Lieut. -Colonel Tod on the Religious Establishments of Mewar. 305 



sun, is painted like himself, blue, and with the eagle's head ; and here he 

 partakes both of the Mercury of the Greeks and of Oulios, the Preserver 

 or Saviour, one of the titles of Apollo at Delos. 



The Tatar nations, who are all of /nrfw race, like the Rajputs (and German 

 tribes) adored the moon {Indii) as a male divinity, and to his son, Buddha^ 

 they assign the same character of mediator. The serpent is alike the symbol 

 of the Buddha of the Hindus, the Hermes of the Egyptians, and the Mercury 

 of Greece: and the allegory of the dragon's teeth, the origin of letters, 

 brought by Cadmus from Egypt, is a version of the Hindu fable of Kaniya 

 (Apollo) wresting the Vedas (^ecre^s) from Buddha or v/isdom (Hermes), 

 under his sign, the serpent or dragon. We might still further elucidate the 

 resemblance, and by an analysis of the titles and attributes of Crishna, the 

 Hindu Apollo, prove that from the Yamuna may have been supplied the 

 various incarnations (avatars) of this divinity which peopled the pantheons 

 of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. As Nomios, who attended the herds of 

 Admetus, we have Nonita, tiie infantine appellation of Kaniya, when he 

 pastured the kine of Cesava in the woods of Vindra, whence the ceremony 

 of the sons of princes assuming the crook, and on particular days tending 

 the flocks. When I heard the octogenarian ruler of Kotah ask his grandson, 

 " Bappa-lal, have you been tending the cows to-day ?" my surprise was 

 converted into pleasure on the origin of the custom being thus classically 

 explained. As Murali-dhara, or the ' flute-holder,' Kaniya is the god of 

 music ; and in giving him the shepherd's reed instead of the vina or lyre, 

 we may conjecture that the simple bhans (bamboo) which formed the first 

 flute (bhansli) was in use before the chatara,* the Grecian cythara,\ the first 

 invented lyre of Apollo. Thus from the six-'wired instrument of the Hindus 

 we have the Greek cythara, and the Spanish guitar of modern days. The 



• From cha, six ; and tar, a string or wire. 



f Strabo says, the Greeks consider music as originating from Thrace and Asia, of which 

 countries were Orpheus, Museus, &c., and that others " qui regardent toide I'Asie jusqu'a V Inde 

 comme un pays consacre a Dionysius, rapportent <5 cette contree I'invention de presque toutes les 

 parties de la musique. Nous les voyons tantot qualifier la Cythare d'Asiatique, tantot donncr 

 aux flutes les epithetes de Phrygiennes. Les nonis de certains instrumens, tels que Nablas ou 

 Nahla et d'autrcs encore, sont tires des langues barbares." This Nabla of Strabo is possibly the 

 Tabla, the small tabor of India. If Strabo took his orthography from the Persian or Arabic, 

 a singly point would constitute the difference between the N dj) and the T (CJ). 



Vol. II. 2 R 



