserpine, and Diana who was, worshipped with bloody sacrifice at Tauris. It was to the barbarians that the Greeks were referred by their own writers to understand the names and origin of their deities.

"S’iva in his character of the creative power became the Zeus triopthalmos (the 'three-eyed,' a special characteristic of S’iva) Jupiter and Osiris. His consort Bhavânî, became Juno, Venus, Cybele, Rhoea the Syrian goddess, the armed Pallas, Iris, Ceres, and Anna Perenna. The multiplication of deities arose from the ignorance of foreign nations as to the source of the superstition which they adopted, and the original meaning of the symbols.

"They supplied their want of information by fables congenial to their own national character and manners: hence arose those contradictions which made their theology a labyrinth of confusion." 6

And now what is S’iva?

The first answer would be that he is the God of Destruction, who moves about amongst the tombs in the guise of an old and emaciated Yogi, a mere scaffolding of the human building. Around his neck is twisted a Naja Tripudians, the most deadly of snakes, but he wears also a larger necklace composed of human skulls. His waist-cloth is a tiger's skin. Vipers are his ear-rings. In one of his hands he holds the Pâs’a, the terrible noose of the Thugs, his ardent worshippers. In another hand hangs a bleeding head; a third holds the Gada, his terrible mace of war. But more awful than all, in his fourth hand is the Trisul, the three pronged pitchfork, with which he pushes about human enterprises and mars them chiefly. Ashes made of very disagreeable ingredients cover him.

Is that the King of Dread With ashy musing face From whose moon-silvered locks famed Gunga springs?

The religions invented by man have reached the most abject depths of baseness. The religions invented by man have reached superb heights of human exaltation. It is a strange paradox that at this early date the religion of S’iva-Durgâ capped both ends of this long line of human speculation. It gave to the world the foul left-handed Tântrika rites; and was also the forerunner of Patanjali, Buddha, Isaiah, Jesus, Fenelon, and Mirza the Sufi. For there sat the Indian Yogi, calmly contemplating this great problem: What is man, and what are his relations to the universe around him?

That the Indian Yogi was in existence when the Aryans reached India is proved from the Zend Avesta for in the fourth Fargard, the Persian Âryans denounce his solitary dreamings in an Indian forest:—

"Verily I say unto thee, O Spitâma Zarathustra, the man who has a wife is far above him who begets no sons; he who keeps a house is far above him who has none; he who has children is far above the childless man; he who has riches is far above him who is poor.

"And of two men he who fills himself with meat is filled with the good spirit much more than he who does not do so.

"It is this man who can strive against the onsets of the death fiend; that can strive against the winter fiend with the thinnest garments on; that can strive against the wicked tyrant and smite him on the head; can strive against the ungodly Ashemaogha (heretic) who does not eat."

S’iva is Darkness—the Lord of Hell, a region that seems to have sprung from him and his cave. But from him has also came the idea of Kailas and its jewelled buildings. That was still the Hindu Paradise at the date of the Râmâyana. And S’iva's rude stone denotes life as well as death,—earthly life, heavenly life.

Also he is sometimes represented with three heads. Trailinga Ishwara, as Creator, Protector, Destroyer. This fancy has been stolen by the Brahmins who call Brahma the Creator, and Vishnu the Protector. But the central head of his statue, say the one at Elora is not that of Brahma, for it has Ganga (a head of the Ganges) in its top knot. Trailinga Ishwara dates very far back, for a considerable portion of Madras is called Telinga after him. And Mr. Crawford tells us that in Java and the Islands it appeared to be the name of the islanders for India. And Siva has one more attribute, the most formidable of all. S’iva is Mahâkâla (Remphan, Kronos, "Great Time.") In the Râmâyana, Valmiki informs us that S’iva has "emasculated all the gods." And when winter tourists in India sneer at a white-dusted yogi in the bazaar, they little guess what he represents. He bears the white ash of the innumerable gods, stars, systems, races of men that the Great Yogi, Mahâ Kâla, has burnt up. 7

Man's religion may be called the "Non-ego as viewed by the Ego." It is the relation that the thinking individual believes himself to hold with the infinite universe around him. What mind-picture did the facts of life present to the early races of India, driven by the hardier Aryans into jungles and wastes where serpents and fevers were very plentiful, and food very scarce? They were pronounced to be Pariahs. They were forbidden to look into any sacred book, death being the penalty. Indra, Agni, Varuna and other gods had poured down on the Indian soil colleges of holy men to perform certain rites that pleased these gods; and folks gained in return happiness and comfort. But such joys were not for the yellow-faced Turanian. Even the Nirvâna promised after many dreary rebirths was refused to him.

But whilst matters were running along in this manner S’iva's Yogi was sitting in his jungle seeking the Bodhi, or transcendental knowledge. It came to him in a form which we might call the critical faculty. He examined the divine claims of the priests, and found them contradicted by experience. Agni ate up greedily the flesh of the bullocks, the rice and the ghee, placed on his altar, but did not give in return wealth, health, or immunity from the accidents and sorrows of life. Indra, when requisitioned, refused, as often as not, to strike with his vajra the bellying cloud and deluge the baking earth with fruitful showers. Soon an early philosophy arose. It was called the Sankhya, and had two schools, two Bibles. One, that of Patanjali, is called Seshwara Sankhya, the Sûtras or maxims of S’iva, the Great Serpent Sesh. The other that of Kapila, is called the Nirîswara Sankhya, and it denies the existence of God altogether. These tractates are immensely old. Professor Manilal Mabhubhai 8 Dvivedi says that in the Yoga Patanjali talks as if he were only an editor, and Colebrooke believes Kapila to be a mythological personage.

We will copy down from Colebrooke a digest of the two prominent philosophies of the followers of S’iva, the first derived from the Yoga S’âstra of Patanjali, and the second from the Karica of Kapila. Says Colebrooke:—

"God, Îs’wara, the supreme ruler according to Patanjali, is a soul, a spirit distinct from other souls; unaffected by the ills by which they are beset; unconcerned with good or bad deeds and their consequences, or with fancies and passing thoughts. In him is the utmost omniscience. He is the instructor of the earliest beings that have a beginning (the deities of mythology), himself infinite, unlimited by time."

Kapila on the other hand, according to Colebrooke, denies an Îs’wara (ruler of the world by volition), alleging that there is no proof of God's existence unperceived by the senses, not inferred from reasoning, nor yet revealed. He acknowledges, indeed, a. being issuing from nature who is intelligence absolute, source of all individual intelligences, and origin of other existences successively evolved and developed. He expressly affirms that the truth of such an Îs’wara is demonstrated, the creator of worlds in such sense of creation: for "the existence of effects," he says, "is dependent on consciousness, not upon Iswara." 9

As I shall have to show that the second or Atheistic Sankhya had so much to do with the great change of Buddhism, I will add another detail, taking advantage of an able essay by Ludwig Büchner.

"A consistent pessimism is the main feature of the system." "Happiness is a mere illusion, and all conscious life, pain and suffering." 10

Suffering man is involved in a vortex of rebirths. It is only after tasting old age and death and other infirmities time after time for thousands of years, that the saint can gain repose in complete annihilation. 11

S’iva is the God of Destruction as well as life. Periodically he destroys the entire Kosmos—gods, men, and whirling stars. The white ashes of his followers represent the charred remains of these portentous destructions, as I have shown. The idea was plainly invented as an answer to the high-blown pretensions of the Brahmin polytheism—"Yes, there are gods, Brahma, Indra, Vishnu, etc., but S’iva sweeps them all away"; and oddly enough, the Brahmins seem to have accepted the theory.

It is also plain that the callousness of the god is another gird against the Brahmin priesthoods, who urged that sacrifices and other savage rites alone could move him. The Yogis held that the Great All was unknowable, unthinkable, omnipresent, inert, eternal.

The theory of this Pralaya, or destruction of worlds, suggests the origin of the Nirvâna of Buddha, in the sense of annihilation. According to his biography, he came to earth to give immortality to mankind, but the Pralaya sweeps away gods, men, and stars. This made immortality out of the question. And the Mahayana movement plainly also got from the Sankhya philosophy its atheism, cosmism, pessimism, and the idea of the grievous, prolonged tortures of its metempsychosis. Early Buddhism had pronounced that by joining Buddha's fold these torments could be made at once to cease.

But the Yogi of S’iva in his jungle gave to the world another gift. He said practically this—A god mysterious and callous, who dwells in the great Temple of Darkness, may be said to be incomprehensible to all except minds of his own fathom. The Absolute must be treated as the Absolute. It could not create anything for everything is already perfection. It could not supervise and direct mortal affairs, for those affairs were by absolute wisdom already arranged. A mind inscrutable and boundless can have no will to produce anything but what is like himself boundless and perfect.

But in the world some men are more wise, some more strong, some more virtuous than others. Could we not, as a workable postulate, deify what seem to be the attributes of this mighty mystery? Could not we imagine a God of Wisdom, a son of God, and call him Gaṇes’a? Could we not imagine a God of Strength and call him Karttikeya? The result was the Avesthâ idea, which, according to Professor Horace Hayman Wilson, was translated "Hypostasis" in Alexandria. Gaṇes’a was the son of Sîva, the "Word" of God, the Creator of the World; and two great feats are plainly his. As Gaṇes’a he gave to India much of its civilisation. As Janus, which Orientalists all affirm is the word Gaṇes’a a little altered, he gave civilisation to ancient Rome.

I insert a quotation from the works of Sir William J ones.

"The titles and attributes of this old Italian deity are fully comprised in two choriambick verses of Sulpitius; a further account of him from Ovid would here be superfluous:—

Jane pater, Jane tuens, dive biceps, biformis, O cate rerum fator, O principium deorum!

Father Janus, all beholding Janus, thou divinity with two heads and with two forms. O sagacious planter of all things and leader of deities.

"He was the God we see of Wisdom whence he is represented on coins with two, and on the Etruscan image found at Falisci, with four faces, emblems of prudence and circumspection. Thus is Gaṇes’a, the God of Wisdom in Hindustan, painted with an elephant's head, the symbol of sagacious discernment.

His next great character (the plentiful source of many superstitious usages) was that from which he is emphatically styled the Father, and which the second verse before cited more fully expresses; the origin and founder of all things. Whence this notion arose, unless from a tradition that he first built shrines, raised altars, and instituted sacrifices, it is not easy to conjecture. Hence it came, however, that his name was invoked before any other god; that in the old sacred rites corn and wine, and in later times incense also, were first offered to Janus; that the doors or entrances of private houses were called Januæ, and any previous passage or thoroughfare in the plural number Jani, or "with two beginnings;" that he was represented as holding a rod as guardian of ways, and a key as opening not gates only, but all-important works and affairs of mankind; that he was thought to preside over the morning or the beginning of day; that, although the Roman year began regularly in March, yet the eleventh month named Januarius, was considered as first of the twelve, whence the whole year was supposed to be under his guidance, and opened with great solemnity by the Consuls inaugurated in his fane, where his statue was decorated on that occasion with fresh laurel; and for the same reason a solemn denunciation of war, than which there can hardly be a more momentous national act, was made by the military consul opening the gates of the temple, with all the pomp of his magistracy. The twelve altars and twelve chapels of Janus might either denote according to the general opinion that he leads and governs twelve months, or that, as he says of himself in Ovid, all entrance and access to the principal gods must be made through him. They were, to a proverb of the same number. We may add that Janus was imagined to preside over infants at their birth or the beginning of life.

"The Indian divinity has precisely the same character. All sacrifices and religious ceremonies, all addresses even to superior gods, all serious compositions in writing and all worldly affairs of moment are begun by pious Hindus with an invocation to Gaṇes’a, a word composed of "Isa," the Governor or leader, and "gana" a company of deities, nine of which companies are enumerated in the Amaracosha. Instances of opening business auspiciously by an ejaculation to the Janus of India (if the lines of resemblance here traced will justify me in so calling him) might be multiplied with ease. Few books are begun without the words "Salutation to Gaṇes’a," and he is first invoked by the Brahmins who conduct the trial by ordeal, or perform the ceremony of the Homa, or sacrifice by fire. M. Sonnerat represents him as highly revered on the Coast of Coromandel, where, the Indians, he says, "would not on any account build a house without having placed on the ground an image of this deity which they sprinkle with oil and adorn every day with flowers. They set up his figure in all the temples, in the streets, in the high roads, and in the open plains at the foot of some tree, so that persons of all ranks may invoke him before they undertake any business, and travellers worship him before they proceed on their journey." To this I may add from my own observation that in the commodious and useful town that now rises at Gaya, under the auspices of the active and benevolent Thomas Law, Esquire, Collector of Rotas, every new built house agreeably to an immemorial usage of the Hindus has the name of Gaṇes’a superscribed on its door; and in the old town his image is placed over the gates of the temples." 12

I pause here to notice an important point. Colebrooke, Sir William Jones, Horace Hayman Wilson, and the old giants, all held that the mythologies of Greece and Rome were derived from India, but since Oriental studies have become professorial, some authorities subscribe to the wild theory of Max Müller, that when the Âryans passed from Bactria across the Hindu Kush, "the great mountains closed for centuries their Cyclopeian gates," 13 and India became a sort of undiscovered America until the arrival in India of Alexander the Great.

Now it seems to me that it would be quite impossible for any writer to compose a paragraph which would more completely pulverise Max Müller's fancy about the "Cyclopean Gates" than that of Sir William Jones. The Professor holds that the Greek and Latin languages were sisters to the Sanskrit before the separation at the Hindu Kush. He holds, too, that the Greek and Latin mythologies were sisters to the Indian mythology; but when the Âryans crossed the mountains, all connection ceased. And yet we find in Italy a wide knowledge of the best Indian religious ideas and customs. This knowledge could not have been obtained before the Âryan separation, for Gaṇes’a is a non-Aryan and non-Vedic god. It was not obtained subsequent to Alexander's expedition, for Gaṇes’a stretches away to the earliest and haziest traditions of Italy, to the time when Kronos his father battled with Zeus.

Learned professors who have never been to India study the Indian books, but not the Indians themselves. We must try and throw ourselves into very early times, when there were no letters of the alphabet, and folks had to rely on their rhapsodists and "bhats" for history; and the said rhapsodists had to make the dull framework of facts into a pleasant romance to obtain a hearing.

Let us suppose that the votaries of one religion think they have triumphed over another, and a pleasant allegory suggests itself. The god of the triumphing religion may be represented as a dwarf who comes to the god of the second religion, and humbly asks to be allowed as much land as he could pace with three of his poor, inconsiderable, dwarfish steps. Then comes the denouement. The dwarf becomes a giant and his three steps cover hell, earth and the vast region lit up by the stars. Every Indian would know what this was intended to mean quite as well as if it were written down in the unpoetical, systematically dull, language of Hallam.

How was such an attack to be met in days when there were no letters of the alphabet and no books.

An answer to this question comes from the S’iva Purâna. It is a legend of great importance to our inquiry.

At a place called Merlya Loka a number of very holy Brahmins had collected together with their wives. They lived in a collection of rude huts called an Â'sram, and they performed daily the most severe and painful exercises of ascetic Brahmanism, to gain magical powers. The people around flocked to them, with their ailments and troubles. All admitted that such holy men had never been seen in those parts. They were stern men, no doubt, especially towards the followers of S’iva, wicked men who neglected and derided the holy Vedas.

But one morning a strange circumstance occurred. One of them looking up whilst seated cross-legged under a tree, saw at the edge of the jungle a woman of exquisite beauty. She seemed to wish him to come towards her, although why he thought this he would not have been able to explain. She held in her hand an Indian lute. Suddenly on this she played a few bars. Such melody had never been heard before. He got up almost unconsciously and moved towards her. He was seeking to bridge earth and heaven. Perhaps Indra had sent one of his beautiful Apsaras to help him.

But the odd thing was that all the other ascetics had much the same experience. They wandered away into the leafy glades after the same Apsara. What occurred there is not narrated in the S’âstras. The next day they were in an angry mood, and specially angry with a magician whom in a body they visited and accosted with these stern words:—

"Ugly fiend, what trick is this that thou hast played?"

The person thus designated was a dwarf, certainly ugly, and as certainly endowed with very rare and magical faculties. He was named Tripurasura. He lived in a hut alone, and was quite independent of the other ascetics. Indeed, he intercepted many of the offerings of the poor people around, folks who thought that he was a greater magician than they were.

"Ugly fiend," said Tripurasura, with a laugh, "go to, the story of an ugly fiend has to be narrated to me and explained to me, worthy masters!"

"What dost mean, O deformed one?"

"I am told that an 'ugly fiend' persuaded certain grave ascetics to follow her into the paths of wantonness."

"Vile slanderer!" cried the ascetics.

"Did ye not recognise the woman with the gaping mouth, Durgâ, who feeds on little babies?"

"These words are silliness, O man of falsities!" said the Brahmins, now thoroughly alarmed.

"And all this time," pursued the malicious dwarf, with a chuckle, "where were the Brahmins’ wives? and where was the Apsara's husband, S’iva, the progenitor of many?"

With shrill voices the Brahmins’ wives treated this as a most pernicious insinuation. But women sometimes quarrel, and by-and-by it came out that a young man as handsome as Kama had visited them when the Brahmins were away in the forest.

The Brahmins were now furious, and desired a summary vengeance. They held that a Brahmajnâni (as initiate in the mysteries of Brahma), was superior to any tricky fiend whatever. They performed new incantations and sacrifices, and produced a tiger whose mouth was like a cavern, and his voice like thunder amongst the mountains. This they sent against the god S’iva. He seized the tiger and squeezed it to death, and he still wears its skin as a kummerbund.

Nothing daunted, the Brahmins tried new incantations. This time they determined to send something that he could not kill. They selected the Ânanta Naga, the Serpent of Eternity. S’iva played to it a tune on his flute to charm it, and wound it harmlessly round his neck, where it still remains. The Brahmins now thought of a new plot. It was to send the dwarf, Tripurasura, against the god. He was vain-glorious, and a little flattery might easily turn his head. He had, moreover, a terrible club charged with horrid spells by Vishnu himself. But S’iva seized the club, dashed out the dwarf's brains with it, and then danced in triumph over the dwarf's body. The club, as the Gada, figures in his hand in all his images.

A fourth plot of the Brahmins had a success that they did not anticipate. They united all their magical potencies to dismember the god, as Ouranos was dismembered by Saturn. In this they succeeded. But an astounding development took place. The severed Mahâdeo, flaming and burning, began to traverse the world and burn up the cities; and Durgâ followed it, uttering the piercing lamentations that re-echo still in the temples. The amazed Brahmins fled for help to Brahma, who advised them to sacrifice to Mahâdevî, and to pray to her to calm the fury of S’iva, before the Traipura (earth, hell, and the sky) was burnt up.

There are two terminations to the story.

One is that it was settled that the S’iva-Durgâ symbol should be set up as chief object of worship in every temple in India. The second termination was that a search was made for the remains of the charred Mahâdeo. It was at last found, and then by miraculous multiplication thirty-nine portions of it were detached. Of these twenty-one were distributed amongst that number of temples on earth, nine were delegated to the temples of heaven, and even dark Pâtâla got its portion, a solitary one, of the precious flesh. But this version of the story has a corollary which would be unintelligible unless we bear in mind S’iva's bull vitality, his marriage, his mutilation, his asceticism, his necklace of skulls, items which represent the sum of human life as seen through the yearly journey of the sun. In the Mahâkâla Sanhita S’iva dies at the end of the year, but at once springs up again as a baby, who becomes a giant almost immediately, under the title of Bâles’war.

And the moral of the story is clear enough. The Brahmin satire described Vishnu as a dwarf compassing the Traipura (earth, heaven and hell) with his portentous strides. "Just so," said the followers of S’iva, "but it was as the Evil Spirit (Asura)," and S’iva vanquished this Dwarf, Traipura Asura. "See the club which he holds as a trophy." And the dwarf has certainly got the worst of the fight. A missionary in Madras, Miss Wilson Carmichael, tells us that thirty millions of S’iva stones (the Mahâdeo, as it is called) are now being adored in India, and that the followers of Sîva number a hundred million. And the gods of the Brahman polytheism, Agni, Brahma, Indra, Vishnu, have been placed on a shelf to give way to a monism, with S’iva nicknamed "Brahma" (neuter).

THE TEMPLE SONG.

Giver of joys untold Thou trampledst on the wondrous dwarf of old, His club made weird by Vishnu's might Became thine honoured trophy in the fight, O dancer in the wondrous halls of gold!

In Perunturrai's shrine The saints assemble round the Lord divine, Nilkanta, 14 when the mountain whirled around To mark the land and fix the ocean's bound He drank, to save us, all the poisoned brine.

Past days and present days Thou art, great Mahâkâla, and thy gaze Measures the future that thou hidst from all, New joys, new pangs, surprises that appal, For Time is Fate with Fate's remorseless ways.

Charred cities fame of old Mark out thy fateful path; and we behold At night thy diamonds streak across the sky, Thy coils great Sesh enfold infinity, O dancer in the wondrous halls of gold!

PLATE 3. S’IVA DANCING.

Chapter 2. Baal

Tree and Serpent worship carried by the Phenicians everywhere—The religion of the Indian jungle—Baal in Palestine—The "Star of Chiun" (S’iva)—The Mahâdeos and Masseboth—Special blood-thirstiness of the Phenician Divinity—"Holy of Holies" of Jewish Temple, and "Sanctuary of the S’iva-Linga" in India.

Colonel Tod tells us that somewhere near Baroda he came across some followers of Durgâ living in caves in abject poverty. They were called Aghoras, or Murdi Chors (man-eaters), and fed on human flesh of the most putrid description, sometimes coming down and begging the body at a funeral. Their goddess they called Aghora Îswarî Mata (Lean Famine), and they pictured her as hungry and as insatiate as themselves.

This spectacle is immensely interesting.

We see the religion of Durgâ in its earliest form.

Early man had three stages of progress:—

(1) The cave man, whose sole food came to him by hunting and battle.

(2) The shepherd, who by the invention of tents could move about from place to place seeking new pastures for his flocks and herds.

(3) In the third stage man had learnt to till the ground and build houses.

The Egyptians and Babylonians, when they emerge in real history, had selected vast plains watered by great rivers as sites for their cities. In a word, they had reached the third stage of progress, the agricultural. Between them and the starving Indian Aghora in his dripping cave there might be hundreds, possibly thousands, of years. And yet their religion was the religion of the Indian Aghora.

Let us try and picture to ourselves the condition of the earliest cave man in an Indian jungle. When we remember that man's first idea of a god is that of a malignant and hurtful being, we cannot be surprised that two special divinities soon suggested themselves.

(1) At the period when the rainy season is over and the burning sun strikes upon the rotten vegetation, Indian jungles are ravaged by a terrible fever called the jungle fever. It is almost certain death to expose oneself to it.

(2) The second danger comes from the cobra ( Naja Tripudians), a snake whose poison mingling with the blood kills the victim in a few hours. In civilised modern India something like 24,000 Hindus perish every year from this snake. India is a vast triangular plain. In these days it was choked with jungles. The poor Aghora had to hunt for his food, bare-footed, in unhealthy seasons as well as healthy seasons. Soon came to him his first idea of a god, a cannibal witch, symbolised in the form of a tree. She was Nirriti, of the Rig Veda, the fever-breath of the Indian forest.

But the deadly snake likewise did not escape observation. He became at once a male god, the Seshanâg, S’iva the husband of Durgâ; the two seemed to work together. Both were propitiated with the gift that the starved and hungry Aghora most valued—raw meat, the warm blood of beasts and babies.

A third divinity very soon suggested itself: a stone; and at this point all that we shall say of it is that it was utilitarian. It was not carved or fashioned in any way; man did not know how to carve or fashion anything. In his cave dwelling it was a lump of the bed rock, and on this he poured the warm blood of the victim. The stone represented Durgâ as well as S’iva. These three objects of worship were started many thousand years ago.

What was the date of the early Indian cave men? How can we fix that? Cave dwellers before they could become shepherds had to invent the tent.

One fact suggests an enormous gap between the Aghora and the builder of cities. When the great Âryan shell burst in Bactria the fragments, the separate Âryan clans, must have been in a pastoral state of development at most. One fragment, Greece, as we see, learnt agriculture from the wife of S’iva or Kronos; one fragment, the Italian, learnt it from S’iva's son Janus, or Ganeśa; one, the Babylonian, learnt it from Rhea, or S’iva's wife Durgâ.

But Professor Max Müller tells us that thousands of years must have elapsed before the ancient Bactrian language could have changed to pure Greek or pure Latin; and Janus, let us say, and Ceres, must have given their instructions in some more modern tongue than the Bactrian, or they would not have been understood.

Of only one thing we can he quite certain, and that is that the epoch of the cave-dweller must be judged by the figures, almost of geological computation.

Kronos, or S’iva, taught Thebes, Babylon, Tyre, Jerusalem, agriculture. Another lesson he taught them: the religion of the Aghora.

That consisted, as we have seen, of three special points:—

(1) The worship of a cannibal witch in the form of a tree.

(2) The worship of a snake, the Naja Tripudians.

(3) The worship of a rough unhewn stone.

Now this in a word was the exact religion of Thebes, Babylon, Athens, Tyre; and the cannibalism of the witch survived everywhere in vast human sacrifices.

THE TREE.

The following legend comes from the Skanda Purâna:—

Durgâ was once very angry with S’iva, accusing him of dalliance with the Apsaras. Refusing to be pacified she fled to the jungles, and seating herself in the hollow trunk of a Sami tree, she performed Tâpasya, or ascetic practices, for nine years. Immense magical powers came to her in her wrath, and flames burst forth which scattered all the animals and shepherds living near the place, and threatened ruin far and near. Sacrifices were made to her and, pacified by these, she determined to restrict this combustion to the Sami tree. She lives in it as Samirama, the goddess of the Sami tree. It was settled that the Araṇî, the wooden drill that lights the sacred fire, should always be from this tree, and that her festival as the Tree goddess should take place once a year, on which occasion she would bestow abundant wealth and corn to all her worshippers. 15

This legend is plainly written to account for Indian tree worship to appease the goddess of Indian fire and Indian fever.

This festival of Durgâ is still the leading festival of India.

Let us now consider Tree-worship in Palestine.

"In early times," says Robertson Smith, "tree worship had such a vogue in Canaan that the sacred tree, or the pole its surrogate, had come to be viewed as a general symbol of Deity."

Mrs. Philpot, in her work on Tree-worship, says the same thing. "There is no country in the world where the tree was more ardently worshipped than it was in ancient Palestine. Amongst the Canaanites every altar to the god had its sacred tree beside it, and when the Israelites established local sanctuaries under their influence, they set up their altar under a green tree, and planted beside it, as its indispensable accompaniment, an Ashêra, which was either a living tree or a tree-like post, and not a 'grove,' as rendered in the Authorised Version."

But in some texts the Ashêra is confused with the goddess Ashtoreth in person, as the Sami Tree in India and Durgâ are deemed one.

Another point of contact between Israel and India is remarkable, namely, the reaping festival. The Jews are commanded to go out for nine days into the woods "when they have gathered the fruit of the land," and to "cut down the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook," and to live in booths of trees seven days.

In India, in the Deccan, during the festival of the tree, the Peishwa and all his followers move out into camp. The whole population marches in solemn procession towards the Holy Tree. Elephants and camels, Sepoys and noblemen, are all dressed out in gorgeous array. The Peishwa in person plucks a few leaves from the tree after the prescribed sacrifices are completed. Cannon and muskets are discharged and all decorate themselves with stalks of the jowri or rice plant.

Mrs. Philpot holds that the Israelites got this Tree worship from the followers of the Assyrian Astarte, but why go so far afield? Ezekiel (xx. 8, 13.) tells us that the Israelites were thoroughly imbued with the religion of Egypt, and that they "rebelled" against Jehovah in the wilderness, which phrase means, no doubt, that they still preserved Egyptian rites and Egyptian ideas. Lower Egypt, where they had been confined, worshipped Bal, or Typhon, with its serpent worship and tree worship. "Trees," says Maspero, "were the homes of the various divinities."

Says Jeremiah:—

"They have built also their high places to Baal to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, nor came it into my mind."

Many critics hold that the earliest god of the Israelites was really this Baal, the chief point of discussion now being, When did Jehovah worship come in.

"Amos," says Professor Dozy, "tells us that the so-called Tabernacle, the Mosaic Sanctuary, was dedicated to Saturn (Chiun or Chievan, i.e., Baal), so that a sanctuary of Baal stood at Shiloh just as a feast of Baal took place at the Gilgal.

"The same is shown by the fact that the place where the ark stood in Samuel's days, known afterwards as Kirjath Jearim was formerly called Kirjath Baal or simply Baal (1 Chron. xiii. 6).

"The strongest proof, however, that the worship of Baal went hand in hand with that of J.H.V.H. and existed as lawful worship till David's time is the fact that the name Baal occurs in several proper names. Among others in those of the sons of Saul and David, viz., Eshbaal, Meribaal, Baalyahad. The Compiler o f the Books of Samuel, who disliked this, changed these names into Ishbosheth, Mephiboseth, Elyadah, but in parallel passages of the Chronicles the original names are preserved." 16

Dr. Oort attacks this as "extravagant." He points out that the passage in Amos mentions not one but three objects of worship, a tent, a Chiun, and a star. He concludes that there is no proof at all that Chiun had anything to do with the planet Saturn. In writing thus confidently he little expected a bolt from the blue.

For Orientalists marking the controversy saw at once its immense importance. Chiun, in its more correct reading "Chievan," is almost the French "Chivin," their name for S’iva. He is called in different parts of India "Shiva," "Shivin," "Chivin." The French call him "Chivin." And the three objects that are supposed to confound Dr. Dozy confirm him instead. The Tabernacle is the Vahan or pavilion carriage of S’iva, and the six-rayed star is also most important. S’iva's symbol is an equilateral triangle; Durgâ's is the same turned upside down. The two joined form the six-rayed star of Amos. That is the S’iva-Durgâ combination.

And when Dr. Oort tells us that Chiun had nothing whatever to do with Saturn we are a little amazed.

In Acts vii. 443, we read, "Yea, ye took up the Tabernacle of Moloch and the star of your god Remphan." The author of "the Acts" knew what was meant, and in point of fact he is quoting the Septuagint, which altered "Chiun" into "Remphan."

And Jehovah's great anger against "Ashtoreth, the goddess of Sidon," and the "pillars" and "groves," does not harmonise with the early books. We are told (2 Kings xviii. 24) that "Hezekiah removed the high places and brake the images and cut down the groves and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made."

Does it seem likely that Moses would have made a brazen serpent almost immediately after he had received a stupendous command from the Almighty never to make the likeness of anything in the heaven above or the earth beneath?

Professor Maspero shows a curious point of contact between the worshippers of Ba’al, in Syria and the worshippers of S’iva, in India. Each tribe, each city, each people had its special Baal, Baal Sur, Baal Sidon, as in India Andhikîśwara is the S’iva in Andheke's cave, another is in Perumterrai, and so on.

"Each of these Baalim, as they were called, had his Astarte, Ashera, Sanit." "Astartis," says the Professor, "presided over love, generation, war, and in consequence over the different seasons of the year, that when nature is restored to youth and that when she seems to die. Gods and goddesses they dwell on the tops of mountains, the Lebanon, Hermon, Sinai, Kasios. They love forests and springs. They reveal themselves to mortals in high places (bamoth). They dwell in trees, in unhewn stones (betyles) and even in fashioned columns (masseboth)." 17

But when we have shown the Indian Durgâ in Palestine and Egypt as the provider of plenty at the tree festival, we have only got halfway to the real difficulty. Why, at that festival did she also figure as a cannibal witch?

Says the "Encyclopædia Britannica":—"Among the nations of Canaan the victims were peculiarly chosen. Their own children and whatever was nearest and dearest to them were deemed the most worthy offerings to their god. The Carthaginians who were a colony of Tyre, carried with them the religion of their mother country and instituted the same worship in the parts where they settled. It consisted in the adoration of several deities, but particularly of Kronus; to whom they offered human sacrifices, and especially the blood of children. If the parents were not at hand to make an immediate offer the magistrates did not fail to make choice of what was most fair and promising, that the god might not be defrauded of his dues. Upon a check being received in Sicily, and other alarming circumstances happening, Hamilcar without any hesitation laid hold of a boy and offered him on the spot to Kronus. The Carthaginians another time upon a great defeat of their army by Agathocles imputed their miscarriages to the anger of the god whose services had been neglected. Touched with this and seeing the enemy at their gates, they seized at once three hundred children of the prime nobility and offered them in public for a sacrifice. Three hundred men, being persons who were somehow obnoxious, yielded themselves voluntarily and were put to death with the others . . . There were particular children brought up for the altar as sheep are fattened for the shambles; and they were bought and butchered in the same manner. It is remarkable that the Egyptians looked out for the most specious and handsome person to be sacrificed. The Albanians pitched upon the best man of the community."

When we read of this awful butchery, we see at once a wild paradox, a monstrous inconsequence. A tree charged with ripe fruit suggests a festival of thanksgiving, but why should it be smeared and fouled with all this human blood. Durgâ is a cannibal witch, and I say that we must go back to the Indian Aghora and his jungle, at a time when human flesh was choice food. In those days the fever tree suggested frantic propitiations.

Mrs. Philpot and Professor Sayce carry Tree-worship back to Eridu on the Persian Gulf, B.C. 4,000.

But Assyria was badly off for trees and had to get her teak from India. Why should not the Indian Tree goddess have come with the Indian tree? In the Rig Veda, Bala has a wife, "Nirriti the Insurmountable."

"May Nirriti so formidable by her power, Nirriti the Insurmountable, never draw near to smite us. May she perish with the thirst that she causes." 18

THE SERPENT.

Monsieur Buffon thus describes an ancient forest:—

"All along the swampy banks of the river Niger or Oroonoko, where the sun is hot, the forests thick, and men but few, the serpents cling among the branches of the trees in infinite numbers. They carry on an unceasing war against all other animals in their vicinity. Travellers have assured us that they have often seen large snakes twining round the trunk of a tall tree, encompassing it like a wreath and thus climbing up and down at pleasure."

The French naturalist goes on to say that the fabulous stories of gigantic serpents may have had some solid truth. Pliny talks of a serpent one hundred and twenty feet long. In India is a serpent that attacks large tigers and buffaloes. These animals it swallows whole; and it takes, we learn, almost as many months to digest a big buffalo as Ravan's brother Kumbhakarna took to digest his gigantic meal.

This description of a forest by the French naturalist gives probably a good picture of an Indian jungle when the earliest Aghora was living in a cave near it. What wonder that he sacrificed to the Serpent Manasâ (one of the earliest forms of Durgâ), and prayed her to protect him from her too numerous brood.

Turning from India to the Delta of the Nile, we find that a city sprang up there which had for its god Typhon, or Bal; then Typhon had for wife Echidna, a serpent, and was himself furnished with one hundred serpent heads. The pair are certainly Seshanâg and Manasâ.

The Creator of the universe was the serpent god and "Kneph, and Egypt," says the anonymous author of "Ophiolatreia," "was the home of this peculiar worship." Gau gives a drawing of one of the columns of a cave temple at Derri. It was four-sided, with for capital four heads of Isis, and with Typhon's serpent body repeated four times along the shaft. This would make Typhon her first husband. In "Ophiolatreia," Horus is called a serpent god. Thermuthis was the name of the snake chiefly worshipped. It is a cobra, the Naja Hage. We learn from Diodorus Seculus that the kings of Egypt wore high bonnets that terminated at top in a round ball, and the whole was surrounded with figures of asps. The priests likewise had upon their bonnets these serpents.

Says the author of "Ophiolatreia," "The worship of the Serpent, next to the adoration of the Phallus, is one of the most remarkable, and at first sight, unaccountable forms of religion the world has ever known. Until the true source from whence it sprang can be reached and understood, its nature will remain as mysterious as its universality, for what man could see in an object so repulsive and forbidding in its habits as this reptile to render worship to, is one of the most difficult problems to find a solution to. There is hardly a country of the ancient world, however, where it cannot be traced pervading every known system of mythology.

* * * *

"Whether the worship was the result of fear or respect is a question that naturally enough presents itself, and in seeking to answer it we shall be confronted with the fact that in some places, as Egypt, the symbol was that of a good demon while in India, Scandinavia, and Mexico it was that of an evil one."

All this is very important: indeed, far more important than the anonymous author of "Ophiolatreia" seems to suspect. In point of fact India viewed the serpent from two opposing points. First it was an object of wild terror when rude tribes like the Aghoras died in thousands from its bites. Ahi was a terrible god at the date of the Rig Veda. But by whatever name and under whatever symbol you describe the Supreme God, the god of the savage will in process of time gain in wisdom and gain in loving-kindness. Ahi became Sesh. At first "in distributing the regions to the different gods," says Colonel Moor, "Seshanâga had the regions under the earth allotted to him." 19