Noah than Adam. The sleep of Vishnou is doubtless the same as the CHAP. IV. death-like repose of Osiris in the ark, and as that rest of Brahma in his floating egg or his lotos-cradle, which is sometimes expressly described as his death in one world only that he may be born again into another. When the great father is supposed to die, then the Ark is his coffin: when he experiences a second birth, the Ark is his mother: when, in consequence of that birth, he is esteemed an infant, the Ark is his cradle: when he sleeps in deep repose until he awakes into a new world, the Ark serves him for a couch or a bed: when he is venerated as the universal parent both of gods and men, the Ark is his consort. The account, which the Hindoos give us of Vishnou-Narayan, is immediately connected with chaos and darkness: and, as is commonly the case in ancient mythology which was specially built on the doctrine of a succession of similar mundane systems, the primeval state of the world at the period which we deem that of its creation, and its disorganized condition during the prevalence of the deluge, are intimately blended together. They represent him moving, as his name implies, on the waters, in the character of the first male and the principle of all nature; which was wholly surrounded in the beginning by Tamas or darkness, the Chaos and primordial night of the Greek mythologists, the Thammuz of Scripture, and the Thaumaz or Thamas of the old Egyptians.' This name Tamas, under all its various modifications, may probably be deduced from Theom or Thaum, which, in the language of the Hebrews and the Babylonians, denotes the great abyss of dark waters. It is equally a title of Adonis and Buddha and it is borne by them exactly in the same sense, as the ocean is deemed a form of Iswara, as Osiris no less than his adversary Typhon is sometimes identified with the sea, as Janus is said to be the same as Chaos, as the sea is called the tears of Saturn, and as Saturn himself is esteemed the element of water.' 4. In the Avatar of Crishna, the fabled sufferings and ultimate triumph of Vishnou are precisely those of the Egyptian Horus and the Greek Apollo. 'Asiat. Res. vol. iii. p. 126. 2 Asiat. Res. vol. i. p. 255. Plut. de Isid. p. 364. Ovid. Fast. lib. i. ver. 103. Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. v. p. 571. Sallust. de diis et mund. c. iv. Macrob. in somn. Scip. lib. i. c. 11. Pag. Idol. VOL. II. 2 N BOOK IV. He was born an infant; but his birth was concealed through fear of the tyrant Cansa, to whom it had been predicted that a child born at that time would destroy him. He was fostered therefore in Mathura by a herdsman and his wife and he spent his youth in sporting with nine rural damsels of extraordinary beauty, in playing upon his flute, and in dancing away the gaily revolving hours. When conveyed from the fury of Cansa, he was borne over the sacred river Yamuna in a navicular cradle or Argha, the great serpent Calya following him with inveterate malice: but he afterwards fought and slew the monster in the midst of the waters, notwithstanding the intercession of the sea-nymphs in his behalf; and, at a more advanced age, he put to death his cruel enemy Cansa. During the period that he was subject to this persecution, he is said to have hid himself in the Moon; and he is also fabled, with three companions and all his flocks and herds, to have taken refuge in the womb of a vast serpent which he created for the purpose.' He rescued the children of his preceptor from an inundation of the sea, which had carried them down to the infernal dominions of Yama: he supported a mountain upon his finger during the prevalence of a deluge: and he appears as the tutelary genius of an Argha, which equally bore him away from the rage of his enemy and is thought to have been filled with all kinds of animals.' In this legend it is easy to perceive, that Crishna's escape in the Argha from Cansa and Calya is the same as that of Apollo and Horus in the floating island from the serpent Python or Typhon; that the river Yamuna occupies the place of the Egean sea and the sacred lake near Buto; and that the final victory of Crishna is no other than the parallel final victory of the Greek and Egyptian deities. The outline in short of all the three fables is this. The great father is exhibited as an infant, in allusion to the mystic birth of Noah from the Ark. A monster, which the Egyptians plainly tell us is the ocean, which the Greeks ascribe to the epoch of the deluge, and which the Hindoos represent as being slain in the midst of the waters, seeks his life. For a season he is constrained to hide himself from his enemy: and this he 'See Plate II. Fig. 5. * Moor's Hind. Panth. p. 197, 199, 201, 202, 213, 280, 287, 394. plates 58, 59, 61, 62, 64. Asiat. Res. vol. i. p. 259-262. does, either in the ship Argha which serves him for a cradle, or in a floating CHAP. IV. island, or in the Moon, or in a large serpent which he constructed for that purpose. Here he spends his time in the midst of flocks and herds, which are inclosed along with him in the same machine; and remains safe under the care of an ancient shepherd, who is the same person as himself viewed under a different aspect, just as Osiris ultimately identifies himself with the infant Horus. But at length he prevails over his inveterate enemy; and, either in the midst of the great waters or in the slime left by the retiring deluge, effects his total destruction.' 5. Thus it appears, that the great gods of Hindostan, when viewed severally, are mutually the same as each other, and that they are all equally the universal father: but, when viewed conjointly, they exhibit a somewhat different aspect. They then constitute a triad emanating from a fourth yet older divinity; who, by a mysterious act of self-triplication, becomes three while yet he remains but one, each member of the triad being ultimately resolvable into the monad. What we are to understand by this phraseology, which has most unhappily been thought to have originated from some traditional knowledge of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, is best ascertained by the declarations of the Hindoos themselves and by the legendary histories of their three great gods. Their doctrine is, that, at the commencement of every new mundane system, Brahm and the three subordinate divinities, appear on earth, under a human form, in the persons of Menu and his three sons; that this transmigration regularly takes place at certain great intervals; that, at the end of every revolving period, the world and all its inhabitants are destroyed by a flood of water; that the universal father, comprehending within himself a Since the knowledge of Christianity has been diffused over Asia, the legend of Crishna has been interpolated by the Brahmens with various circumstances taken from the gospels, so that the whole exhibits a tolerably accurate account of the escape of Jesus from Herod but the more simple narrative, which is here given, enables us easily to distinguish between what is spurious and what is genuine. This narrative existed long anterior to the birth of Christ, and probably to the time of Homer; nor have I the least doubt of its identity, previous to its adulteration, with the Greek and Egyptian fables of Apollo and Horus. Every particular in it palpably refers us to the era of the deluge. See Sir W. Jones's Dissert. in Asiat. Res. vol. i. p. 273. triad and existing in eight forms, then alone remains, floating in a state of deep meditation or death-like sleep on the boundless ocean; and that, when the deluge retires and a new world emerges from beneath the waves, he awakes from his slumber, and manifests himself as the Menu of the renovated system, the father first of three sons and afterwards through them of the whole human race. One might think, that so plain an account as this could scarcely be misapprehended. The evident purport of it is, that the triplicated god of Hindostan is Noah at the head of his three sons viewed as the parent of the present generation of men, and Adam similarly at the head of his three sons viewed as the parent of the antediluvian race of mortals. Of these, the former monad and triad is deemed a transmigratory reappearance of the latter monad and triad: and, as the succession of worlds is fancifully maintained to be endless, because one world has really been succeeded by another; the same monad and triad is exhibited, and the same events occur, at the commencement of each new system. Such is the doctrine of the Hindoos; which, so far as I can judge, contains not the slightest allusion to the scriptural doctrine of the Trinity, but which wholly relates to a succession of mere human triads each springing from a yet anterior monad: and with their doctrine the history of their triplicated god will be found exactly to correspond. When viewed as the three sons of Noah or Menu-Satyavrata, who (we are literally told) was preserved with seven companions in an ark at the time of the general deluge, Brahma, Vishnou, and Siva, are declared to be Shama, Chama, and Pra-Japati ; and are each severally represented, as having floated on the surface of the waters, either in a ship, or in certain vehicles which are positively asserted to be symbols of that ship. But, when viewed as the three sons of Adam or Adima or Menu-Swayambhuva, the same three deities appear at the commencement of the antediluvian world with every characteristic of Abel, Cain, and Seth. One of them murders his brother at a solemn sacrifice, and is doomed to be a wanderer upon the face of the earth. In consequence of this event, the first race of men is described as springing only from two brethren; the third, although fabled to be half restored to life, being so debilitated as to be incapable of producing children, until he appears again in renovated vigour at the beginning of the present mundane system. On the whole, nothing can well be less ambiguous than the origination of the Brahmenical triad: and I cannot but lament, that learned and ingenious men should have advocated the groundless conceit of its having sprung from a corrupted primeval tradition of the Holy Trinity. VIII. The Hindoo triad of Brahma, Vishnou, and Siva, is, I am persuaded, fundamentally the same as the classical triad of Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto. I mean not to say, that every person of the one can be perfectly identified with a corresponding person of the other, so that each shall distinctly answer to each: but the three classical gods melt into one another just in the same manner as the three Hindoo deities; and, notwithstanding some varieties, the general resemblance between the two triads is such, as to warrant the belief of their having originated from a common source. Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, when viewed conjointly as the three sons of Saturn; and Brahma, Vishnou, and Siva, when viewed conjointly as the three emanations from Brahm or as the three sons of Menu; are certainly the triple offspring of the great transmigrating universal father of gods and men, by whom the Gentiles meant Adam reappearing in the person of Noah. Yet, by a species of genealogical confusion which pervades the whole of ancient mythology, the three are deemed mutually the same both with each other and with the parent from whom they sprang; for, as the whole human race may be resolved genethliacally into the triad, so the triad ultimately resolves itself into the monad whence all mankind derived their common origin. In this point of view therefore, the three, when beheld separately, are alike the great father; and, as such, are considered as being essentially but one character, acting as it were in the three different capacities of the renovator, the preserver, and the destroyer, of the eternally mutable Universe. The ancient pagan sages delighted to express themselves mysteriously, and thus to throw a shade of awful obscurity over the simplest matters. Instead of merely saying that their principal hero-god was the father of three sons, they were wont to speak of him as a being who had wonderfully triplicated himself. Thus triplicated, he had three forms; which yet were esteemed, as being fundamentally but one deity. Hence we sometimes have an account of only a single god springing from the egg, which during the space of a year was CHAP. 17. |