performed, the aurm bulla was taken from the boy's neck, and consecrated to the domestic Lar ; so, in India, at the ceremony of investiture with the sacrificial thread, an identical ornament, a hollow hemisphere of gold, hung from a yellow cotton thread or chain of gold, is taken from the boy's neck, and the sacred cord, the symbol of his manhood, is put on him.
The nava-ratna or nm-ratan , an amulet or talisman composed of a nine gems/' generally the—
Coral, Topaz, Sapphire, Ruby, flat Diamond, cut Diamond, Emerald, Hyacinth, and Carbuncle,
is certainly suggestive also of some connexion with the Urim and Tkummim , or sacred oracle of the Jews, taken by Chosroes II from Jerusalem, ad. 615, and probably still existing among the ruins of one of the old Sassanian palaces of Persia, This ancient ornament gave its name as a collective epithet to the “ nine-gems or sages of the Court of Vikramaditya, nx. 56. In books the nine gems of the amulet are said to be pearl, ruby, topaz, diamond, emerald, lapis lazuli, corah sapphire, and a stone, not identified, called gomeda* The tri-rat na, is the “ triple-gemmed ” “Alpha and Omega” jewel of the Buddhists, symbolical of Buddha, the Law, and the Church.
The jeweller's and goldsmith's art in India is indeed of the highest antiquity, and the forms of Indian jewelry as well as of gold and silver plate, and the chasings and embossments decorating them, have come down in an unbroken tradition from the Ram ay ana and Mahabharata* The first light of Aryan civilisation dawned in the Ganges valley, and spread thence into the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The civilisation of Egypt was more ancient, but was undoubtedly largely influenced by Assyria and India, influencing them in turn ; and from the earliest ages, as throughout all ages, through the Arabs,
