BOOK III. diluvian age: for the fabulous Semiramis was supposed to be the daughter of Derceto or Atargatis or the Syrian goddess, and to have been changed into a dove; as her reputed parent, who was no other than the Ark, assumed the shape of a fish to escape from the rage of Typhon or the diluvian ocean. The son of Derceto, and therefore the imaginary brother of Semiramis, was called Icthys or the Fish. He was no doubt the same as Dagon or Noah: for Icthys is a mere Greek translation of Dagon; and Dagon is the title, under which the Philistines or Palli of old venerated the great father, as their brethren the Chasas or Indo-Scythæ of Bokhara and Cashgar and Ava do at the present day.' Among the latter, Dagun is still an appellation of Buddha or the sovereign prince in the belly of the fish: and Buddha is thought to have been born in the very same high region with the Bactrian Zoroaster; that region, which, comprehending Bokhara and Cashgar, may be distinguished by the general appellation of the Indian Caucasus. Such are the characters, with whom Zoroaster is made contemporary: nor was it without reason; for the land of his pretended nativity is the precise country of mount Meru, and he himself is the very same character as Buddha or Menu or Dagon.

As for the period, in which the Zoroaster of the Greek writers flourished, it cannot possibly be reconciled with the reign of Darius Hystaspis. Xanthus the Lydian makes him six hundred years prior to that prince. Suidas, on'the authority of an anonymous writer, places him five centuries before the siege of Troy. Hermodorus, Hermippus, and Plutarch, concur in fixing him no less than five thousand years before the same era. Eudoxus supposes him to have lived six thousand years before the death of Plato. Pliny ascribes to him an antiquity many thousand years higher than that of Moses; and represents him, from Hermippus, as being the pupil of Azonac, who makes a conspicuous figure in the Chaldèan oracles, and who like Zoroaster himself is the great father. He moreover tells us, that he laughed on the day of his nativity; a fable, which exactly corresponds with the Samothracian tradition of the laughter of the new-born Jupiter. Lastly, Plato supposes him to be

Luc. de dea Syra. sect. 14. Artemid. Oniroc. lib. i. c. 9. Euseb. Præp. Evan. lib. i. c. 10. Glyc. Annal. p. 184. Ovid. Metam. lib. iv. ver. 44. Athenag. Legat. p. 33. Athen. Deipnos. lib. viii. p. 346. Dissert. on Cabiri. vol. i. p. 85-87. Symes's Embass. to Ava. vol. ii. p. 110.

the son of Ormuzd, the highest god of the Persians; who in the Zend-Avesta CHAP. I. undoubtedly appears as the Supreme Being, but who (I believe) was really no other than the great father clothed with the attributes of Deity.'

These varying accounts, while they concur in proving that a primitive Zoroaster ought to be placed in a most remote age, plainly shew, that such a character as that which they describe could not have lived in the reign of Darius Hystaspis; for, if there had been only a single Zeradusht (as Hyde and Prideaux contend) and he a contemporary of Darius, it is incredible that the western writers should have made such enormous chronological blunders respecting him; they must have known, that both he and his religion were comparatively modern. In fact, the primeval Zoroaster, who (I am persuaded) was the same as Buddha or Menu, lived in an age or (to speak more properly) in ages, to which the traditions indeed of the Gentiles extended, though not their regular chronological history. He lived, for he was a compound character, in the Paradisiacal and diluvian ages: and, like Buddha or Menu, was in the first instance Adam reappearing in the person of Noah; though, agreeably to the notion of every eminent patriarch or reformer being an intermediate manifestation of the great father, he may also be in some sort identified both with Ham and with Cush, the ancestors of all the Gothic or Scuthic tribes. Thus Cassian very reasonably thinks, that he was Ham; and Annius of Viterbo makes his false Berosus assert the same: while Gregory of Tours him to have been Cush. Indeed some such opinion supposes must necessarily result from his being ascribed to so very remote a period : and the manner, in which I have stated it, best accords with the doctrines that prevailed so extensively throughout the pagan world; Zoroaster was, in one word, the Buddha or Menu of the Chusas of Iran.

2

It is a curious circumstance, that the ancient Irish should also have had a Zeradusht, and that both they and the Persians (who in this instance seem

Diog. Laer. in procm. p. 3. Suid. Lex. Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. vii. c. 16. lib. xxx. c. 1. Plut. de Isid. et Osir. p. 369. Plat. in Alcib. lib. i. p. 122. Mos. Choren. p. 16, 47. Euseb. Chron. p. 32. Syncell. Chronog. p. 167. apud Bryant. Ptol. Heph. Nov. Hist. lib. vii. Dissert. on Cabiri. vol. ii. P. 153-158.

Cassian. Collat. c. 21. apud Vallancey. Beros. Ant, lib. ii. fol. 25. Greg. Turon. Rer. Franc. lib. i. apud Bryant.

BOOK III. to have confounded together the primitive, and the later Zeradusht) should have designated his mother by the name of Doghdu or Daghda.' The close resemblance between the religion of Persia and that of the British isles was observed by Borlase; and the complete identity of the old superstitions of the Druids, the Magi, and the Brahmens, has been since satisfactorily established by Vallancey, Wilford, Maurice, and Davies: so that the appearance of this mythological character in Ireland may be accounted for without much difficulty. Doghdu or Daghda or Dag-Deva signifies the fish-goddess. This fabulous personage, the allegorical consort of Dagon or Buddha in one point of view and his parent in another, is certainly the Ark whence Buddha, whom I contend to be the same as Zoroaster, and who bears the masculine title of Dagon or Dagun, is sometimes styled the sovereign prince of the belly of the fish. Among the Syrians she appears as the fish-goddess Derceto or Atargatis; who was esteemed the universal receptacle or hiding-place of the hero-gods, who was the reputed parent of the dove Semiramis and the fish-god Icthys or Dagon, who was thence said to be contemporary with the primeval Zoroaster, and who is evidently the watery goddess Dearg and Durga of the ancient Irish and Hindoos. In the old Celtic mythology of Ireland, the children of this Zeradusht were called Mithr or Midhr; an appellation palpably the same as the title of the Persian Mithras, who was reported to have triplicated himself. The offspring therefore of Zeradusht was Mithras triplicated; as Mithras in unity was Zeradusht viewed separately from his children: and this self-triplication, which equally occurs in the mythology of Hindostan and indeed of every other ancient nation, means only, that the great father, whether Adam or Noah, was the parent of three sons, with whom each similar successive world invariably commenced."

1

Vallancey's Vindic. of anc. hist. of Ireland. Collect. de reb. Hibern. vol. iv. p. 197, 198. Hyde de rel. vet. Pers. p. 312.

2

Gen. Vallancey says, that the Irish have preserved and ascribe to their Zeradusht the very prophecy respecting the advent of the Messiah, which Abulpharagius attributes to the Persian Zeradusht. As it is difficult to conceive how this could have been a forgery of the monks in the middle ages, we scem obliged to conclude, either that the prophecy was really contained in some more ancient Zend-Avesta, or that an emigration to Ireland took place

I

But though the classical writers justly ascribe the Magianism of Persia to CHAP.11. a very ancient Zoroaster, long anterior to the time of Darius Hystaspis; for Aristotle places Zoroaster as long before Plato as Eudoxus does, and tells us (very truly, I believe) that the Magi of Persia were prior even to the Egyptians: they were not ignorant of the existence of a later Zoroaster, who is certainly the Zeradusht of Hyde, Prideaux, and Sir William Jones, and who seems to have flourished during the reigns of Darius and his son Xerxes. Thus Pliny ascribes a Zoroaster to the age of the latter of these princes; and therefore of course distinguishes him from that primeval Zoroaster, whom he himself places many thousand years before the days of Moses: thus Clemens Alexandrinus mentions a Persian Zoroaster, who was visited by Pythagoras: and thus Agathias speaks of a Zoroaster, who lived in the time of Hystaspes, though he confesses himself unable to ascertain who this person was.* All these seem plainly to be that Zeradusht, who reformed the Magianism of Hushang as he had reformed that of his predecessors, and who was probably the compiler and editor of the work whence the present Zend-Avesta has been taken. But, when I consider the texture of the early history contained in it, I can no more persuade myself either that he was the inventor of it or that he stole it from the Pentateuch, than I can believe that the beginning of the Metamorphoses was the sole and original production of Ovid or that Tzetzes was the author of the fables contained in the scholia on Lycophron.

III. I may now proceed to offer a few observations on the curious legend, which has produced this long discussion, and which from the internal evidence afforded by it I suppose to be a genuine relic of ancient eastern mythology new modelled and corrected by the later Zeradusht and his successors. Such observations therefore will be made with a special eye to the Pentateuch; in order that it may thus clearly appear, that the materials of the

subsequent to the time of Darius Hystaspis. Vind. in Collect. de reb. Hib. vol. iv. p. 196, 200, 201.

1 Huet. Demons. Evan. prop. iv. p. 88, 89. Diog. Laer. in proœm. p. 6.

2

Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. xxx. c. 1. Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. i. p. 357. Agath. de Pers. lib. ii. p. 62. apud Bryant.

BOOK III, Zend-Avestaic mythology could not have been borrowed from the sacred volume during the period of the Babylonian captivity.

1. The Dabistan of Mohsan leads us to conclude, that the early superstition of the Iranian Magi was substantially the same as that of the Indian Brahmens and, accordingly, we find a very close resemblance between the theology of the Zend-Avesta and that of the Puranas. Several points of this resemblance have already been incidentally noticed; and others, as we advance in the inquiry, will continue to present themselves to our view.

From the sacred records of Hindostan we learn, that, at the beginning of the world, numerous celestial spirits were formed capable of perfection, but with the powers of imperfection, both depending on their voluntary choice; that a considerable part of the angelic bands rebelled; that they were cast, together with Mahasoor their leader, into Onderah or the abyss of intense darkness; and that there they continued for an immense period in penal torments. Here the Mahasoor of the Brahmens is evidently the Ahriman of the Zend-Avesta: and the Onderah and the Dewtahs of the former are no less evidently the Douzakh and the Dews of the latter. The resemblance is too close to be accidental: yet, from whatever source the compiler of the Zend-Avesta might borrow such a tenet, he certainly could not have received it from the Pentateuch. We may indeed, from the Mosaical history of the fall, covertly gather the existence of a malignant and evil spirit: but we have no account of the manner, in which he deflected from his original purity; nor is the least mention made, either of his daring associates, or of any place of torment to which they were consigned.

2. In the Zend-Avesta, the first man-bull Key-Umursh is clearly Adam: and the second man-bull Taschter, who appears at the time of the deluge, can only be Noah. Of these, the latter was deemed a transmigratory revival of the former. For the title Key-Umursh, which in the Sanscrit denotes the great lord of the World, is, throughout the legends of Persia, indifferently applied both to Noah and to Adam. Hence it will follow, that Taschter was viewed as a reappearance of the primeval Key-Umursh.'

The whole of this perfectly accords with the general tenor of old mytho