Egypt, as in a circular position; for, it is the serpent wreathed into a circle, by holding his tail in his mouth.* By this they probably meant to shadow out the rotundity of the world; or, since the serpent, thus sculptured, was, among the Egyptians, the common emblem of eternity, they might possibly intend to intimate the old atheistical doctrine of its eternal duration.

It has already been observed, in the Geographical Dissertation, that Sir W. Jones is inclined to derive the name of the river of Egypt from the Sanscreet word NILA, or blue; and he cites Dionysius, who expressly calls the. Nile an azure stream, in corroboration of his opinion. Now it is exceedingly singular, that the Indus, in the early part of its course, should be also called the NILAB, from the blue cast of its waters. Indeed, one large branch of the Indus still bears that name; and, possibly, it was the similitude of their names which led Alexander into that enormous error, recorded in Arrian, of imagining, upon his arrival at the banks of the Indus, that he had

Serpentem pingunt, says Horapollo, qui suam ipsius cau· dam rodat; variis insterstinctam squamis. Per squamas, quidem, STELLAS, quibus cælum, seu mundus distinctus est, obscure indicantes. Vide Hori-Apollonis Hieroglyphica, p. 8, edit. duodecimo, 1631.

discovered

discovered the sources of the Nile. But let us proceed to state some farther particulars, in which this similitude is still more directly and distinctly visible.

upon

If Brahma, in the act of creation, be painted in the pagodas floating over the surface of the vast watery abyss, while he reclines the expanded leaf of the lotos; exactly in the same attitude, and recumbent upon the same saered plant, does the figure of Osiris constantly occur on all the monuments of Egyptian antiquity. Instances of the latter deity, thus designated, may be seen by the inquisitive reader in Kircher, Kæmpfer,

Mountfaucon, and in the curious and elaborate work of M. D'Ancarville, who has attempted, from a series of commemorative coins and medals, to give us a history of the earliest progress of the arts and the diffusion of superstitious rites throughout the antient world. In the first volume also of this history, I shall be happy to present the reader with engravings of some of the more remarkable representations on antient Egyptian and Phænician coins and sculptures; particularly of OSIRIS UPON THE LOTOS, THE SERPENT-WORSHIP, and THE MUNDANE EGG; all of which notions were as familiar to the antient Hindoo sages as ever they were to the

Egyptian, Persian, and Greek, philosophers; and, as appears to me, at a period far more remote than, from any remaining annals of these latter nations, it can be proved they flourished among them. These plates, however expensive they may prove to the author, will prove of infinite use towards illustrating the comparative description, which it is my intention to exhibit, of the Oriental cosmogonies, and will, in particular, throw great light on the antient history and mythology of Hindostan.

The last of those celebrated antiquaries mentioned above, M. D'Ancarville, decidedly corroborates what I have before remarked on the antient worship of stones, gradually improving in form and grace, from the rude block adored in Scythia, as the representation of Deity, to the polished and elegant statues of Greece ;Greece, which, he observes, added nothing but beauty to the idea of the Deity, entertained by those who conceived his majesty and attri butes to be most properly represented by gigantic sculptures and massy symbols. The commencing of his laborious investigation by medals, rather than by designs, was a step equally novel and judicious, since the engraved tablet of brass and copper, as I have in my preface observed, with respect to those dug up in India, bids fair to remain, when the sculp

tured

tured stone shall have crumbled into dust, and the tints of the most glowing picture shall have been totally obliterated. Antient coins not only preserve impressed the figures under which the Pagan gods were worshipped, but in their very formation are emblematical of those figures. According to Plutarch, he remarks, that the most antient Greek coins are of an obeliscal form, and intended to imitate the solar ray; they represent javelins, or, to use his own words, les bélemnites, commonly called the thunder-stone, of which javelins were antiently made. Of coins, bearing this obeliscal form, there is great variety exhibited in his first volume; but it was not so much my intention to mark this, though a circumstance extremely curious, as the succeeding observation. M. D'Ancarville asserts, that the bélemnite coins, which represent the thunder, that is, the power of the Almighty, and, consequently, the Deity by his symbol, are often found surrounded by the tamara-leaf, to signify that thunder is engendered in the region of clouds created by the water, near which the tamara constantly grows. For the proof of this assertion, he refers us to the valuable collection of Mr Charles Townley, in which the SACRED FIRE, on an antient candelabre

Z4

labre of white marble, is represented assurrounded by a tamara-leaf.* Now, the plant of the tamara is the same with the NELUMBO of Linnæus. It is an aquatic plant, of the genus of the nymphæa, and, if I may judge from a print of it in Kæmpfer, not dissimilar from the LOTOS, on which Brahma and Osiris float upon the chaos. The candelabre of Mr Townley, therefore, appears at once to resolve the whole mystery; for, since we have repeatedly observed, from Plutarch, that Osiris is the sun; and since Sir William Jones informs us, that the names of Brahma, Veeshnu, and Seeva, coalesce, and form the mystical word OM, a word which in the antient Sanscreet character signifies neither more nor less than the SOLAR FIRE; the consequence is, that the antient Egyptians and Indians adored the same deity, under two different appellations; that deity which I have proved was so universally worshipped in Persia, and throughout Asia,

THE SUN.

See M. D'Ancarville's Récherches sur l'Origine et les Pro-. grès des Arts de la Grèce, tom. i. p. 6, edit. 4to, à Londres,

1785.

+ See Kempfer's Hist. of Japan, vol. ii. and plate 37. The reader, who possesses and will turn to Kæmpfer's curious book, will there see the great god of Japan, with innumerable arms, all adorned with various symbols, seated upon the TAMARA.

As