blished than this: that, when the Gentiles worshipped the Sun as their principal divinity, they did not worship him simply and absolutely as the mere chief of the heavenly luminaries; but they adored in conjunction with him, and perpetually distinguished by his name, the patriarch Noah, whose soul after death they feigned to have migrated into his orb and to have become the intellectual regent of it.

Yet, although they venerated Noah as the solar deity or (to adopt the phraseology of the Chaldean oracles) as the one fire from which all things were produced, they did not venerate him exclusively as such. Agreeably to the doctrine of a succession of similar worlds, each of which alike commenced with an universal father and three sons who had floated on the surface of a preceding deluge, the person worshipped in the Sun was not simply Noah, but Noah viewed as a transmigratory reappearance of Adam; nor yet merely Noah as a reappearance of Adam alone, but Noah considered as one of the numerous or rather innumerable manifestations of the great father. In absolute strictness of speech then, according to the system of the pagan hierophants, their floating solar deity is that fabled compound or transmigrating personage, whom they denominated the great father both of gods and men, and whom they deemed at once the destroyer and reproducer of the world. What, in naked truth, is properly the character of Noah does indeed largely predominate in this personage: but, though his attributes are eminently diluvian; we find him, in various instances, also sustaining the character of Adam. He may be viewed therefore, when the fable of an endless succession of worlds is traced up to its real origin, as a mixed being, who unites in his own person the characters of the two great fathers of the human race.

VII. There is much even in the physical character of the Sun; which led the Gentiles, according to their favourite mode of speculating, to adopt him as the best astronomical representative of their great father.

His daily descent below the horizon and his daily rising above it visibly exhibited to the devout aspirant the aphauism and reappearance of their chief god. By this was really meant the entrance into, and the quitting of, the

• EJOTY TAYTα Tugos Évos exyeɣaura. Orac. Magic. Zoroast, p. 22. Opsop.

CHAP. 11.

BOOK IV.

Ark; when the great father vanished out of one world, and manifested himself again into another: but it was variously described, as a death and a revival, as a deep sleep and an expergefaction, as an entrance into the womb and a new birth, as a descent into the infernal regions and a return from them. Accordingly we are told, that, while the Sun was invisible beneath the horizon, he shadowed out the great father, as an infernal god, or as inclosed in a state of temporary death within his ark which was deemed his coffin; but that, while he was visible above the horizon, he represented the same great father as emerging from Hades and as restored to life and liberty," Each day, at his rising and setting, he displayed a lively image of his human associate, the diluvian patriarch, by seeming to float on the surface of the mighty ocean. Each year, by his departure into the southern tropic and his return with new life and vigour into the northern, he again exhibited the allegorical death and revival of his mortal antitype within the precise literal period, allowing for a few days excess, of the confinement of Noah within the Ark; that period, which the Hindoos celebrate as the great year of the solar Brahma's sleep within the egg as it floats on the surface of the intermediate deluge. And lastly, as the ruler of the seven planets with whom as his companions he navigates the great ship of the heavens, he afforded to his enraptured votaries the edifying astronomical spectacle of the great father presiding over the seven gods and with them jointly constituting that primeval ogdoad of deities so highly venerated in Egypt and throughout the pagan world: while, in his three altitudes of morning, noon, and evening, he displayed himself as a mysterious triplication of one and the same Sun, analogous to the generative triplication of the patriarch in the persons of his three children.'

2

Macrob. Saturn. lib. i. c. 18. p. 200. c. 21. Macrob. Saturn. lib. i. c. 18. p. 200, 201. The Hindoos declare, that Brahm or the Sun is the triad Brahma-Vishnou-Siva as he appears at these three altitudes: yet, in their human capacities, these three gods are evidently first the three sons of Adam, and afterwards those of Noah,

CHAPTER III.

Respecting the division of the gentile mythologists into two great primeval sects.

I. THOUGH

HOUGH all the Gentiles in every quarter of the globe worshipped the great father as their principal divinity, and though all their various gods ultimately resolve themselves into that ancient compound and transmigrating personage viewed as multiplying himself by a mysterious act of triplication: yet we may distinctly trace the existence of two principal sects, who agreed indeed to venerate the same being, but who differed in the peculiar mode of venerating him. The difference chiefly consists in the greater or less complexity of the two systems: and, even when they are found in decided hostility to each other, they are not more unlike than those of Rome and Geneva in the Christian world. Very frequently however they have amicably blended together: all distinction has been nearly lost between them: and the two have immemorially enjoyed their respective votaries in common. Of these, we may term the one the Osiric or Bacchic or Saivic or Brahmenical superstition: and the other, the Buddhic or Thothic or Hermetic or Samanean. Throughout India' they yet exist in a separate state, and their adherents view each other with sentiments of the most malignant bigotry:

BOOK IV.

yet, from the palpable similarity of the two religions in essentials, there cam
be no doubt, as it has justly been observed, either that the one is the child
of the other, or that the two have branched off from a common original.
This has occasioned much discussion, whether of them ought to be esteemed
the most ancient: but the mode, in which the discussion, has been.
conducted, appears to me not at all to bear upon the real merits of
the question. It is in fact rather a dispute, which of the two was
first established in India, than which of them could abstractedly and from
its primeval origin claim the priority. I certainly think with Mr. Joinville,
that there is considerable reason for believing that Buddhism preceded
Brahmenism among the Hindoos: but this, so far as I can judge, leaves the
true question wholly undecided; for the former might be more ancient in
Hindostan than the latter, without being so in regard to its original institu-
tion. At the same time, one of his arguments, though somewhat irrelevant
according to the limited manner in which he treats the subject, tends strongly
to establish the propriety of the hypothesis, that Buddhism was in the first
instance antecedent to Brahmenism. The more finished and elaborate sys-
tem is usually posterior to that, which is less so.
But Buddhism is in many
respects crude, and simple, and unformed: while Brahmenism is the very
reverse. The presumption therefore is, that the latter is only a more finished
exhibition of the former; and, consequently, that Buddhism is more ancient
than Brahmenism."

II. Yet, although the priority ought perhaps to be conceded to Buddhism, such priority can only be trifling. We find each system existing in almost every part of the world, either separately, or conjointly with the other system. Hence, every argument, which proves that the one must have originated when all mankind formed but one community in one region, will equally prove that the other cannot have had a more recent origin. The rise therefore of both must be referred to a period not later than the era of the building of the tower under the auspices of Nimrod. On the whole, I am inclined to believe, that the more simple Buddhic superstition was the first political corruption of Patriarchism, the commencement of what

Asiat. Res. vol. vii. p. 398 et infra.

Epiphanius calls the Scythic or Cuthic heresy: while the more complex Brahmenical superstition (though in all probability it has received many subsequent additions) was the completion and perfection of that heresy, denominated in this latter state by the same writer Hellenism or Ionism.'

III. In all ages, the warlike Chasas or Chusas or Goths or Scythians have peculiarly attached themselves to the Buddhic superstition. These are the comparatively unmixed descendants of the original sacerdotal and military castes, the genuine children of the Babylonic Cuthim of Nimrod." On the other hand, the various tribes, who retired to the several places of their allotted settlement under a Cuthic priesthood and nobility of an entirely distinct race from themselves, appear to have either affected the Brahmenical superstition or to have carried off both systems which in time were reconciled and blended together into one.' The votaries of these two modes of worship certainly existed in India, separate from each other, so early as the times of Strabo, Porphyry, and Clemens Alexandrinus: for they all positively declare, that the Hindoo theologists were divided into two sects, the Brachmans or Brahmens and the Samanèans or Sarmanèans or Germanes; and, while Clemens specifically mentions the god Buddha by name, Strabo very accurately remarks that the Brachmans were more regular and systematic in their scheme of doctrine than the others. Clemens further observes, that the Samanèans were peculiarly the priests of the Bactrians and such they continue even to the present day; for the Chasas of Bokhara and Cashgar are still, like their ancestors, devoted to the worship of Buddha or Saman.' The Buddhists of that country insist, that their religion is no modern figment, but has existed from the very beginning. In saying this, I believe them to speak the truth, provided we limit the beginning of their theology to the era of Nimrod. It is evident, that their system was not of novel origin in the days of the authors to whom I have just

1 Vide infra b. vi. c. 2. § IV. 2.

3 Vide infra b. vi. c. 2. § VI. c. 3. § VI.

2

Vide infra b. vi. c. 2. § IV. 1. c. 4. § I, II.

Strab. Geog. lib. xv. p. 712. Porph. de abstin. lib. iv. § 17. Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. i.

p. 305.

5 Clem. Strom. lib. i. p. 395.

Asiat. Res. vol. vi. p. 531.

CHAP. III.