2»a S. No 90., Sept. 19. '57.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



221 



LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1857. 



INDIAN CAKES AND lOTOS. 



There is little difficulty in giving all the ex- 

 planations required in " N. &. Q." for Sept. 5, 

 though I fear the compliment is misapplied. The 

 solutions I have hinted at are easy of explication 

 also ; and what I have drawn upon myself I am 

 ready to meet to the utmost. 



But denying and decrying all Sanscrit refer- 

 ences, which confound the historical events they 

 affect to preserve, your readers will not expect 

 from me any concession to Krishna : still less as 

 Baal ; for we must be careful to guard the history 

 of each separate country as well as its mythology, 

 since all its gods were historical. 



I knew Thammuz in Egypt once ; but have 

 no acquaintance with him personally in India ; 

 nor can imagine him getting there. The Jews 

 believe he may be Adonis ; and the name is at- 

 tributed to the Syrian river : but this is only one, 

 and the least probable, of its derivations : for the 

 river was his symbol, and therefore subsequent to 

 his reign : the red clay typifying his blood, in July. 

 The name itself is derived from Hebrew, from 

 Yakoot, and from Mongolian ; as sovereign, spear- 

 man, and as hunter or horseman. As the beloved 

 of Venus, and as wounded by the boar, he is, be- 

 sides his own specialities, precluded from con- 

 nexion or interest with Hindostan. The similarity 

 of Boar and Dove in the two countries is simply 

 similarity of races divaricating from one centre, 

 and both extending, in one instance to Egypt, in 

 the other to India. Any trace of the Syro- 

 Egyptian is therefore hopeless in the East. 



But this is a very intricate question as it stands: 

 to solve it we must get rid of all prepossessions, 

 and closely adhere to philology exemplifying and 

 supporting tradition ; as it ever does. I pass 

 therefore from the subject in general at the mo- 

 ment, content with placing two statements of 

 different periods in juxta-position, since each 

 comprises all known of the matter, severally in its 

 former or present period. 



" Thammuz came next, 

 Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured 

 The Sj'rian damsels to lament his fate 

 In amorous ditties all a summer's day ; 

 While smoothe Adonis from his native rock 

 Ean purple to the sea, supposed with blood 

 Of Thammuz, yearly wounded : the love tale 

 Infected Zion's daughters with like heat : 

 Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch 

 Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led, 

 His eye surveyed the dark idolatries 

 Of alienated Judah." Paradise Lost, Book ii. 



The magnificent description of Milton through- 

 out this part of the Secpnd Book condenses the- 

 learning of Selden {de Diis Syriis). A far feebler 

 effort, inferior as the welding-hammer's toil to the 



flow of inspiration, is nevertheless — sU mihi fas 

 — based on the far wider field of modern re- 

 search ; and the difference is obvious. 

 " Adonis ! come ; whom all thy summer's day 

 Egyptian Syria's virgin tears deplore ; 

 And Judah's burning maids, since Beauty's sway 



Enthralling, taught thy Venus to adore. 

 Fair vision ! — first and fondest fable hoar I 



Tale of the yearning heart ; too well belied 

 In History's veiled guise and symbol lore : 

 Egypt nor Syria name nor deed supplied, 

 O'erthrown by Orient fate and Scythian boar decried." 

 Tlwughts, Legends, and Memories, ^c. 



The notes to this passage I shall strive shortly 

 to condense for your columns. 



In the meantime, trusting that Baal-Peor may 

 not "entice" my learned appellant — 



" To do him wanton rites that cost him woe," 

 it is merely necessary farther to remark that the 

 rites of Kali are the most debasing, in her form of 

 Dabie, that can possibly be imagined ; and it is no 

 wonder that ignorance so foul as to worship her 

 recorded abominations, of cruelty as symbolised 

 in her image, and the detestable horrors of her 

 gross celebrations, can rouse to the atrocious in- 

 famies that have pained and appalled Europe. 

 Yet we have suffered these rites, nor once tried if 

 a careful examination of their sources might not 

 remove the accursed thing. We have taken the 

 Bramin's word for it. 



It is clear that much of our success in India 

 must, for the future, depend on a due manage- 

 ment of the Bramins : yet who has ever met the 

 man or work that could explain their real views 

 and belief? We, in our learniiig, are as blind as 

 the humblest Hindoo in his ignorance, and era- 

 brace the Juno of Braminical deism in the cloud 

 of his specious superstitions ! 

 " Dost thou not laugh ! No, Coz, I would rather weep," 



The Mahommedan, whose horror of swine is 

 but the far echo of a faint tradition, joined to a 

 sanitary precaution of climate, and both borrowed 

 from his predecessors, but carried to a senseless 

 point in Turkey, unites with the Hindoo in these 

 two feelings alone : but agrees in these at least 

 with his Imams, and his creed is theirs. But 

 nothing can be wider asunder than the belief of 

 the Bramin and his devotee. The former, whose 

 gross historical ignorance has destroyed all his- 

 tory because against his pretensions, while he 

 holds in direct detestation his Viraha, or Boa-con- 

 querors, actually preserves their early symbol as his 

 own, and unites it with the succeeding victor's sym- 

 bol, but in its grossest form ; thus warped from the 

 lone of the Greek, Hebrew, and Assyrian races. 



But what is the state of the devotee ? He ex- 

 aggerates all his superiors teach to the very 

 utmost of monstrosity in religion, and accepts for 

 morality a state in which the dictates of reason 

 and nature are substituted by a system so utterly 

 factitious as to raise a merely conventional in- 



