Chapter XXIII
A very industrious contributor to the Asiatic Researches has afforded scope for some jests at his expense, because of the attempt which he has made to identify the British islands with certain Western localities commemorated in the writings of the Hindoos. Had he but known, however, the coincidence of our monuments with those mysteries which the Puranas record, how they mutually support and dovetail into each other, he could not only have laughed to scorn the traducers of his services, but fixed his fame upon a pinnacle of literary pride which no undergrowl of envy could have subverted.
But as it is, unacquainted with the history of the places which he left behind him, and wading, therefore, through an ocean in which he had no compass for his guide, he has, in his puerile endeavours to wrest the text of the Puranas to external prejudices, effected more himself towards the disparagement of his reputation, than what the combined influence of interest and of scepticism could otherwise accomplish.
“There are,” say the Puranas, “many manifestations and forms of Bhagavan, O Muni, but the form which resides in the White Island is the primitive one. Vishnu,” says the author, “recalling all his emanations into the White Island, went into the womb, in the house of Vasu-devi; and on this grand occasion he recalled all his emanations. Bama and Nrisinha are complete forms, O Muni; but Crishna, the most powerful king of the White Island, is the most perfect and complete of all Vishnu’s forms. For this purpose Vishnu, from Potola, rejoins the body of Radhiceswara, the lord of Radha, he who dwells in the White Island with the famous snake, a portion of his essence. The gods sent there portions of their own essences to be consolidated into the person of Crishna, who was going to be incarnated at Gocula.”380
The gist of the foregoing, Mr. Wilford would neutralise by this following extract, which he gives as the substance of another notice in the same documents, and which he considers himself as incredible:—
“Bali, an antediluvian, and in the fifth generation from the creation, is introduced, requesting the god of gods, or Vishnu, to allow him to die by his hand, that he might go into his paradise in the White Island. Vishnu told him it was a favour not easily obtained; that he would however grant his request. But, says Vishnu, you cannot come into my paradise now; but you must wait till I become incarnate in the shape of a boar, in order to make the world undergo a total renovation, to establish and secure it upon a most firm and permanent footing: and you must wait a whole yuga till this takes place, and then you will accompany me into my paradise.”
“Ganesa, who is identified with Vishnu, and has also an inferior paradise in the White Island, and another in the Euxine, or Jeshu sea, thus says to a king of Casi, or Benares, an antediluvian, and who, like Bali, wished much to be admitted into his elysium, “you cannot now enter my paradise in the White Island; you must wait 5000 years; but in the mean time you may reside in my other paradise, in the Euxine Sea.”
Now, all these monstrosities, as they presented themselves to Mr. Wilford, gauging them with the comparisons of dry rule and line on the application of the true touchstone, vanish into ether.
The most mysterious and religiously-occult name given to Ireland in the days of its pristine glory was Muc-Inis.
This word has three interpretations—firstly, the Boar Island; secondly, the White Island; and, thirdly, the Sacred, or rather the Divine, and Consecrated Island of God.381
Is it necessary that I should say one syllable more to authenticate the Puranas, and identify this hallowed spot with the paradise of their encomiums? No: I shall not affront your understanding by so supposing. The explanation of this single term has, more effectually than could a ship-load of folios, set to flight the hobgoblins of ignorance and of scepticism, and reared the castle of truth on the ruins of prostrated error.
I would by no means, however, be understood as intending an ungenerous trophy over Mr. Wilford’s mistakes. I respect the zeal with which he embarked in his undertaking; and, to speak over-board, the lapses which he has committed were to him ethically unavoidable.
The sting, therefore, of the above, if any it convey, must be directed exclusively to the romancers of my own country: a specimen of whom I shall give you in the Rev. Dr. Keating, who, venturing to unveil the mystery of the name Muc-Inis, and account for its origin, tells us, with a serious face, that “when the Danaans found the Milesians attempted to land, by their magical enchantments they threw a cloud on the island, by which it appeared no bigger than a hog’s back!!!”
But Ireland, thank God, is rescued from the drivelling of such dotards. It will hold its place now amongst the nations of the earth; and the result is inevitable, however tardy your compliance, but that the truth will be revived from one pole of the universe to the other, that, in the primeval world, all sanctity and all happiness had here fixed their abode, that heaven was here personified, and that the irradiating focus of all moral enlightenment was here alone to be found.382
Look, Sir, what do you see before you? The solution of that all-healing arrow which Abaris was said to have brought with him from the island of the Hyperboreans, on his visit of religion to Greece!
Should you ever chance to travel as far as the county of Galway, inquire for the deserted village of Knockmoy. Though now dreary, inconsiderable, and forgotten, it was once the theatre of soul-stirring impressions!
There in the remnant of an ancient Tuath-de-danaan Temple, vaulted with stone, and transformed, in after ages, to a Christian Abbey, you will find, after a succession of, at least, three thousand revolving years, this pathetic representation of the youth Apollo slaying with his arrow the serpent Python383—in other words, overthrowing, by self-endurance, the dominion of sin! and, finally, by immolation upon a tree, to which you perceive him pinioned, establishing ascendency over the serpent and his wiles, and pointing out the road to eternity beyond the grave!
In an upper range, on the same compartment, you can trace this other line, consisting of three kings with their eastern crowns, their eastern costume, and the dove of amity entwining all of them as they superintend the spectacle, while the solemnity of the whole is enhanced by the composure with which a Brehon sits by, in his turban of state, after reading from the Bana, or the Budhist gospel, the sentence of condemnation and of mysterious expiation, in one and the same breath.
“He was oppressed and He was afflicted; yet He opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before His shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth.”384
But this is not the only incident which this treasure of antiquity pourtrays. Beside the three monarchs are skeleton delineations of the three other divinities, who, before this fourth, assumed the form of humanity, and went through the same ordeal of atoning passion to reclaim our species, through ages back in the distance!385
It will readily be believed, that descriptions so mysterious, relating to events so momentous, must have attracted the observation of subsequent years. Generation after generation gazed upon them with wonder! Generation after generation spoke their ignorance in wonder! Mr. Ledwich, of course, must have a snap at them: and it would make a cat laugh, or Plutarch’s boar dance a hornpipe, to hear the contortions of history, the violations of nature, the perversions of fact, of date, and of philosophy, which this blot upon letters has strung together into a melange, as if an exposition of the above hieroglyphics!
And yet, this is he who boasts of his having been “not sparing of ridicule” in those moments which he tells us, “he could steal from clerical and domestic avocations,”—to tell lies of his country!
The speculation took, however, and he was fostered in his malice—riches and honours were showered upon him!
Well, he died—a monitory pause accompanies the sound—but the party must have a successor!
They “have found him” amongst themselves!—the author of the Fine Arts in Ireland!
This fine gentleman has really exhibited some degree of tact, which shows him not unworthy of his appointment. He begins by denouncing, hoof and horn, every position of his predecessor! Calls him, as a salvo, “a learned man!” but insists upon his being a “most unskilful antiquary”; and though “dogmatic,” “altogether a visionary.”
These, you would suppose, were great liberties to take with the foster-child of patronage. They were so, in appearance, not in reality, for
“Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur”—
he is a modern,386 and though of a different school, it suits their purpose as well.
But let us see how he would decipher “the writing upon the wall.”
“If we might venture a conjecture,” he says, “it would be that the living figures represent the most distinguished native princes, who warred with the adventurers in defence of their country; and that those of the deceased kings were the patriot monarchs of earlier times!”
Pray, what adventurers? what?—But the farce is too absurd to bestow discussion upon it.
Come, however, to the crucifixion scene, what would “P——” make of this?
“This appears,” he says, “to represent the death of the young son of Dermod MacMurrough, who was delivered up to Roderick O’Connor, as a hostage for his father’s fidelity, and who, according to Cambrensis, and, we believe, to our own annalists, was abandoned by that inhuman and ambitious parent to his fate!”
After the flourish of trumpets, with which Mr. P—— had proclaimed independence of Dr. Ledwich, one would have expected a new ascription, or, at least, a different one, from him. This, however, is but a servile transcript from his predecessor’s work, and that, too, without having the candour to quote him as his authority!
“But let us view those things with closer eyes.”
Had MacMurrough’s son been put to death by O’Connor, in that awful manner above delineated, with such external parade, and such mysterious pomp, think you that Cambrensis, who never omitted even the most trivial feature of a narrative, would have been blind to a particular, which must have interested all his readers? Yet, as to the reality of this—Mr. P——’s insinuation notwithstanding—Cambrensis is silent and mute as the grave!
A fact which was thought worthy to be commemorated in fresco must have been equally eligible as a phenomenon in writing. The O’Connors, therefore, whom Mr. P—— would install as the authors of this device, must have retained some documentary register thereof: and, though it is well known, that there is not a family in the kingdom, who have preserved the records of their house with such industry or minuteness as they have, yet is there not so much as the semblance of an allusion to be traced amongst them, to this mysterious representation!
Nay, if O’Connor had put to death MacMurrough’s son, with such circumstances of torture and savage insensibility, is it probable that he would himself be the person to immortalise his disgrace, by depicting it upon such a chronicle? And if the virtue of the nation were not previously outraged by the hellishness of the crime itself, would it not now blaze forth in holy indignation at the infatuated vanity of the monster, who, not satisfied with the murder of his innocent victim, must deluge his country also in gore, by associating it, to forthcoming ages, with this outline of his barbarity?
Yes, sir, if they were silent as to the crime, they would be eloquent as to the painting! And it is not only that they would demolish the structure within which it was inscribed, but every quill within the realm would become a pen, every liquid be converted into ink, and every hand be made that of a writer to rescue the island’s fame from identity with the traitor’s cause; and confine to his own and his loathed head the withering execrations of posterity!
Instead of which, however, not a syllable is uttered, on paper or on parchment, allusive to the tragedy! Not a presage is imparted by mournful banshee! nor elegy sung by familiar mna-caointha! No historian records the heart-rending tale! nor does gipsy retail it in itinerant ditty! But the mystery of sorrow, and the sanctity of truth, that hallowed the scene which this temple commemorates, has, still further, exerted its protecting instrumentality, and besides the moving evidences imprinted upon its interior, has added those also of exclusion from without, and prevented the iniquity of profane appropriation, by the occurrence of any equivocal record!
The devices upon places of worship are always of a religious kind. Would the perpetration of a faithless infanticide be considered an act of religion? And, if not, why emblazon it within the tabernacle of prayer, with all the circumstances of grace and of grandeur around it?—solemnised by kings! superintended by gods! and executed by judges!
Oh! sir, a dire plague of astringent benightment has lain brooding over history! and spread, like the upas, its baleful emaciation over everything of culture that fell within its shadow! But truth is immortal: and, however momentarily suppressed, will ultimately recover.
“It is a pleasure,” says Bacon, “to stand on the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventurers thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing on the vantage-ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings and mists and tempests, in the vale below; so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.”
The very dresses, which adorn these venerable delineations, are enough to redeem them from the turpitude which Mr. P—— would impute to them. O’Connor and MacMurrough were, neither of them, on this earth, for at least two thousand years after these were in vogue! neither are they by any means the habits which P—— would persuade us that “laws were subsequently enacted to abolish as barbarous!”
Behold! I show you a mystery!387
What do you see here?388 What do you make of this Mr. P——. Or do you think that O’Connor went over into Nubia, and got the impress of his enormity canonised there also, in the form of a cross, within the temples and sanctuaries of the adoring Egyptians?
I copy this image from a work of great value, lately published in Paris by Monsieur Rifaud; which he designates by the title of Voyage en Egypte et en Nubie, et lieux circonvoisins. The plate under notice is but part of a larger one, which he describes as “Façade du petit temple de Kalabche (en Nubie) et ses détails intérieurs,” and of which I shall, by and by, treat you to two more compartments, as the exact correspondents of the six crowned figures at Knockmoy.
Meanwhile, I beg leave to introduce to you on the next page, some of the sculptures on the Tuath-de-danaan cross, at old Kilcullen, in the county of Kildare, Ireland. Here you distinguish nine Budhist priests in the Eastern uniform, with bonnet, tunic, and trouser—nay, with their very beards dressed after the Egyptian fashion.
Other figures I shall leave to your own research to unfold. But let me particularly fasten upon your faculty of comparing, the head-gear of the standing figure, in the second division, and that of the crucifixion upon the Nubian temple. Are they not critically, accurately, and identically the same?
Look next at the brute animals that take part in this group! Mind the grotesqueness of their positions, and the combination of their character with that of man! then lay your hand upon your breast, and, with the light now streaming in upon you, can you conscientiously believe that the cross which exhibits itself at the other side, was ever the work of Christianity?389
But as you cannot imagine that O’Connor had gone over to Nubia, in the twelfth century of the Christian era, to get his murdered hostage deified in a pagan temple, built, perhaps, at the very lowest, three thousand years before his time, so neither can you impose upon us, that the Budhists stole a march upon our Christian supineness, and, while our different sects were fighting for who should have most, and proclaiming “I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ,”390 imprinted their complexity upon our boasted simplicity, and then suddenly again vanished without having been once seen, felt, heard, discovered, or understood!!!
What entanglements will not people plunge themselves into when supporting a bad cause! And how easy is the road which rectitude follows!
The Hindoo Puranas corroborate, to an iota, this our Knockmoy crucifixion.391 Sulivahana is the name which they give to the deity there represented. The meaning of the word is tree-born, or, who suffered death upon a tree. He was otherwise called Dhanandhara, that is, the sacred almoner. And his fame, say the Puranas, reached even to the Sacred Island, in the sea of milk, that is, of Doghda, which signifies milk, and which was the title of the tutelar goddess of Ireland.392
Avaunt, then, evermore, to the humbug of back-reckoning, and the charge of imposture upon the Brahmins! I flatter myself, I have laid an extinguisher, for ever, upon that pretext.
As I have before presumed to offer a suggestion to the translators of oriental manuscripts, I shall take the additional liberty of intimating, which I do with profound submission and respect, to the decipherers of all hieroglyphics, whether in Ireland or in the East, that those arrow-headed characters, to be met with at Persepolis, and resembling in their formation our Irish Oghams, bear reference, both of them, to this mysterious crucifixion! And that if Mr. Champollion, and other gentlemen interested in the prosecution of those useful points, will attend to this my advice, they will find it a more certain key to the attainment of their desired object, than all the labour and outlay of centuries heretofore!
“Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The heart that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.”
—Wordsworth.