BOOK IV. referred: and, in searching for its first institution, I see not how we can reasonably stop short of the great Babylonian apostasy.

IV. By the destruction of idolatry throughout Europe and the west of Asia, Buddhism reigns at present over a larger portion of the globe than Brahmenism. The latter is confined to India: while the former not only shares that country with it, but prevails from the very north of Tartary to the island of Ceylon, and from the Indus to Siam and China and Japan. Its principal seat is Thibet, Boutan, and Cashgar: countries, which have ever formed one of the chief settlements of the Chasas or Scythians, and which are thence consistently deemed the cradle of Buddhism. Yet this, if I mistake not, is but a local appropriation. As Paradise and mount Ararat have been transferred from Armenia to the high land of Cashgar and Bokhara at the head of the Ganges: so has the origin of Samanianism experienced an exactly similar removal. When a branch of the warlike Cuthim migrated in an unmixed state from the plains of Shinar to the lofty region of the Indian Caucasus, they brought with them that Buddhic superstition which was so immediately founded on the history of Paradise and the deluge; and to that peculiar form of old mythology their house seems to have pertinaciously adhered in all its other settlements, until it relinquished it either for the light of Christianity or for the imposture of Mohammedism.

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CHAPTER IV.

Respecting the human character of the great father, as exhibited in the Osiric or Bacchic or Saivic or Brahmenical superstition.

ALL the great gods of the Gentiles ultimately resolve themselves into one

deity, known by many different names; and that deity, we are positively told, is the Sun. Yet, though the Sun was their principal male divinity, his character was not purely Sabian or astronomical. The solar orb, to adopt the language of the Orphic poet, was but the heavenly body of the splendid god Helius.' And this god, under his various appellations, is confessed by the Gentiles themselves to sustain a second and mortal character. But the character, which he thus sustains, will be found on examination to identify itself, by no unequivocal tokens, with that of Noah viewed as a reappearance of Adam: hence he is celebrated, with perfect accuracy, as the great common father both of hero-gods and of men. In this capacity he was equally venerated by two sects, into which the ancient idolaters appear to have been divided as early as the building of the Babylonic tower: for, whatever difference there might be in the mode of worshipping or describing the great father, the person was alike adored by the votaries of each superstition.

I shall at present consider the human character of the great father, as ex

hibited, in different countries and under various appellations, by the adherents of what may be termed the Osiric or Bacchic or Saivic or Brahmenical superstition.

I. In Egypt, the transmigrating patriarch was denominated Osiris; and the younger god Horus was esteemed his offspring: but this descent is purely mythological: for, as Osiris and Horus are alike declared to be the Sun in their astronomical capacity; so, in their human capacity, they are each plainly the great father. Hence we find a very strong resemblance between their several legends. If Horus be constrained by Typhon to take refuge in a floating island; Osiris is similarly compelled by him to enter into a floating ark. If Horus be reputed to suffer death and afterwards to be restored to life; Osiris is thought to have experienced a perfectly analogous death and revival. If Isis wanders over the world in quest of Horus; she makes exactly the same search for the lost Osiris. If she carefully collects the scattered limbs of Horus, and afterwards reanimates his at length united frame; she performs also for the murdered Osiris the self-same good offices. If Horus be torn into seven pieces by the Titans; Osiris is similarly torn by the Titans into fourteen pieces, which number is the mere reduplicate of seven. Thus, their enemies are the same: the calamities, which they endure, are the same: and their final triumph is the same. They plainly, in short, constitute but a single character: and this character was divided between two deities, because it was viewed under two somewhat different lights; yet one person was still shadowed out by each.

Horus was represented as an infant, either sailing in a ship, or floating in the golden cup of the lotos, or scated on a crocodile, or swathed (as in the Bembine table) after the manner of the mummies: and he seems designed to typify the diluvian god, as born again from the Ark like a child from its mother, as returning to life after the period of his mystical death, as entering upon a new state of existence in a new world, and as finally triumphant over every attack of the ocean; designed, that is to say, more peculiarly to exhibit the post diluvian, or mystically regenerated, great father.

Osiris, on the contrary, appears to be the same person considered more generally: he is Noah in every part of his character, Noah both antediluvian and post diluvian. Thus, in one point of view, Noah the antediluvian, when

considered with reference to the second great father's existence after the flood, precedes him; and is then the parent and husband of the Ark, that mysterious mother both of the renovated world and of the great father himself: as such, he is Osiris, the consort of Isis and the sire of the infant Horus. But, in another point of view, Noah the postdiluvian, when considered with reference to the great father's existence before the flood, succeeds him; and, proceeding from the womb of the Ark which is the great father's consort, displays himself in the character of their son: as such, he is Horus or the younger Osiris, the offspring of Isis and the elder Osiris.

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Some refinement of this nature, which indeed was the almost inevitable consequence of the various degrees of relationship sustained by the great father towards the great mother, may be traced with sufficient clearness in the avowed notions of the Egyptians themselves. Plutarch tells us, that they esteemed Osiris as the beginning, Isis as the receptacle, and. Horus as the completion: and he speaks of Isis, as being the mundane house or habitation of Horus, the seat of generation, the nurse of the world, the universal recipient. Simplicius ascribes the same character to the Syrian fish-goddess Derceto or Atargatis: for he represents her, as being the place or habitation of the gods; and he adds, that, like the Egyptian Isis with whom she ought doubtless to be identified, she contained, inclosed within her womb, what he calls the specialities or proper natures of many deitics. Such phraseology, when the history of Osiris and Horus is considered, must relate to the Ark; though, as the great father was Adam no less than Noah, without excluding the Earth or the greater World which was ever associated in the minds of the ancient hierophants with the Ark or the smaller World.

Osiris then is Noah anterior to the deluge; yet, as his history shews, without excluding any other part of that patriarch's character: while Horus, the mythological son of Osiris and Isis, represents to us the same person, born as an infant from the womb of the Ark, and finally prevailing over the ravages of the ocean.

1. Agreeably to such an arrangement, Horus, as we have seen, is described as taking refuge in a floating island from the fury of Typhon or the sea,

Plut. de Isid. p. 374.

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Plut. de Isid. p. 372, 374. 3 Simpl. in Aristot. de auscul. phys. lib. iv. p. 150.

CHAP. IV.

and as afterwards expelling his enemy and as assuming that sovereignty which the overwhelming monster had for a season usurped. He is also said to have been slain by the Titans, and to have been left by them for dead in the water; where, his mother Isis, at length finding him, by her divine power restored him to life and immortality.'

These legends both relate to the same event: they are merely told in a somewhat different manner. The floating island shadowed out the Ark: whence Typhon, by whom Horus is driven into it, is rightly declared to be the personified ocean. In a similar manner, the Titans were the whole race of antediluvians: and they are generally represented, as being in arms against the navicular hero-gods, but as being finally subdued by them and as being then plunged into the watery depths of the great central abyss. Yet there is an evident distinction made between the impious Titans and certain others of a very different character who yet bore the same appellation: for Horus or Apollo, Cronus or Saturn, Hercules, Prometheus, and Helius, as being fundamentally one person, were all equally called Titan; and we find a particular family of Titans, which, with their parent Cronus at their head, amounted precisely to eight persons.* These are doubtless the eight great gods of Egypt: and the distinction is made, because the whole race of antediluvians comprehended the Noëtic family as well as their irreclaimable contemporaries. The supposed death of Horus then by the hands of the Titans is closely allied to Typhon's inveterate pursuit of him. The Ark was esteemed a coffin; and the inclosure of Noah within it, his death: hence arose the various fables of the death and burial of the principal ship-god. Thus dead, Isis finds Horus in the midst of the waters; and forthwith bestows upon him that new life, which Noah received when he quitted his floating coffin the Ark.

2. The fabled persecution, which Osiris experiences from Typhon, is evidently the same, as the exactly parallel persecution, from which Horus is

2

Diod. Bibl. lib. i. p. 22.

Orph. Hymn. xi. 1. xii. 2, 7. xxxiii. 3. Soph. dip. Colon. ver. 57. Stat. Thebaid. lib. i. ver. 738. Sanch. apud Euseb. Præp. Evan. lib. i. c. 10. As Cronus is certainly the same as Sydyk or the just man Noah, his seven children the Titans are the same as the seven Cabiri. They are the same also as the seven Heliade and the seven Rishis of Hindostan; the same, it may be added, as various other parallel septenaries.