BOOK IV. The sword or spear being thus the symbol of the war-god, we shall find, that the name of the deity was applied to the was applied to the weapon both among the › Romans and the Goths: and the appellations, which they used, will serve additionally to establish the point contended for, that Mars was Buddha. Plutarch tells us, that the Romans called the sacred spear Mars: and he adds, that Quirinus was a title of that god afterwards applied to the deified Romulus, that the word was derived from Quiris, and that Quiris among the old Sabines denoted the head or dagger of a spear. Ovid gives much the same account, writing the word Quiris, as a Greek would do, Curis. Curis therefore, or (with a slight variation) Quirinus or Curenus, was at once the name of the god and of the spear. But Quirinus was not only a title of Mars and Romulus, it was likewise one of the many designations of Janus. That god, as we learn from Macrobius, was called, as being the god of war, Quirinus from Curis the old Sabine name of a spear. Thus it appears, that Mars is the same as Janus, each bearing the name of Quirinus, and each being reputed the god of battles: but Janus, as we have already seen, is the Jain or Buddha of the east. From the god Curis the Romans were called Quirites, which is the same word as Curetes. These were the Cabiri under a different name: and that name they seem to have borrowed from the sword-god Curis; for they are represented as dancing with drawn swords in their hands, like the Salii whom the Roman pontifices associated with Mars or Hercules. They are usually placed in Crete, because the Cabiri were there worshipped under that denomination: and from the same god Curis both the island and its fabled original sovereign Cres or Cures borrowed their names. This Cres I believe to have been the same as Minos and Minotaur, Cres being the title of Minos or Menu or Buddha in his quality of the sword-god. ship the import therefore of the war-god's name will be the illustrious ship-deity Esa. This will exactly accord with his solar character: for the ancients represented the Sun sailing in a ship, allusively no doubt to him who was worshipped in the Sun. I suspect, that the Cuthite god Tartak, worshipped with Adrammelech, whose form is said by the Rabbins to have been a peacock, was no other than the Carticeya of the Indo-Scythæ. Plut. in vit. Rom. 2 Ovid. Fast. lib. ii. ver. 475-477. 3 Macrob. Saturn. lib. i. c. 9. p. 159. We shall be brought to just the same conclusion, if we turn to the Goths. As the old Saxons or Sacas worshipped their war-god under the symbol of a sword; so the name, by which in their language they expressed a dagger, was Sava or Seara.' But this is the precise appellation of their great god and reputed father: for Buddha is called Saca or Saxa; and, as he was their war-god and as his symbol was a sword, they at once applied his name to a dagger and took from it their own national title. The ancient Scythians thus deifying their swords, it was not unnatural for them to ascribe many wonderful properties to those sacred weapons. Their heroes were wont to stamp them with mysterious characters and each designated his own by some formidable proper name, which he thought likely to inspire his enemies with terror.. Hence, when mythology melted into romance, originated the inchanted and almost animated swords of the Gothic cavaliers: such, for instance, as the Caliburn of king Arthur; and the Durindana, the Fusberta, and the marvellous golden lance, which make so conspicuous a figure in the divine poem of Ariosto. Hence also, unless I greatly mistake, sprang the warlike superstition, which prompted the maid of Orleans to refuse all vulgar swords, and to demand a mysterious holy weapon which would be found in a tomb behind the high altar of the church of St. Catharine de Fierbois; a circumstance strongly resembling the discovery of the sword of Mars by Attila.' So again: the sword being the symbolical war-god of the Scythians, they were led from the earliest times to swear by it as by a deity. Hence Shakespeare, with singular propriety, represents his prince Hamlet as requiring his companions to take an oath of secrecy upon his sword. The custom was preserved, when the weapon had ceased to be worshipped by the Christianized warriors of the north." At the war-cry of Nemed eure Saxes or Take your daggers, our perfidious forefathers under Hengist suddenly drew their swords, and assassinated at least three hundred of the unsuspecting British nobility at Stonehenge. See Turner's Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons. vol. i. p. 161, 162, and Davies's Mythol. p. 308. • Mallet's North. Ant. vol. i. p. 239. Mallet's North. Ant. vol. i. p. 217. 3 Gifford's Hist. of France. vol. ii. P. 548. 6. I am not without suspicion, that the old chivalric oath before the ladies and the peacock, by which the knights bound themselves to attempt some hazardous adventure, has originated from the peacock of the war-god Carticeya. CHAP. V. BOOK IV. 3. Mars, like Woden and Hercules, being the diluvian patriarch viewed in the character of the lord of battles, we find him always with strict mythological propriety represented as the paramour of Venus; the goddess, who was born from the sea, and who was esteemed the maritime receptacle of all the hero-gods: whence, in the old rites of the Romans, they were worshipped conjointly, he as the great father, and she as the great mother; and the idea was so familiar, that his name was frequently expressed in composition Marspiter or father Mars to denote his paternity.' As an arkite deity, he was engaged in the war of the gods with Typhon or the deluge and, on that occasion, he is said, like Venus, to have assumed the shape of a fish. This points him out to be the same as the fish-god Dagon, as Vishnou in the Matsya Avatar, and as Buddha in his character of the sovereign prince in the belly of the fish. Nor is this resemblance purely accidental or imaginary: the period, when he thus metamorphosed himself, sufficiently explains the import of the fable; it was the age of Typhon or the unrestrained ocean, who compelled Osiris to enter into an ark, and who for a time put to flight the whole body of the hero-gods. The war of the giants alludes to the same event as the war of Typhon: and here we have the escape of Mars described in a somewhat more literal form. Those allegorical children of Neptune or the sea, whose growth increased so rapidly that they soon overtopped the highest mountains, are said to have forced Mars to enter into a tub.' This is manifestly nothing more than a repetition of the fable of Osiris What the classical mythologists have converted into a tub, was the round dish or goblet which the Hindoos consider 'Macrob. Saturn. lib. i. c. 12. p. 170. c. 19. p. 203. The names of many other of the gods were similarly compounded, and, I believe, for the same reason: the character of each, when analyzed, shews him to be the great father. The title of Jupiter or Jovispiter is familiar to every one: but Lucilius will teach us, that he was by no means the only god who bore the appellation of father. Ut nemo sit nostrum, quin pater optimus divům. 2 Anton. Liber. Metam. c. 28. Lucil. apud Lactan. Instit. lib. iv. c. 3. p. 353. Hyg. Poet. Astron. lib. ii. c. 40. p. 415. Hyg. Fab. 28. as a copy of the ship Argha. It was the same as the cup of Hercules and CHAP. V. Helius, in which they were thought to have sailed in safety over the surface of the ocean in other words, it was the Ark, which preserved the great father from the fury of those waters, the mighty children of the sea, that in the short space of forty days prevailed above the summits of the loftiest hills. That the circular tub of Mars was really a cup, is evident from the place which it occupies on the sphere: for we are told, that some supposed it to be the goblet, which appears near the Centaur and the ship Argo.' This opinion seems to me very probable: for, since the sacrificial cup is professedly a copy of the Argha, it is reasonable to believe, that the mythological astronomers should have placed the one in the immediate vicinity of the other. XXVI. There is a remarkable peculiarity in the fabled birth of Mars, which must by no means be omitted, as it forms a link in a mythological chain, which binds together Italy, China, Hindostan, Greece, Egypt, and the various countries that profess the religion of Buddha. 1. Mars is sometimes said to have been the son of Juno by Jupiter; but he was likewise thought to have been born of the goddess alone without the instrumentality of a father. Ovid informs us, that Juno, indignant at Jupiter's production of Minerva without a mother, went to complain of her husband to the Ocean. On her way she met with Flora, who attempted to comfort her: but Juno declared, that nothing could give her consolation except a complete conjugal retort; as Jupiter had produced a daughter without a mother, she would compass heaven and earth to retaliate by producing a son without a father. Flora, pitying the whimsical distress of the exasperated goddess, undertook to gratify her wishes, provided she would swear by the waters of Styx faithfully to keep her secret from Jupiter. Juno complied: and Flora forthwith produced a flower of marvellous potency. He who gave me this, said she, told me to touch with it a barren heifer, and it assuredly should become a mother: I obeyed; and, lo, the heifer became a mother. The experiment was repeated upon Juno, and with equal success. She left Flora in a state of pregnancy; journeyed into Thrace; and in due time, BOOK IV. among the warlike Scythians, became the exulting mother of the god Mars.' This curious, though somewhat ludicrous, fable relates to the allegorical birth of Noah from the Ark or great mother, a birth obviously effected without the intervention of a father: for Juno is the same as Yoni or Isi ; and Isi took the form of the ship Argha at the time of the deluge. Nor is the heifer introduced into it accidentally: as that animal symbolized the Ark, its supposed parturition by the touch of the flower is but the story of Juno repeated in hieroglyphics. Nor yet are we told without reason, that the goddess journeyed into Thrace: this circumstance shews, whence the fable originated; it was a Scythian or Gothic story, adorned by the pen of a classical writer, but truly relating to the Cuthic god Buddha. 2. Accordingly, in almost every region where Buddha is worshipped, we shall meet with a tale more or less resembling that of the nativity of Mars. without a father. It was long since observed by Ratramnus, that the Brahmens of the sect of Buddha maintained their god to have been born through the side of a virgin. This virgin, like the sole parent of Mars, was the Ark and the birth of Buddha through her side was the birth of Noah: through the door, which was fashioned in the side of that vessel.' The. Ovid. Fast. lib. v. ver. 231-258. 2 Ratramn. de nat. Christ. c. 3. He calls the deity by mistake Bubda; but it is indisputable, that he meant Buddha. 3 It is easy to see, that this fable in particular and other points in the legend of Buddha. produced that monstrous heresy, which the Manichèans spread over the whole east. Christ was pronounced to be an incarnation of Buddha, and Christianity was strangely ingrafted upon Paganism. Manes himself claimed to be an appearance of the Paraclete; and gave himself out to be an incarnation of the god Buddha, whose titles he assumed. The name Manes, by which he is generally known at least in the west, is the same appellation as Menes, Manes, or Menu; which is a title of the ark-god Buddha. Bp. Pearson rightly pronounces it to be no proper name, but rather a title assumed by the heresiarch: he is however, I conceive, totally mistaken in deriving it from the Hebrew and in supposing it to denote a heretic. This is evident from the appellation assumed by his predecessor Terebinthus, who called himself Buddas. Terebinthus is said to have had a master denominated Scythianus, who was the first author of the heresy. Bp. Pearson on the Creed. Art. I. note c. vol. ii. p. 76. Oxon. This circumstance is extremely curious. The heresy itself consisted of an ingraftation. of Christianity upon a Scythian superstition; for the Chusas were by the Greeks called Scy |