of poverty, chastity, and obedience,—the same as the monks and nuns of the European Christians. This singular fact at once proves the identity of the orders in the two communities, and that they must have had a common origin. I know not any circumstance of consequence in their economy in which they differ.
Maya is called the great mother, the universal mother. She is called Devi, or the Goddess παρ’ εξοχην—the Grand Bhavani, the mother of gods and of men. She is the mother of the Trimurti, or the being called the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, whom she conceived by Brahm: and when the Brahmins can get no farther in their mystics, they finish by calling her Illusion. Perhaps they had better have said, Delusion, which is the very point arrived at by Bishop Berkeley, in his metaphysics. Plate VI. of Creuzer’s work represents Maia receiving the adoration of the other divinities. On the top of the building appear the Beeve, and, at the side of it, the Yoni and Lingha, in union. The Burmese make Maria, or Maha-Maria, the mother of their God Somon-Codom, who was Buddha.[1]
10. A certain order of persons called Samaneans are noticed by Porphyry and Clemens Alexandrinus. I do not doubt that these are the Somonokodomites of Siam, and the Buddha called by them their leader—to be the Buddha of Siam, who, as Surya with the seven heads, is the sun and the seven planets. This Mons. Guigniaut, in his note, by a curious etymological process, has proved.[2] And that this Buddha was of very remote date is also proved by the fact noticed by Guigniaut, that he is identical with Osiris and the Hermes of Egypt. “L’Hermes d’Egypte, appelé encore Thoth ou Thaut, a tous ses charactères, et se retrouvé à la fois dans les cieux, sur la terre, et aux enfers: l’Hermes ou Mercure des Grecs et des Latins est fils de Maya comme Buddha. Nous pourions pousser beaucoup plus loin ces rapprochemens.”[3] Learned men have endeavoured to make out several Buddhas as they have done several Herculeses, &c.[4] They were both very numerous, but at last there was only one of each, and that one the sun. And from this I account for the striking similarity of many of the facts stated of Buddha and Cristna. What was suitable to the sun in Taurus, would, for the most part, be suitable to him in Aries, and it was probably about this change that a great war took place between the followers of Buddha and Cristna, when ultimately the Buddists were expelled from Lower India. This was the war of the Maha-barata. Maha means great, and Barata is the Hebrew ברא bra and בראת brat, and means Creator or Regenerator. This, I have no doubt, was the meaning of this proper name, in the old language. What meaning the Brahmins may give to it, in their beautiful, artificial Sanscrit, I do not know. All the proper names of gods, men, and places, will be found, if we could get to the bottom of them, in the Hebrew. On this I must request my Sanscrit reader to suspend his judgment till I treat of the Sanscrit language.
Porphyry, in his treatise on Abstinence, gives a very good description of the Brahmins and Samaneans,[5] from which it appears that the latter had precisely the same monastic regulations in his time, that they have at this day.
The Hermes of Egypt, or Buddha, was well known to the ancient Canaanites, who had a temple to הרם erm, “The Projector, by which they seem to have meant the material spirit, or rather heavens, considered as projecting, impelling, and pushing forwards, the planetary bodies in their courses.”[6] Notwithstanding the nonsense about material spirit or heavens, the Hermes, or Buddha, is very apparent.
- ↑ La Loubère, P. iii. p. 136.Hesychius says, that Μαι, μεγα, and Maha, had the meaning of great, and Μαι has the meaning of great in modern Coptic. Asiat. Res. Vol. III. p. 415.
- ↑ Vol. I. p. 292.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ See the Desatir, published at Bombay, in 1818.
- ↑ De Abs. Lib. iv. Sect. xvii.
- ↑ Parkhurst, Lex. in voce רמה rme.
