one mould, the mould being made of clay. But he ought to have deposited the two specimens where they could have been examined, to ascertain that they were duplicates. Besides, how does he know that the Hindoos, who are so ingenious, had not the very simple art of making casts from the brass figure, as well as clay moulds from the one of wax? Nothing could be more easy. The crucified body without the cross of wood reminds me that some of the ancient sects of heretics held Jesus to have been crucified in the clouds.
Montfaucon says, “What can be the reason that, in the most common medals, some thousands of which might be got up, we never can find two struck with the same die, though the impression and inscription be still the same? This is so constantly true, that whenever we find two medals which appear to be struck with the same die, we always suspect one is a modern piece coined from the other, and upon strict examination find it always is so.”[1]
I very much suspect that it is from some story now unknown, or kept out of sight, relating to this Avatar, that the ancient heretics alluded to before obtained their tradition of Jesus having been crucified in the clouds. The temple at Punderpoor deserves to be searched, although the result of this search would give but little satisfaction, unless it were made by a person of a very different character from that of our missionaries. The argument respecting the duplicates on which Mr. Moore places his chief dependence to prove it Christian, at once falls to the ground when it is known that the assertion is not true: duplicates of brass idols, or at least copies so near that it is very difficult to distingush them, or to say that they are not duplicates from the same mould coarsely and unskilfully made, may be seen at the Museum at the India House; and also in that of the Asiatic Society in Grafton Street, where there are what I believe to be duplicates of figures from the same mould. I therefore think it must remain a Wittoba. But the reader has seen what I have found in Montfaucon, and he must judge for himself.
That nothing more is known respecting this Avatar, I cannot help suspecting may be attributed to the same kind of feeling which induced Mr. Moore’s friend to wish him to remove this print from his book. The innumerable pious frauds of which Christian priests stand convicted, and the principle of the expediency of fraud admitted to have existed by Mosheim, are a perfect justification of my suspicions respecting the concealment of the history of this Avatar: especially as I can find no Wittobas in any of the collections. I repeat, I cannot help suspecting, that it is from this Avatar of Cristna that the sect of Christian heretics got their Christ crucified in the clouds.
Long after the above was written, I accidentally looked into Moore’s Pantheon, at the British Museum, where it appears that the copy is an earlier impression than the former which I had consulted: and I discovered something which Mr. Moore has apparently not dared to tell us, viz. that in several of the icons of Wittoba, there are marks of holes in both feet, and in others, of holes in the hands. In the first copy which I consulted, the marks are very faint, so as to be scarcely visible. In figures 4 and 5 of plate 11, the figures have nail-holes in both feet. Fig. 3 has a hole in one hand. Fig. 6 has on his side the mark of a foot, and a little lower in the side a round hole; to his collar or shirt hangs the ornament or emblem of a heart, which we generally see in the Romish pictures of Christ; on his head he has an Yoni-Linga. In plate 12, and in plate 97, he has a round mark in the palm of the hand. Of this last, Mr. Moore says, “This cast is in five pieces: the back lifts out of sockets in the pedestal, and admits the figures to slide backwards out of the grooves in which they are fitted: it is then seen that the seven-headed Naga (cobra), joined to the figure, continues his scaly length down Ballaji’s back, and making two convolutions under him forms his seat: a second shorter snake, also part of the figure, pro-
- ↑ Ant. Exp. Supplement, Vol. III. B. v. p. 329.
