FLORAL ANTIQUITIES OF THE EAST. 143 



the deities were painted sitting in their leaves. The creation of 

 Brahma on the leaf of the lotos, was, however, the legend which 

 formed the groundwork of all others of the same class ; Osiris, Puzza, 

 and Priapus being but modifications of the same personage, less 

 sublime in character, because removed a greater or less degree from 

 the sources of the original thought. In Hindoo worship, its fecun- 

 dating properties associate it with the worship of the Linga in the 

 shrine of Siva, one of those mysteries of the temple, which to an 

 European mind, appears but an orgie of disgusting indecency, but 

 which, to the devout son of Mizriam, whose chastity of character is 

 too often a rebuke to his Christian master, is purely emblematic of 

 the creative poAer of the universe. 



Priapus, who with the Greek and Roman poets, was the son of 

 Bacchus and Venus, the god of debauchery, a sort of guardian devil, 

 invented to countenance the luxury of Athens and the sensuality of 

 Rome, was a god of highest repute in the Chaldaic and Egyptian 

 mythologies, profoundly venerated under the names of Orus and Apis, 

 the god of light, the son of the world. The Priapus of the Greeks is 

 a compound of Peor-Apis, according to the Grecian mode of adopt- 

 ing Egyptian names ; he is sometimes called Poer singly, sometimes 

 Baal Peor, the same with whose rites the Israelites are so often up- 

 braided. Phurmitus supposes Priapus to have been the same as 

 Pan, the shepherd god ; who was equally degraded on one hand and 

 as highly reverenced on the other. The Romans, reducing the ideas 

 of a refined mythology to their own sensual imbecility, degraded the 

 one to a filthy monster, and made of the other a scarecrow.* Under 

 the name of Az-el,f he was the supposed son of Isis, who was herself 

 but an emblem of the ark — the mother of mankind — and from the 

 Titans he received all that Osiris suffered under the Typhon. 



Both Orus and Osiris were styled Heliadae, and often represented 

 the sun, which has led many writers to refer what has been said of 

 the personages to the luminary itself. Orus was in fact the same as 

 Osiris, but Osiris in his second state ; and therefore he is represented 

 by the Egyptians as a child swathed in bondage, a type of the infancy 

 of the world. At other times he shadows forth the likeness of Saturn, 

 the father of agriculture, holding in his hands the implements of 



* Bryant, i, 141. t Ibid, vol. i, p. 206. 



