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 theadmittedSaviour 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 aheavento the votaries of His truths, Budha did anirwanato his disciples and imitators: and though the former place, to our imagination, soundsreplete with all delights, while the latter is merely figured as exempt from allpainfulness, yetbothagree 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 thecrossto 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 thecrosswas 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 latterstamped its form upon the most majestic of the shrines of their deities.”[336]
Thefactalone is here attested to: not a syllable is said as to thereason why: and though I cannot but recognise thescruplesof thewriter, nor withhold my admiration from therotundityin which the diction has been cast, yet the reader must have seen that, as toactual illustration, it is—like the Rev. Mr. Deane’sflourishabout the worship of the serpent—“Vox et præterea nihil!”[337]
“You do err, not knowing the Scriptures,”[338]said a Master,without pride, andwho could not err. If the remark applied inHisday, 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 offaithand preceptorial maxims, but exhibiting its operation in all the outward details ofform, the inhabitants going even so far as to wearcrossesaround 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 ofChristianitybefore planted; whereasBudhismflourished thousands of years before it, or Brahminism either; andthis cross was the symbol of Budha crucified.
“Our second illustration,” says theDublin 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 theSaviour, whetheron 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 inthis, as in one of the shrine-figures before given, the kilt, or philibeg, is distinctly marked, andcontroverts the erroneous assertionof 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 affectedpomposityof censorialmagniloquence. Theself-complacencyof thecensorone could tolerate with ease, if theassumptionof thehistorianhad 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 leavingPinkertonto P——[340]would be consigning the blind to a blinder conductor.
For, in the first place, thephilibegwas not aCelticcostume 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 maketheir own habits, as well ofreligionas ofdress, universal throughout the realm, but obliterated every vestige of theobnoxiouscostume, and cancelled every symptom of its characteristicceremonial, 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 thesixthcentury, or in thetwelfth, 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 theIranian regal crowninstead of theJewish crown of thorns. Therefore are we justified in ascribing it to its owner,Budha, whom again we find imprinted in the samecrucified form, but with moreirresistibility 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 acrucifix, and between both, towards the middle, are figures of the Virgin Mary and St. John, the latter holding a cup with a lamb. The outerarch is adorned with knobs, and within both is a slit or loop. At bottom of the outer arch aretwo beastscouchant.If one of them, by his proboscis, was not evidentlyan 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 hisAntiquities 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 smallelephant of brass form the ornamentof 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. Alarge white elephantmade a conspicuous figure in most of these assemblies.”[345]
Scotch arms, indeed! Why, Sir, those animals were recumbent there, in deified transfiguration, before everPictorScothad planted a profane foot within their neighbourhood. What connection, let me ask, could thiselephantand thisbullhave 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, inchurchesorchapels, orconventsorcathedrals?[345]
But if they belong not to the Christian ceremonial, they do to something else. They are thegrand, distinctive, andindispensable adjuncts of Budhism; being thetwo animalsinto which,according to its doctrine of metempsychosis, the soul of Budha had entered after his death.
This was the origin of the EgyptianApis: and who is not familiar with the honours lavished upon the sacredbull? To this day theelephantis worshipped in the Burman empire,[346]where the genius ofBudhismstill lingeringly tarries; and “Lord of the White Elephant” is the proudest ensign of power claimed by the successors to the throne of Pegu.
Thehumanfigures, then,of course, cannot be intended for “St. Johnor theVirgin Mary.” They representBudha’s Virgin Mother, along with hisfavourite disciple, Rama. And thus does the testimony of Artemidorus, whoflourished 104 years before Christ, a native himself of Ephesus, andwho did not himself understandthemysteryof thatVirginwhom he historically records, receiveillustrationfrommy proof, while it givesit confirmationin return.
His words are—“Adjacent to Britain there stands an island, wheresacred ritesare performed to Ceres and theVirgin, similar to those in Samothrace.”
Initiation in the principles of this Samothracian ceremonial was thought so necessary an accomplishmentfor 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 ofsacredwas 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 andthe 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 theinitiatedever 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 andmysteries, 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 ofProserpine: whom they represent “so beautiful thatthe 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 theGreek perversionof the narrative. They had received it from the Pelasgi, under the garb of aconception, byserpentine insinuation, in a virgin womb: and, the grossness of their intellects not allowing them to comprehend the possibility of anemanation, yet giving unqualified credence to the record, they degraded altogether thereligiousnessof the thought, and supposed that the Almighty, to effectuate his design, had actually assumed thecobra di capelloform!
So austere was the rule, by which those mysteries were protected, that Æschylus butbarely escaped discerption within the theatre, for an imagined disrespect to their tendency. Nor was it but on the plea of ignorance andun-initiation, that he did ultimately obtain pardon.[352]
This insuperable barrier to the curiosity of the profane, engendered in their conduct a correspondingreaction, and, as thefoxdid to thegrapes, 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]
I would have my reader pause upon the substance of the terms with which the last section concluded—“Not only to live with more comfort, but to die with better hopes!”
Have you read them? Have you digested them? And are you not ashamed of your illiberality?
From what pulpit in Christendom will you hear better or more orthodox truths? Where will you find the Gospel more energetically enunciated? And, with thistestimonystaring you in the face—in defiance of inner light—and imperiously subjugating the allegiance of rationality—will you still persist in limiting the benevolence of your “Father?” and in withholding every symptom of paternal regard from his own handiwork, until the beginning of the last two thousand years? that is, as it were, till yesterday?
“I tell you, that if these should hold their peace, thestoneswould immediately cry out.”[355]
“On a bank near the shore,” says Cordiner, in hisAntiquities of Scotland, “opposite to the ruins of a castellated house, called Sandwick (in Ross-shire), and about three miles east from Ferns, a very splendid obelisk is erected, surrounded at the base withlarge, well-cut flag stones, formed like steps. Both sides of this column are elaborately covered with various enrichments, in well-finished carved work. The one face presents a sumptuous cross, with a figure of St. Andrew on each hand, and some uncouth animals and flowerings underneath. The central division, on the reverse, renders it a piece of antiquity well worthy of preservation; there is exhibited on that such a variety of figures, birds, and animals, as seemed what might prove a curious subject of investigation; I have, therefore, given a distinct delineation of them at the foot of the column, on a larger scale, that their shapes might be distinctly ascertained, and the more probable conjectures formed of their allusion.”
What, on earth, business would St. Andrew have in company with “uncouth animals?” What have “birds,” “figures,” and “flowerings” to do with Christianity? If this “obelisk” had not been erected here, in commemorative deification, centuries upon centuries before the era of his Saintship’s birth, why should the “cross,” which “one face presents,” be decorated with “enrichments” brought all the way from Egypt?
Look at these hieroglyphics: and where will you find anything congenial to them within the empire of the Romans? Here is theBulbul of Iran,[356]theboarof Vishnu, the elk, the fox, the lamb, and the dancers. All the other configurations, without going through them in detail, are not only, in their natureand import, essentially eastern, but are actually thesymbols of the various animal-forms under which they contemplated the properties of the Godhead. As thecross, however, is that to which we are more immediately directed, I shall confine myself, for the present, to the establishment of its antiquity.
No one will question but thatVenuswas antecedent to the days ofSt. Andrew; andsheis represented with acrossand a circle![357]Jupiteralso, it will be admitted, was anterior to his time; and we find him delineated with acrossand a horn!Saturnis said to have been sire to the last-mentioned god, and, by the laws of primogeniture, must have been senior to him; yet we findhimalso pictured with acrossand horn! The monogram of Osiris is across! On a medal of one of the Ptolemies is to be seen an eagle conveying a thunderbolt with thecross! In short, all through the ancient world this symbol was to be encountered, and wherever it presented itself, it was always the harbinger of sanctity and of peace.
Can we glean from their writings any confirmation to my development as to theoriginof the rite? Plato asserts, that the form of the letter X was imprinted upon the universe.[358]I know how this has been interpreted as a reference to the Son of God,and the second power of the Divinity. I will not make use of it in any such light, preferring to avoid everything that may seemequivocal, yet am I well convinced that, under the philosopher’s ratiocination, may be seen the twinkling trace of a previous incarnation of the λογος, and a crucifixion, likewise, as an atonement for the sins of humanity.
“Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement ofour peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.”[359]
This is all in the past tense; bearing reference, irrefutably, to aformeroccurrence, but including also, in the sequel, the idea of afuturereappearance. And if you look back at the effigy,page 296, will it not sensitively prove him to have been “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief?”[360]
“The deity Harì,” says an inscription atBudda-gaya, in India, “the lord and possessor of all, appeared in this ocean of natural beings at the close of the Devapara and beginning of the Cali Yug. He who is omnipresent and everlastingly to be contemplated, the Supreme Being, the Eternal One, the Divinity worthy of mankind, appeared here, with a portion of His divine nature.”[361]
There is no term so vernacular in the Irish language as that ofBudh-gaye. It is familiar to theearsof every smatterer inletters; and is in themouthof everycowherd, from Cape Clear to the Giants’ Causeway. Neither class has, however, had so much as aglimpseof what it means: nor did they busy themselves much in the pursuit, but acquiesced in that example ofcommendableresignation once practised by Strabo—when he failed to ascertain anything about theCabiri—by declaring that “the name was mysterious!”
A great personage, however, who was not only in his habitswise, but was in himselfwisdom, has affirmed, that “there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; nor hid that shall not be known.”[362]And as every sentence recorded as emanating fromHislips has with me a value more than what could serve to illustrate a momentary topic, I flatter myself that the result of the confidence, thus humbly inspired, will be additionally verified in the instance before us.
Budh-gaye, then of the Irish, orBudha-gayaof the Hindoos, meansPhallus[363]telluris,i.e.thegenerativeness of the earth, orthe earth’s prolific principle. This I have before demonstrated to have been the object of adoration to the ancients; and have furthermore shown, that one of the individuals, in whom this idea was personified, had suffered crucifixion as a mediator for sin.
A new disclosure suggests itself from this.BudhandPhallusbeing synonymous, if you addGayeto each, thenBudh-gayeandGaye-phalluswill be identical. But as the character who embodied theabstract virtueof the former had been crucified, his name came to stand, not only for thatabstract virtue, but also for a cross,[364]or acrucified man; and of course,Gaye-phallus, its equivalent, represented the same ideas.
Now, as well theprimaryassecondarymeaning of those two words was liable to misconstruction; and they were sure to obtain such from ignorance and from depravity. Thepureand thesublime emotions, which the religiousness of theprolific principlehadcomprehended, were perverted by malice intosensualityanddebauchery; while the idea of aman crucified, however innocent of charge, could not be separated, by grovelling and servile dispositions, from the ordinary accompaniments ofcontemptand ofcrime.
HenceBudh-gayeandGaye-phallus, after a succession of ages, when theirproperacceptation was forgotten, were remembered only in theirpervertedsense. And accordingly we observe, that, when a Roman Emperor who had been brought up a priest in the East, assumed, on his being appointed to the Roman sceptre, the title ofHelio-ga-balus, and thereby invested himself in all the attributes ofGaye-phallus, orBudh-gaye, that is, in other words, as theVicegerent of the Sun, the licentiousness of his life, and the profligacy of his demeanour, having rendered him obnoxious to his subjects, they amputated theprefixof hisSolarmajesty, and branded him with thescornofGa-balus.
Thedisdainintended in this latter abbreviation is now, therefore, already solved.Gaye-phallus, for sound sake, having been madeGa-phallus, this latter was still further—by reason of the commutability of the lettersphandb—reduced intoGa-balus.
When the temple of Serapis, at Alexandria, was destroyed, we are told by Sozomen, that the monogram of Christ was discovered beneath the foundation. And, though neither party knew how to account for the sign, yet was it pleaded alike by the Gentiles as by the Christians, in support of the heavenliness of their respective religions.
The early Romanfathers, very pious but very illiterate men, unable to close their eyes against the proofs of the priority of the cross to the era of the advent,did not scruple to assign it to the malicious foreknowledge of the prince of the lower world.[365]
But if this gentleman had been the author of the early cross, is it likely that God would have embraced it as the signal of His protection when dealing destruction to the objects of His divine vengeance?
“And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put amarkupon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof:
“And to the others he said in my hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity.
“Slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children, and women; butcome not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at My sanctuary.”[366]
Now this “mark,” in the ancient Hebrew original, was thecrossX. St. Jerome, the most learned by far of those “fathers,” has admitted the circumstance. And if this had been the device of the enemy of man, would the Author of all goodness so sanctionhisimposture, as to adopt it as the index of His saving love?
“Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?”[367]
But this was not the onlyinventionwhich they attributed to the devil. Tertullian gravely assures us that he was the author ofbuskinsalso! And why,good reader, would you suppose?—in sooth, for no other reason than because that our Saviour said, in His sermon upon the mountain, “Which of you, by taking thought, canadd one cubit unto his stature?”[368]
In him, also, did they find an adequate excuse for thoseapertures, which I shall by and by notice, as excavated in rocks and mounds of clay, calling them, with some compliment it must be admitted to hisgallantry, by the monopolising appellation of the Devil’sYonies.[369]
But of all thepuerilitieswhich sully their zeal, there is no one half so calculated to injurevital religion, as thelow quibblesanddishonest quotationswhich Justin Martyr had recourse to, asapologiesfor thecross!
Why, Sir, the greatest persecutor with which the Christians had ever been cursed, namely, the Emperor Decius, had imprinted thecrossupon some of his coins!
Here, again, it is upon a medal found in the ruins of Citium, and proved by Dr. Clarke in hisTravelsto have been Phœnician! It exhibits thelamb, thecross, and the rosary![370]
When John the Baptist first saw Jesus beyond the Jordan, in Bethabara, he exclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world.”[371]
This he did not apply as anoveldesignation; but as the familiar epithet, and the recognised denomination of the Son of God, whose prescribed office it was, inall the changes of past worlds, as it was now in this present, to redress the broken-hearted by taking away sin.
He adds: “This is He of whom I said, after me cometh a man which is preferred before me;for He was before me,”[372]not only in eternity, but on this earth.
“And I knew Him not; but thatHe should be made manifest to Israel,”[373]as He was before to other nations,—an event which was but the fulfilment of a prophecy ushered in many years before in these remarkable words—
“Behold, the former things are come to pass”:[374]not that thepredictionsformerly delivered had taken place, but thethings, theevents, theoccurrences, which had beenenactedbefore, were nowre-enacted! that arenovationof the world was at hand, which the mouthpiece of the Lord commences by saying—“New things do I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.”
On turning the leaf you will see another of thosepillars which grace a land of heroes, “where stones were raised on high to speak to future times, with their grey heads of moss”;[375]and whose story, though “lost in the mist of years,” may yet be deciphered from off themselves.
This costly relic of religion, erected solely in honour of the cross, is to be seen at Forres, in Scotland, and is thus described by Cordiner:—
“On the first division, under the Gothic ornaments at the top, are nine horses with their riders, marching in order; in the next division is a line of warriors on foot, brandishing their weapons, and appear to be shouting for the battle. The import of the attitudes in the third division very dubious, their expression indefinite.
“The figures which form a square in the middle of the column are pretty complex, but distinct; four serjeants, with their halberts, guard a canopy, under which are placed several human heads, which have belonged to the dead bodies piled up at the left of the division: one appears in the character of executioner, severing the head from another body; behind him are three trumpeters sounding their trumpets; and before him two pair of combatants fighting with sword and target.
“A troop of horse next appears, put to flight by infantry, whose first line have bows and arrows; the three following, swords and targets. In the lowermost division now visible, the horses seem to be seized by the victorious party, their riders beheaded, and the head of their chief hung in chains, or placed in a frame: the others being thrown together beside the dead bodies, under an arched cover.”
With this compare the description given by Captain Head, of the devices sculptured upon one of the Egyptian antiquities.
“It would,” says he, “far exceed the limits of this work, to attempt a description of the ornaments of sculpture in this temple. The most interesting are on the north wall, where there are battle-scenes, with innumerable figures of military combatants, using their arms, consisting of bows and arrows, spears and bucklers—of prostrate enemies, of war-chariots and horses. The fiery action and elegant shape of the steeds are remarkable. It would require a first-rate living genius to rival the variety of position, the power of effect, and fidelity of execution, in which men and horses are exhibited in the dismay of the flight, the agony of the death-struggle, and the exultation of the triumph.”
Let us take a view, now, of the other side of this obelisk. “The greatest part of it,” says Cordiner, “is occupied by asumptuouscross, and covered over with an uniform figure, elaborately raised, and interwoven with great mathematical exactness; of this, on account of its singularity, there is given a representation at the foot of the column. Under the cross are two august personages with some attendants, much obliterated, but evidently in an attitude of reconciliation; and if the monument was erected in memory of the peace concluded betweenMalcolmandCanute, upon the final retreat of theDanes, these larger figures may represent the reconciled monarchs.
“On the edge, below the fretwork, are some rows of figures, joined hand-in-hand, which may also imply the new degree of confidence and security which took place, after the feuds were composed,which are characterised on the front of the pillar. But to whatever particular transaction it may allude, it can hardly be imagined,that in so early an age of the arts in Scotland as it must have been raised, so elaborate a performance would have been undertaken but in consequence of an event of the most general importance: it is, therefore, surprising, that no distincter traditions of it arrived at the era when letters were known.”
As to “the era when letters were known,” I shall bestow upon that a sentence or two by and by. For the present I confine myself to the “surprise that no distincter traditions” of thismonolithtemple[376]has been handed down to us.
It was erected by theTuath-de-danaanson their expulsion from Ireland. The inscriptions upon it are the irresistible evidence of their emblematic religion. After an interval of some centuries, the Picts poured in upon their quietude; and the barbarous habits of those marauders, being averse as much to theritualas to theavocationsof the Tuath-de-danaans, they effaced every vestige of the dominion of that people, and made them fly for shelter to the Highlands.
In the days ofMalcolm, therefore, and ofCanute, the history of this pyramid was as difficult of solution as it was in those ofPennantand ofCordiner. And there is no question but that the twomonarchslooked, with as much wonder, upon the hieroglyphics along its sides, as did the twoantiquarians, who would fain associate them with them.
It is to me marvellous, how persons, in the possessionof common reason could,contrary to all the evidence of observation and history, look upon the Danish invasion as the epoch of all enlightenment! and the Danes, themselves, as the heaven-sent importers of its blessings! Yet, whatever may have been the case withsome hopefulscions of this order, Mr. Cordiner, at all events, appears to have been honest, and if he missed the direction of historical verity, it was less his fault than his misfortune.
Who can say so much for Ledwich?
The following extract will justify the tribute here paid to thesincerityof Mr. Cordiner’s investigations “These monuments,” says he, “are all said to have been erected in memory of defeats of the Danes, but theredoes not appear any reference that the hieroglyphics on them can have to such events. That they have been raised on interesting occasions there can be little doubt, perhaps in memory of the most renowned chieftains and their exploits who first embraced Christianity.”
They who first “embraced Christianity” were no “chieftains”; or such as were, had no “exploits” to record. But it was not so with the professors of theprimeval“cross,” in the revelation of Budhism, the transmigrations of which were but typically pourtrayed on this enduring column. And in confirmation hereof, Mr. Gordon affirms that he has “distinguished upon it several figures of amonstrous form, resemblingfour-footed beastswith human heads!”
Carnac, in Upper Egypt, retains amonolithof the same symbolic character. It is eighty feet high, composed of a single block of black granite, presenting a beautifully polished surface on each of its four sides. The hieroglyphics upon it represent thelifetime ofThot, orBudda, until you at last see him enthroned in heaven, at the top.
“He seems, indeed,” says Hamilton, “to have been considered either by himself, his subjects, or his successors, as a peculiar favourite of heaven. He is frequently on his knees, receiving from Isis and Osiris, together with their blessing, the insignia of royalty, and even of divinity. The hawk is always flying about him. Two priests are performing upon him the mysterious ceremony of pouring thecruces ansatas, orcrosses with rings, over his head; at which time he wears a common dress and close cap. Hermes and Osiris are pointing out to him a particular line in a graduated scale, allusive it may be to the periodical inundation of the Nile, or the administration of strict justice: or (combined with the preceding scene) to the ceremony of ‘initiation into the religious mysteries.’”[377]
The number of feet in the pillar corresponds too, if I mistake not, with that of the years of his recorded pilgrimage.
Captain Head describes, in his splendid work, the avenue which leads to the temple to which this belongs, in the following terms:—“Fragments of sphinxes line the sides of the road at intervals of ten or twelve feet, and usher the visitor to the magnificent granite propylon, or gateway, whose grandeur for a time monopolises the attention, and makes him who gazes on it at a loss to decide whether he shall remain adoring its fine proportions, or advance and examine the carvings which embellish its front. Isthis ‘the land made waste by the hand of strangers, who destroy the walls, and cause the images to cease?’ The fragments of desolation that lie scattered around are identified with the predictions of the inspired historians, by whom we are enabled to estimate the ‘palmy state’ of this once mighty kingdom, whose gigantic monuments fully verify all that has been said or sung of its pristine splendour.”
After what has been said above, then, along with what may be added by and by, may I not safely proclaim that M‘Pherson’s prediction, that “the history of Caledonia, before the Roman eagles were displayed beyond the friths, must ever remain in impenetrable darkness,”[378]has now been falsified?
“What areagesand the lapse of time,Matched againsttruthsas lasting as sublime?Can length of years on God Himself exact?Or make thatfictionwhich was once afact?No—marble and recording brass decay,And like the graver’smemorypass away:The works of man inherit, as is just,Their author’s frailty, and return to dust;But truth divine for ever stands secure,Its head is guarded, as its base is sure;Fixed in the rolling flood of endless years,The pillar of the eternal plan appears,The raving storm and dashing wave defies,Built by that Architect who built the skies.”[379]
A very industrious contributor to theAsiatic Researcheshas 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 ofour monumentswith thosemysterieswhich 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 noundergrowlof 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 theWhite Islandis the primitive one. Vishnu,” says the author, “recalling all his emanations into theWhite 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 theWhite 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 theWhite Islandwith the famoussnake, 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 theWhite 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 aboar, 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 theWhite Island, andanother 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 theWhite 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 mostmysteriousandreligiously-occultname given toIrelandin the days of its pristine glory wasMuc-Inis.
This word has three interpretations—firstly, theBoar Island; secondly, theWhite Island; and, thirdly, theSacred, or rather theDivine, andConsecrated Island of God.[381]
Is it necessary that I should say one syllable more to authenticate the Puranas, and identify thishallowedspot with theparadiseof their encomiums? No: I shall not affront your understanding by so supposing. The explanation of thissingle termhas, more effectually than could aship-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 tohimethically unavoidable.
The sting, therefore, of the above, if any it convey, must be directed exclusively to theromancersof my own country: a specimen of whom I shall give you in the Rev. Dr. Keating, who, venturing to unveil the mystery of the nameMuc-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 ahog’sback!!!”
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 berevivedfrom 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-healingarrowwhich 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, inafter ages, to a Christian Abbey, you will find, after a succession of, at least, three thousand revolving years, this pathetic representation of theyouth Apollo slaying with his arrow the serpent Python[383]—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 withtheir easterncrowns, their easterncostume, and thedoveof 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 theBana, 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 thethreeother divinities, who, before thisfourth, 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 acatlaugh, or Plutarch’sboardance a hornpipe, to hear the contortions of history, the violations of nature, the perversions of fact, of date, and of philosophy,which thisblotupon 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 fromclericaland 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 theFine Arts in Ireland!
Thisfinegentleman has really exhibited some degree oftact, 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, inappearance, notin reality, for
“Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur”—
he is amodern,[386]and though of a differentschool, it suits their purpose as well.
But let us see how he would decipher “the writing upon the wall.”
“If we might venture aconjecture,” he says, “it would be that the living figures represent the most distinguished native princes, who warred with theadventurers in defence of their country; and that those of the deceased kings were the patriot monarchs of earlier times!”
Pray,whatadventurers?what?—But the farce is too absurd to bestow discussion upon it.
Come, however, to thecrucifixion scene, what would “P——” make of this?
“Thisappears,” 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, webelieve, 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 proclaimedindependenceof Dr. Ledwich, one would have expected anewascription, or, at least, adifferentone, from him. This, however, is but aservile 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 omittedeven the most trivial featureof 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 infrescomust have been equally eligible as a phenomenon inwriting. The O’Connors,therefore, whom Mr. P—— would install as the authors of this device, must have retained somedocumentaryregister 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 astheyhave, yet is there not so much as thesemblanceof an allusion to be traced amongst them, to thismysterious 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 thehellishnessof the crime itself, would it not now blaze forth in holy indignation at the infatuatedvanityof the monster, who, not satisfied with the murder of his innocentvictim, must deluge hiscountryalso in gore, by associating it, to forthcoming ages, with this outline of his barbarity?
Yes, sir, if they weresilentas to thecrime, they would beeloquentas to thepainting! And it is not only that they woulddemolishthestructurewithin which it wasinscribed, but everyquillwithin the realm would become apen, everyliquidbe converted intoink, and everyhandbe made that of awriterto rescue theisland’sfame from identity with the traitor’scause; 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 apresageis imparted by mournfulbanshee! norelegysung by familiarmna-caointha! Nohistorianrecords the heart-rendingtale! nor doesgipsyretail it in itinerantditty! But themysteryof sorrow, and thesanctityoftruth, thathallowed the scene which this temple commemorates, has, still further, exerted its protecting instrumentality, and besides themoving evidences imprintedupon itsinterior, has added those also ofexclusion from without, and prevented the iniquity ofprofaneappropriation, by the occurrence of any equivocal record!
The devices upon places of worship are always of a religious kind. Would the perpetration of afaithless infanticidebe 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 theupas, its baleful emaciation over everything of culture that fell within its shadow! Buttruthisimmortal: and, howevermomentarily suppressed, willultimatelyrecover.
“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 venerabledelineations, 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 leasttwo thousand years afterthese 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 ofthis 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 ofVoyage 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-danaancross, at old Kilcullen, in the county of Kildare, Ireland. Here you distinguish nineBudhistpriests in theEasternuniform, withbonnet,tunic, andtrouser—nay, with their verybeardsdressed after the Egyptian fashion.
Other figures I shall leave to your own research to unfold. But let me particularlyfastenupon your faculty of comparing, thehead-gearof the standing figure, in theseconddivision, and that of the crucifixion upon the Nubian temple. Are they notcritically,accurately, andidenticallythe same?
Look next at the bruteanimalsthat take part in this group! Mind thegrotesquenessof their positions, and thecombinationof their character with that ofman! then lay your hand upon your breast, and, with the light now streaming in upon you, can you conscientiously believe that thecrosswhich 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 hostagedeifiedin 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 Christiansupineness, and, while our different sects were fighting forwho 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]Sulivahanais the name which they give to the deity there represented. The meaning of the word istree-born, or, who suffered death upon a tree. He was otherwise calledDhanandhara, that is, thesacred almoner. And his fame, say the Puranas, reached even to theSacred Island, in the sea ofmilk, that is, ofDoghda, which signifies milk, and which was the title of the tutelar goddess of Ireland.[392]
Avaunt, then, evermore, to the humbug ofback-reckoning, and the charge ofimpostureupon theBrahmins! I flatter myself, I have laid anextinguisher, for ever, upon that pretext.
As I have before presumed to offer a suggestion to the translators of orientalmanuscripts, I shall take the additional liberty of intimating, which I do with profound submission and respect, to the decipherers of allhieroglyphics, whether in Ireland or in the East, that thosearrow-headedcharacters, 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 morecertain key to the attainment of their desired object, than all the labour and outlay of centuries heretofore!
“Knowing that Nature never did betrayThe heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege,Through all the years of this our life, to leadFrom joy to joy: forshe can so informThe heart that is within us, so impressWith quietness and beauty, and so feedWith lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor allThe dreary intercourse of daily life,Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturbOur cheerful faith, that all which we beholdIs full of blessings.”—Wordsworth.