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subjects has been obtained chiefly by turning to the east for interpretation. 

 It is by the uncovering of buried records, that so much light is now thrown 

 upon these matters, it is by means of the long-lost riches that have been dis- 

 interred in Egypt and Assyria. Perhaps we may now go a step further east 

 with equal, if not greater success, and in so doing we may even find existing 

 among living men, the means of interpreting the remotest antiquity. I 

 allude to Bactria and its surrounding highlands, especially the unsubdued 

 and unknown recesses of Kafiristan. With reference to this word " am," I 

 would particularly call attention to a well-known sentence that is under- 

 stood, or, at all events, is used rather than understood, in the exercise of one 

 of the most widely-extended religions of the world I allude to Buddhism. 

 The Buddhist religion has a sentence somewhat equivalent to the famous 

 Arabic sentence, which is a part of the ritual of every Mahommedan. The 

 Buddhist sentence is " Orn mani padmi hum." In this sentence the word 

 " Am," or "Om,' J has been referred to the Deity ;* and therefore I should 

 be slow to accept the assurance, even on the part of so learned a man as 

 the lecturer, that the word is purely and wholly an Egyptian word. 



The Rev. H. G. TOMKINS. I beg pardon ; I never gave such an assurance 

 as that at all. I only traced the word "Amun," to Egypt, but I did not say 

 how it came into Egypt. That is part of a very great question. 



Mr. TRELAWNEY SAUNDBRS. I look for the origin of the word further 

 east. I am one of those who believe that the origin of the Egyptian 

 language and religion is to be traced much further east than Egypt itself. 

 The late Rev. Alex. Hislop, in The Two Eabylons, has accumulated evidence 

 of the Assyrian origin of the Egyptian rites. The Bible not only takes us 

 to Babylon, but still further east. The first inhabitants of Babylonia, or 

 Shinar, came from the east of that plain. If we go among the Hindus, and 

 ask them whence they came, they do not tell us " from the east," but 

 they say " from the north-west." One of the most interesting facts commu- 

 nicated to us in those instructive volumes, " The Sacred Writings of the 

 East," now being edited by Dr. Max Miiller, has reference to the origin of 

 the Chinese. The Chinese say they came from the west. Now, et us just 

 for a moment lay down our bearings from these several points. There is the 

 bearing eastward from the land of Shinar ; the bearing north-westward from 

 the land of Bramavarta ; and the bearing westward from China. Where do 

 these meet ? They meet on the Pamir, the Roof of the World, among 

 those mountains that overhang the ancient Ariana, and which I believe to 

 be the original home of the Aryans. The ancient books of the Zoroastrians 

 say that the people of Ariana Viejo, or old Ariana, were driven away by the 

 snow. When the population became too great in the valleys, and could not 

 settle higher up because of the winter snow, they were obliged to emigrate. 



* Some authors translate the sentence thus: "Oh! the jewel in the 

 lotus, Amen.'' But others define the Am, Um, or more accurately Aum, 

 as expressing the Trinity of Bramah, Vishnu, and Siva, or Budha, Dharma, 

 and canga, indeed the Triune God. Bryan Hodgson's Essays, p. 88. T.S. 



