BOOK IV.

waters, and which Vishnou is thought to have recovered from the bottom of the ocean when the deluge began to abate. They descend from heaven, because they were preserved in the hieroglyphical Moon: just as the egg of the Dioscori is said to have dropped from the lunar circle, and as the egg of the Syrian Venus is reported to have fallen from heaven into the Euphrates.' They are the books, in short, which we generally find introduced into the history of the great father, by whatever name he may be celebrated.*

4. Among the Hindoos the general character of Buddha is that of a mild and benevolent prince, who came to abolish the cruelty of sanguinary sacrifices, and to preserve the lives of all animated beings.'

This notion probably originated from a perversion of the history of Noah. The patriarch did not indeed abolish sacrifice; on the contrary, he offered up the first victim after the deluge: but his benevolent character seems to correspond with that of Buddha; and, as in one sense he was the undoubted preserver of the lives of all creatures, so the Samanèan opinion respecting the illegality of shedding blood may perhaps have arisen from a too much extended interpretation of the doctrine of the Metempsychosis. At first the soul of man was believed only to reappear in the person of man, as each new world introduced a perfect repetition of the history of a former world but afterwards, partly from the use of bestial symbols, and partly from a notion that the essence of the great father entered into all creation, the human soul was thought to experience a penal transmigration through a long succession of animal forms. Such an opinion would naturally produce a horror of slaughtering the brute creation; lest haply the limbs of a parent should be served up at the table of a son, or a wife perish beneath the blows of an unconscious husband. The doctrine in question, and with it the aversion to the slaying of animals, was brought by Pythagoras out of the east, where it took deep root and had long flourished in full luxuriancy.*

2

II. The Buddhists of Ceylon are the descendants of the continental

Athen. Deipnos. lib. ii. p. 57. Hyg. Fab. 197.

* Vide supra b. iii. c. 5.

'Asiat. Res. vol. iii. p. 197, 198, 201. Maur. Hist. of Hind. vol. ii. p. 481,

4 Ovid. Metam. lib. xv. ver. 153-477.

Buddhists, who emigrated at the revolution effected by the Brahmenists. CHAP. V. These, on the old principle of the destruction and reproduction of similar worlds, have imagined no less than twenty two Buddhas, of whom they allot five for the government of the present world. Four of them have already appeared; and a fifth, like the last Avatar of Vishnou, is thought to be yet future. The Buddha, whose religion now prevails in Ceylon, is Gautameh-Buddha. He is the person, who was born of Maha-Maya : consequently he is the fabled husband of Ila or Argha, the sovereign prince in the belly of the arkite fish, and the destroyer of the Asoors by the deluge which the Earth poured out to his assistance.*

The Buddhists themselves do in effect explain this multiplication of their god. The renewal of the world after the deluge, with many circumstances resembling those which occurred at the commencement of the antediluvian world, led to the belief in a succession of similar mundane systems. At the beginning of each appears a Buddha or Menu; whose office it is to replenish the new world with inhabitants, and who is accounted the universal father both of hero-gods and of men. Hence, if we omit the intermediate descents of this personage which for the most part are of uncertain application, we may ultimately reduce all the Buddhas, like all the Menus, to two; and these two are Adam and Noah.

Gautameh-Buddha ought, I think, evidently to be deemed the latter of those patriarchs; though, as is very commonly the case with gentile traditions of Noah, his legend has been erroneously decorated with Enoch's translation to heaven. The people of Ceylon have a notion, that before the arrival of Gautameh their island was entirely overrun by evil spirits; and that, when he became incarnate, he determined to expel them. For this purpose he took three voyages to that country: and, having succeeded in dislodging them, he planted the mark of his foot on the summit of the sacred hill called Adam's peak or Sammanelleh-Sree-Padè, and thence ascended to heaven. The doctrine however of three other Buddhas had prevailed in Ceylon previous to its being overrun by evil spirits: and its occupation by

'Asiat. Res. vol. vii. p. 406. Pag. Idol.

2

Asiat. Res. vol. vii. p. 32, 33.
VOL. II.

2 U

BOOK LY.

those malignant demons was the cause of the religion of Gautameh being there promulgated.'

When we consider the character of this deity as established by other circumstances, it will not be very difficult to ascertain the import of the present fiction. In the imagined evil spirits, that occupied Ceylon previous to the mystically triplicated voyage of Gautameh and subsequent to the manifestation of the former Buddhas, we recognize the Asoors of the Brahmens, the Kharfesters of the Zend-Avesta, and the Titans of Greek and Egyptian mythology. They were those wicked antediluvians, that intervened between the only two Buddhas whose existence was real and literal. Accordingly, they are destroyed by a hero-god; who performs a voyage for the express purpose of eradicating them and of introducing his own religion in lieu of their impieties, and who at the close of his voyage plants his foot on the summit of a lofty mountain ere he is miraculously translated to heaven. What we are to understand by the voyage by the mountain, need scarcely be pointed out. As Buddha flourished at the period of the deluge, and was the husband and navigator of the ship Ila or Argha, the voyage undertaken to destroy an impious race can only be the voyage of Noah. Whence it will follow, that the mountain, on whose summit he completed his expedition, is the local Meru or Paradisiacal Ararat of the Cingalese..

Agreeably to the prevailing belief in a succession of similar worlds, over each of which presides a Buddha or Menu, the inhabitants of Ceylon suppose, that, towards the end of the present mundane system, there will be long wars, unheard of crimes, and a portentous diminution of the length of human life; that a terrible rain will then sweep from the face of the earth. all except a small number of pious persons, who will receive timely notice of the evil and thus be enabled to avoid it; that the wicked, after being drowned, will be changed into beasts; and that ultimately Maitri-Buddha will appear and establish a new order of things. The whole of this is palpably a mere repetition of the history of the deluge applied to a yet future epoch; and it serves to confirm the opinion, that the multiplication

I

Asiat. Res. vol. vii. p. 49, 50.

2 Asiat. Res. vol. vii. p. 415..

both of Buddhas and of worlds has altogether originated from the succession of Noah and the Noëtic world to Adam and the Adamitic world.

III. Buddha-Gautameh is acknowledged by the Cingalese to be the same divinity as the Somono-Kodom or Pooti-Sat of Siam and Pegu: but they contend, that the title Somono-Kodom ought properly to be written SomonoGautameh. Such varieties occur perpetually in the orthography of the oriental nations. Thus, in the present instance, Somono is pronounced either' Samano or Saman, Sumano or Suman: and thus Gautameh is indifferently expressed Gautame or Godama, Kodom or Codum, Codam or Cadam.*

Throughout the Burma empire, the temples of Buddha are of a pyramidal form: and, like all other buildings of that shape, they are copies of the sacred mount Meru or Mienmo; in other words, they are transcripts of Ararat. The statues of the god are sometimes small, but frequently of a stupendous size. Dr. Buchanan saw one in old Ava, consisting of a single solid block of white marble. It was in a sitting posture: and its fingers he guessed to be about the length and thickness of a large man's leg and thigh. There is another of these statues, though by no means of equal size, in the plain of Virapatnam. Mr. Gentil, who published his travels in the year 1779, says, that it exactly resembles the Somono-Kodom of the Siamese. Its head is of the same form; it has the same features; its arms are in the same attitude; and its ears are exactly similar. He made various inquiries concerning it: and the answer, which he universally received, was, that it represented the god Baouth, who was now no longer regarded, since the Brahmens had abolished his worship and had made themselves masters of the people's faith. What the French traveller writes Baouth is evidently no other than Bout, Budh, or Buddha: and the tradition respecting the divinity seems necessarily to imply, that the worship of Buddha was established in India prior to the superstition of the Brahmenists. Very frequently however the only representation of Somono-Kodom is a large black

I

Asiat. Res. vol. vii. P. 38.

Asiat. Res. vol. vii. p. 413.

3 Symes's Embass. to Ava..vol. ii. p. 110, 183, 222. Sce Plate III. Fig. 14.

* Asiat. Res. vol. vii. p. 293, 295, 299. 248. vol. iii. p. 213. and Plate II. Fig. 3.

5 Asiat. Res. vol. i. P. 169.

See also Symes's Embass. to Ava, vol. ii. p. 247,

CHAP. V.

This is sometimes carved with various hieroglyphics, and is said to

exhibit the impression of his feet: for the Siamese, no less than the Cingalese, have a notion that the print of his foot was left in their country. The practice of representing Buddha, either by colossal images or by large black stones, is of considerable importance: since it affords us two special marks, by which we may trace his worship; a worship however, perpetually melting, as it were, into Brahmenism.

In many of the temples of Somono-Kodom there is a sculptured groupe of female figures, exhibiting a princess with her attendants. The princess is on her knees, and appears to be offering up her long hair to the deity. Respecting the import of this sculpture the Burmas say, that once, when Godama was in danger of perishing in a river, he was saved by a princess, who threw him a rope made of her long hair.3 A circumstance not very dissimilar is introduced into the device of several ancient coins, stamped in countries which lie far to the west of Siam. On those of Syria, the goddess Cybele, or the mountain-born Magna Mater, appears seated upon a rock, which rises out of the surrounding ocean. Sometimes a dove is perched upon her head and sometimes the fabulous Centaur, that well-known type of the great father, is placed in the same situation. Near her not unfrequently blazes an altar: but a man is universally represented at her feet in the midst of the water, imploring that assistance which the goddess from her insular rock seems prepared to hold out to him. From the general history and character of Buddha I have little hesitation in concluding, that the two legends are fundamentally the same. The supposed princess is the arkite Magna Mater resting on the summit of Ararat: and Godama saved from the river is the man, whom the Syrian medals exhibit as plunged in the ocean and as receiving assistance from the goddess of the rock.

IV. The high region to the north of India, which comprehends Cashmire, Boutan, Thibet, and Bokhara, was one of the first and most eminent settlements of the Buddhic Chusas: and it still retains a spiritual preëmi

'Maur. Hist. of Hind. vol. ii. p. 481. Ind. Ant. vol. iii. p. 31.

2 Asiat. Res. vol. vi. p. 295. Symes's Embass. vol. ii. p. 183, 197, 198.

3 Asiat. Res. vol. vi. p. 295, 296.

• See several representations of these coins in Bryant's Anal. vol. ii. p. 386.