horn. The Bull was the body into which Osiris transmigrated after his death; and, lastly, the Hebrew name for bull is שור sur. Orpheus has a hymn to the Lord Bull. Iswara of India or Osiris, is the husband of Isi or of Isis; and Surya is Buddha. Can all these coincidences be the effect of accident?
“Osiris, or Isiris, as Sanchoniathon calls him, is also the same name with Mizraim, when the servile letter M is left out.”[1] The reason of the monogram M being prefixed to this, and to many other words, will be shewn by and by.
I have some suspicion that O-siris is a Greek corruption; that the name ought, as already mentioned, to be what it is called by Hellanicus, Ysiris or Isiris, and that it is derived from, or rather I should say is the same as, Iswara of India. Iswara and Isi are the same as Osiris and Isis—the male and female procreative powers of nature.
“Iswara, in Sanscrit, signifies Lord, and in that sense is applied by the Bramans to each of their three principal deities, or rather to each of the forms in which they teach the people to adore Brahm, or the great one . . . . Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahadeva, say the Puranics, were brothers: and the Egyptian triad, or Osiris, Horus, and Typhon, were brought forth by the same parent.”[2]
Syria was called Suria. Eusebius says the Egyptians called Osiris, Surius, and that, in Persia, Surē was the old name of the sun.[3]
In the sol-lunar legends of the Hindoos, the Sun is, as we have seen, sometimes male and sometimes female. The Moon is also of both sexes, and is called Isu and Isi.[4] Deus Lunus was common to several nations of the ancient world.[5]
The peculiar mode in which the Hindoos identify their three great Gods with the solar orb, is a curious specimen of the physical refinements of ancient mythology. At night and in the West, the Sun is Vishnu: he is Brama in the East and in the morning: and from noon to evening, he is Siva.[6]
The adoration of a black stone is a very singular superstition. Like many other superstitions this also came from India. Buddha was adored as a square black stone; so was Mercury; so was the Roman Terminus. The famous Pessinuntian stone, brought to Rome, was square and black. The sacred black stone at Mecca many of my readers are acquainted with, and George the Fourth did very wisely to be crowned on the square stone, nearer black than any other colour, of Scotia and Ireland.
In Montfaucon, a black Isis and Orus are described in the printing, but not in the plate. I suspect many of Montfaucon’s figures ought to be black, which are not so described.[7]
Pausanias states the Thespians to have had a temple and statue to Jupiter the Saviour, and a statue to Love, consisting only of a rude stone; and a temple to Venus Melainis, or the black.[8]
Ammon was founded by Black doves, Ατρε-Ιωνες. One of them flew from Ammon to Dodona and founded it.[9]
At Corinth there was a black Venus.[10]
In my search into the origin of ancient Druids, I continually found, at last, that my labours terminated with something black. Thus the oracles at Dodona, and of Apollo at Delphi, were founded by black doves. Doves are not often, I believe never really, black.
- ↑ Cumberland, Orig. Gen. p. 100.
- ↑ Asiat. Res. Vol. III. p. 371; Moore’s Pantheon, p. 44.
- ↑ Maur. Ind. Ant. Vol. VI. p. 39.
- ↑ Moore’s Pantheon, pp. 289, 290.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 291.
- ↑ Faber, Or. Idol. B. iv. Ch. i.
- ↑ Montf. Exp. Vol. II. Plate XXXVII. Fig. 5.
- ↑ Pausanias, Lib. ix. Cap. xxvi. xxvii.
- ↑ Nimrod, p. 276.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 400.
T
