Chapter XXI
I have stated that it was from the Pish-de-danaans or Yavana philosophers of Egypt that Moses had learned the allegories of the Deluge and of the Fall. I now add, that it was by them also he had been instructed in that consolatory assurance which told him that the “Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head.”315
In truth, it was this very promise made to the ancestors of those people in Paradise, which is but another name for Iran,316 that gave rise to the schism between them and the Tuath-de-danaans.
“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children: and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”317
The nature of the crime is here clearly denoted by the suitableness of the punishment.318 But the same over-ruling Judge, who, in conformity with His justice, could not but chastise the violation of His injunctions, yet, in mercy to man’s weakness, and seeing that “he also is flesh,” condescended to promise that the instrument of his seduction should be also the vehicle of his redeeming triumph.
“I will put enmity between thee (the serpent) and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”319
Pinning their faith upon the literal fulfilment of these terms, which told them that the female, as such, would be the unaided author of a being, whose healing effects would restore them to the inheritance so heedlessly forfeited, their veneration for that symbol of divine interposition became correspondingly unbounded; and their enthusiasm for the principle of its strict verification was what engendered the thought that in the general procreating scheme the yoni was the vivifier.
The Tuath-de-danaans or Lingajas, on the other hand, were not less satisfied in their security; but looking upon the terms with a more spiritual interpretation, and led by the operation of ordinary physics to consider the question as a deviation from the general rule, they erected the symbol of male capability as the standard of their doctrine. And thus, while the zeal of both parties shook the very framework of society, yet did they concur in all the essentials of their respective religions; and even the particulars of that prospect by which they were both sustained, instead of operating as an exception to the universality of this truth, only confirm its import.
The Jews, who were but newly brought forward upon the stage, and who, in the inscrutable councils of heaven, were selected as the objects of God’s immediate superintendence, being informed of the tenour of the paradisaical hope, abused it more wantonly than ever did the Pish-de-danaans or the Tuath-de-danaans.
Unable to comprehend, from their narrow mental calibre, any agency in the form of a divine emanation, and yet fancying, each of them, that she would herself be the mother of the expected Redeemer, their women indulged in all the lusts of desire, and, where no opportunity offered for licensed gratification, revelled in the arms of incest.
This alone can apologise for that intensity of passion, exceeding even the dictates of natural thirst, and unrestrained by the consideration of decency or consanguinity, whereof we read in the Old Testament, respecting the Israelitish daughters;320 while it also demonstrates that the carnality of their souls did not allow them thoroughly to understand the precise nature of the favour designed.
Far otherwise the case with the intellectual races, which they were now appointed to supersede.
“In order to reclaim the vicious, to punish the incorrigible, to protect the oppressed, to destroy the oppressor, to encourage and reward the good, and to show all spirits the path to their ultimate happiness, God has been pleased to manifest Himself, say the Brahmins, in a variety of ways, from age to age, in all parts of the habitable globe. When He acts immediately, without assuming a shape, or sending forth a new emanation, when a divine sound is heard from the sky, that manifestation of Himself is called acasavani, or an ethereal voice: when the voice proceeds from a meteor or a flame, it is said to be agnarupi, or formed of fire; but an avatara is a descent of the Deity in the shape of a mortal; and an avantara is a similar incarnation of an inferior kind, intended to answer some purpose of less moment. The Supreme Being, and the celestial emanations from Him, are niracara, or bodiless, in which state they must be invisible to mortals; but when they are pratya-sha, or obvious to sight, they become sacara, or embodied, either in shapes different from that of any mortal, and expressive of the divine attributes, as Chrishna revealed himself to Arjun, or in a human form, which Chrishna usually bore, and in that mode of appearing the deities are generally supposed to be born of women without any carnal intercourse.”321
Is this repugnant to the spirit of Christianity? No; it is its counterpart. “I know,” says Job, in the moment of inspiration, “that my Redeemer liveth.”322 Prophetically, you reply; and you back the opinion by our Saviour’s own appeal that “Abraham saw his day, and was glad.”323
Abraham certainly believed by anticipation, but Job by retrospection. And if you will not think my assertion decisive of the matter, I will produce an authority to which you will more readily subscribe.
“And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship Him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”324
It will be in vain for you to attempt to parry the evidence of this startling text. No visionary foresight will accomplish its defeat: no ideal substitutions will shake its validity.
“How it came to pass,” says Skelton, “that the Egyptians, Arabians, and Indians, before Christ came among us, and the inhabitants of the extreme northern parts of the world, ere they had so much as heard of Him, paid a remarkable veneration to the sign of the cross, is to me unknown, but the fact itself is known. In some places this sign was given to men accused of a crime, but acquitted: and in Egypt it stood for the signification of eternal life.”325
“V. W.” has asserted something similar;326 but neither one nor the other has attempted to fathom its origin.
“The Druids,” adds Schedius, “seek studiously for an oak tree, large and handsome, growing up with two principal arms, in form of a cross, beside the main stem upright. If the two horizontal arms are not sufficiently adapted to the figure, they fasten a cross-beam to it. This tree they consecrate in this manner. Upon the right branch, they cut in the back, in fair characters, the word Hesus: upon the middle or upright stem, the word Taramis: upon the left branch, Belenus: over this, above the going off of the arms, they cut the name of God, Thau: under all, the same repeated Thau.”327
“The form of the great temple,” observes Dr. Macculloch, “at Loch Bernera, in the Isle of Lewis the chief isle of the Hebrides, is that of a cross, containing, at the intersection, a circle with a central stone; an additional line being superadded on one side of the longest arms, and nearly parallel to it. Were this line absent, its proportion would be nearly that of the Roman cross, or common crucifix.”
And then, in reply to the supposition of its having been converted by the Christians into this form, he avers that “the whole is too consistent, and too much of one age, to admit of such; while at the same time, it could not, under any circumstances, have been applicable to a Christian worship. Its essential part, the circular area, and the number of similar structures found in the vicinity, equally bespeak its ancient origin. It must, therefore, be concluded, that the cruciform shape was given by the original contrivers of the fabric; and it will afford an object of speculation to antiquaries, who, if they are sometimes accused of heaping additional obscurity on the records of antiquity, must also be allowed the frequent merit of eliciting light from darkness. To them I willingly consign all further speculations concerning it.”328... “Yet it seems unquestionable that the figure of a cross was known to the Gothic nations, and also used by them before they were converted to Christianity.”329
I do not know whether or not would the Doctor deem me an “antiquary,” or if he did, in which class would he assign me a place. I will undertake, notwithstanding, to solve this difficulty with as much precision as I have the others before it.
The existence of the “cross,” and its worship, anterior to the Christian era, being no longer liable to dispute, it remains only that we investigate the cause which it commemorates.330
Our first aid in this research will be the notice of its accompaniments; and when we find that it goes ever in the train of a particular divinity, are we not compelled to connect that divinity with the idea of a crucifixion?
Taut, amongst the Egyptians, is emblemised by three crosses.331 The Scandinavians represent their Teutates by a cross. And a cross is the device by which the Irish Tuath is perpetuated.
But these are all one and the same name, varied by the genius of the different countries. The centre from which they diverge, as well as the focus to which they return, I have shown to be Budh: and as this symbol of his worship is universally recognised, does not the crucifixion thus implied identify his fate with that of the “Lamb slain from the beginning of the world”?332
The Pythonic allegory which the Greeks have so obscured, in reality originated in this religious transaction. For what is their fable? Is it not that Apollo slew with his arrow the serpent Python? And as Apollo means son of the Sun, is not the substance of the whole, that the offspring of a virgin’s womb—that is, an emanation of the Sun, or Budh—overcame by his own death—typified by an arrow—sin and sensuality, of which the serpent, i.e. pith, is the symbol?
We are now prepared for the reception of that chronicle, transmitted through the Puranas, and noticed already at p. 221, viz. that a “giant, named Sancha-mucha-naga, in the shape of a snake, with a mouth like a shell, and whose abode was in a shell, having two countenances, was killed by Christnah.”
The very name of this allegoric “giant” indicates the mysterious snake—his being in the form of a snake is but the personification of sensuality; his having a mouth like a shell alludes to the concha Veneris, or the Pith; his having his abode in that shell denotes its being the seat of temptation; his having two countenances implies the disguise which sin assumes; and his being slain by Christnah denotes that the Son of God, by mortification and self-denial, and the most rigid abstinence from all worldly pleasures, verified in His own person the promise made in Paradise, and for the minor disquietudes which guilt entails—expressed by the “heel” being “bruised” by the “serpent,”—inflicted a blow, which laid low his empire, and stamped the signal of victory over his “head.”333
“Ye search the Scriptures,” says our Saviour “for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of Me.”334
Testification can be made only in the case of a past occurrence. It is never used in the way of prophecy. And in conformity with its true import, you will find, from Genesis to Revelation, the concurrent tenor of the Sacred Volume giving proof to the fact of Christ’s former appearance upon the earth as man!
But suppose me for a moment to descend from this position, and view those previous manifestations as ordinary subjects of history, then hear an outline of what is transmitted to us respecting one of them.
Chanakya, Zacha, or, as our registers have it, Macha,335 one of the personifications of Budh, the general appellative of those heaven-sent devotees, was so startling a paragon of human impeccability, as to inspire his followers with the conviction of his being an incarnation of the Godhead.
He is stated to have been the son of one of the most powerful of eastern kings; but, according to their preconceived notions of the future Redeemer, born of his mother without any knowledge of the other sex.
The circumstances attendant upon his infantine education, and the precocity of his parts, favoured an inauguration upon which their fancies had been long riveted. After a laborious ordeal of pious austerity, not without miraculous proofs and other intimations of Divine approval, he was duly admitted to the honour of canonisation, and entered, accordingly, upon his task of consigned Saviour of the world.
The encounters with which he had to contend, in this uphill work, against flesh and blood, were those which were, afterwards, again combated by the admitted Saviour whom he had personated. The same faults he reprehended; the same weakness he deplored; the same hypocrisy he rebuked; and the same virtues he inculcated. The purification of the inner spirit was the object which both professed, and the improvement of human morals in social intercourse and relation, the evidence in practice, upon which both equally insisted.
If Christ promised a heaven to the votaries of His truths, Budha did a nirwana to his disciples and imitators: and though the former place, to our imagination, sounds replete with all delights, while the latter is merely figured as exempt from all painfulness, yet both agree in one particular, not a little soothing to wounded hope, in being essentially such, as where “the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest.”
But great as was the resemblance which the personal example and the doctrinal lessons of Macha and Christ bore to one another, it was as nothing compared to the almost incredible similitude of their respective departures. They both died the inglorious death of the cross to reconcile man to his offended Creator; and in confident dependence upon the best authenticated assurance, exulted on the occasion, however galling the process, of expiating, by their own sufferings, the accumulated sins of humanity.
Is it to be wondered at, therefore, that the traces which they have left behind them, in their different ages, should bear an analogy to one another? Or would not the wonder rather be that they did not, in all respects, harmonise?
“Let not the piety of the Catholic Christian,” says the Rev. Mr. Maurice, “be offended at the preceding assertion, that the cross was one of the most usual symbols among the hieroglyphics of Egypt and India. Equally honoured in the Gentile and the Christian world, this emblem of universal nature, of that world to whose quarters its diverging radii pointed, decorated the hands of most of the sculptured images in the former country, and in the latter stamped its form upon the most majestic of the shrines of their deities.”336
The fact alone is here attested to: not a syllable is said as to the reason why: and though I cannot but recognise the scruples of the writer, nor withhold my admiration from the rotundity in which the diction has been cast, yet the reader must have seen that, as to actual illustration, it is—like the Rev. Mr. Deane’s flourish about the worship of the serpent—“Vox et præterea nihil!”337
“You do err, not knowing the Scriptures,”338 said a Master, without pride, and who could not err. If the remark applied in His day, it is not the less urgent in ours. So astounding did the correspondence between the Christian and the Budhist doctrines appear to the early missionaries to Thibet and the adjacent countries—a correspondence not limited to mere points of faith and preceptorial maxims, but exhibiting its operation in all the outward details of form, the inhabitants going even so far as to wear crosses around their necks—that Thevenot, Renaudot, Lacroze, and Andrada, have supposed in their ignorance of the cause of such affinity, that Budhism must have been a vitiation of Christianity before planted; whereas Budhism flourished thousands of years before it, or Brahminism either; and this cross was the symbol of Budha crucified.
“Our second illustration,” says the Dublin Penny Journal, referring to what I have here introduced, “belongs to a later period, and will give a good idea of the usual mode of representing the Saviour, whether on stone crosses, or on bronze, which prevailed from the sixth to the twelfth century. Such remains however, are valuable, not only as memorials of the arts, but as preserving the Celtic costume of a portion of the inhabitants of our island in those remote ages. It will be seen that in this, as in one of the shrine-figures before given, the kilt, or philibeg, is distinctly marked, and controverts the erroneous assertion of Pinkerton, formerly noticed, that “it was always quite unknown amongst the Welsh and Irish.”339
How others may receive it I do not know; but for myself, I confess, I find it no easy matter to maintain the composure of my countenance at this affected pomposity of censorial magniloquence. The self-complacency of the censor one could tolerate with ease, if the assumption of the historian had aught to support it. But alas! every position in the extract is the direct opposite of truth, with the exception of that which asserts another person’s error; and even this is beclouded with such egregious observations as to show, that leaving Pinkerton to P——340 would be consigning the blind to a blinder conductor.
For, in the first place, the philibeg was not a Celtic costume at all, but belonged to the De-danaan, or Iranian colony,341 who, on their overthrow here, took it with them to what is now called Scotland. The Firbolgs, who were Celts, and occupied this island before the Iranians, wore another style of dress altogether, which, on the reconquest of the country by the Scythian swarms, B.C. 1000, became again the national uniform. For the Firbolgs, having assisted the Scythians in dislodging the Iranians from the throne of the kingdom, and agreeing with them furthermore in point of worship and of garb, they did not only make their own habits, as well of religion as of dress, universal throughout the realm, but obliterated every vestige of the obnoxious costume, and cancelled every symptom of its characteristic ceremonial, except alone those Round Temples of adamantine strength, which defied the assailment of all violence and batteries.
There was no remnant, therefore, of the kilt to be met with in Ireland, either in the sixth century, or in the twelfth, or indeed for many centuries before the Christian era at all. This effigy,342 therefore, could not have been intended for our Saviour, wanting, besides, the I. N. R. I.,343 and wearing the Iranian regal crown instead of the Jewish crown of thorns. Therefore are we justified in ascribing it to its owner, Budha, whom again we find imprinted in the same crucified form, but with more irresistibility of identification, over the monuments of his name—over the doors and lintels of the temples of his worship.
Mr. Gough, describing this edifice, tells us that “On the west front of the tower (Brechin) are two arches, one within the other, in relief. On the point of the outermost is a crucifix, and between both, towards the middle, are figures of the Virgin Mary and St. John, the latter holding a cup with a lamb. The outer arch is adorned with knobs, and within both is a slit or loop. At bottom of the outer arch are two beasts couchant. If one of them, by his proboscis, was not evidently an elephant, I should suppose them the supporters of the Scotch arms. Parallel with the crucifix are two plain stones, which do not appear to have had anything upon them.”344
Captain Mackenzie, in his Antiquities of the West and South Coast of Ceylon, which still professes adherence to Budhism, tells us that “at each side of the doorway (of the temple at Calane), inclosed in recesses cut in the wall, are two large figures, the janitors of the god (Budh).... A large elephant’s tooth and a small elephant of brass form the ornament of a lampstead.... A female figure of the natural size, decently and not ungracefully arrayed in the same garb, was represented standing in another quarter, holding a lamp in the extended hand. The gallery was entirely covered with paintings, containing an history of the life of Boodhoo—one of these seemed to represent the birth of the divine child. A large white elephant made a conspicuous figure in most of these assemblies.”345
Scotch arms, indeed! Why, Sir, those animals were recumbent there, in deified transfiguration, before ever Pict or Scot had planted a profane foot within their neighbourhood. What connection, let me ask, could this elephant and this bull have with Christianity, to entitle them to the honour of being grouped with our Saviour? Or, if any, how happens it that we never see them enter into similar combinations, in churches or chapels, or convents or cathedrals?345
But if they belong not to the Christian ceremonial, they do to something else. They are the grand, distinctive, and indispensable adjuncts of Budhism; being the two animals into which, according to its doctrine of metempsychosis, the soul of Budha had entered after his death.
This was the origin of the Egyptian Apis: and who is not familiar with the honours lavished upon the sacred bull? To this day the elephant is worshipped in the Burman empire,346 where the genius of Budhism still lingeringly tarries; and “Lord of the White Elephant” is the proudest ensign of power claimed by the successors to the throne of Pegu.
The human figures, then, of course, cannot be intended for “St. John or the Virgin Mary.” They represent Budha’s Virgin Mother, along with his favourite disciple, Rama. And thus does the testimony of Artemidorus, who flourished 104 years before Christ, a native himself of Ephesus, and who did not himself understand the mystery of that Virgin whom he historically records, receive illustration from my proof, while it gives it confirmation in return.
His words are—“Adjacent to Britain there stands an island, where sacred rites are performed to Ceres and the Virgin, similar to those in Samothrace.”
Initiation in the principles of this Samothracian ceremonial was thought so necessary an accomplishment for every hero and every prince, that no aspirant to those distinctions ever ventured upon his destination, without first paying a visit to that religious rendezvous. The solemnity, attaching to the ritual there performed, was not greater than the veneration paid to the place itself. All fugitives found shelter within its privileged precincts, and the name of sacred was assigned it, as the ordinary characteristic of such sanctuaries.347
“There are,” says the Scholiast upon Aristophanes, “two orders of mysteries celebrated in the course of the year, in honour of Ceres and the Virgin—the lesser and the greater; the former being but a sort of purification and holy preparation for the latter.”348
Who the Virgin was, however, none but the initiated ever presumed to investigate, the practice observed in respect to her, being the same as that which influenced the other ordinances of antiquity: and which made Strabo himself declare, that “all that can be said concerning the gods must be by the exposition of old opinions and fables; it being the custom of the ancients to wrap up in enigma and allegory their thoughts and discourses concerning nature, which are, therefore, not easily explained.”349
Proclus also says: “In all initiations and mysteries, the gods exhibit themselves under many forms, and with a frequent change of shape; sometimes as light defined to no particular figure; sometimes in a human form; and sometimes in that of some other creature.”350
With the clue, however, already afforded, we need not be deterred from approaching her fane. The allegorical name, under which they disguised her, was that of Proserpine: whom they represent “so beautiful that the father of the gods himself became enamoured of her, and deceived her by changing himself into a serpent, and folding her in his wreaths.”351
This was the Greek perversion of the narrative. They had received it from the Pelasgi, under the garb of a conception, by serpentine insinuation, in a virgin womb: and, the grossness of their intellects not allowing them to comprehend the possibility of an emanation, yet giving unqualified credence to the record, they degraded altogether the religiousness of the thought, and supposed that the Almighty, to effectuate his design, had actually assumed the cobra di capello form!
So austere was the rule, by which those mysteries were protected, that Æschylus but barely escaped discerption within the theatre, for an imagined disrespect to their tendency. Nor was it but on the plea of ignorance and un-initiation, that he did ultimately obtain pardon.352
This insuperable barrier to the curiosity of the profane, engendered in their conduct a corresponding reaction, and, as the fox did to the grapes, what they could not themselves compass, they strove all they could to vituperate!
“Virtue, however, is its own reward,” and, as the authority of Cicero, having been himself a priest, ought to have some weight in the discussion, it is no small impetus to the cause of truth, to hear this pre-eminent man assign to the efficacy of the precepts, inculcated in those mysteries,—“the knowledge of the God of nature; the first, the supreme, the intellectual; by which men had been reclaimed from rudeness and barbarism, to elegance and refinement; and been taught, not only to live with more comfort, but to die with better hopes.”353
“Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God;
Pursues that chain which links the immense design,
Joins heaven and earth, and mortal and divine,
Sees that no being any bliss can know,
But touches some above, and some below;
Learns from this union of the rising whole,
The first, last purpose of the human soul;
And knows where faith, law, morals, all began,
All end in love of God and love of man.”354