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♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[August 2, 1886. 



rc'presentiDg a vii-gia — as Viigo, among the nations named, 

 assuvedlj' did (be "the explanation what it may) — would 

 necessai-ily be understood to be unlike that of an ordinary 

 being. The Supreme Being, or tlie Heaven Father, would 

 be regarded as having begotten the sun-god of a virgin 

 mother. We find this idea in all the ancient myths of the 

 sun-god, and later it appears naturally in myths relating to 

 divinities, or to persons of divine origin. 



Osiris, of whom Murray, in his " Manual of Mythology," 

 speaks as the Egyptian Saviour, was regarded as a virgin- 

 born god. But he was also the father of Horns, more justly 

 regai'ded as the Egyptian Saviour ; and Horus was born of 

 the virgin Isis, whose symbol (as later that of the Virgin 

 Mary in Catholic churches) was the crescent moon.* She 

 was, however, associated also with the Virgin of the Egyptian 

 zodiac, and indeed in the earliest pictures of the zodiacal 

 signs Virgo is shown as Isis. On this point the Arabian 

 astronomer Abulmazar says, " One sees in the first Decan of 

 the sign of the Virgin, according to the most ancient tra- 

 ditions of the Persians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, of Hermes 

 and of P]sculapius, a chaste, pure, immaculate virgin, of a 

 beautiful figure and an agreeable face, having an air of 

 modesty, holding in her hand two eai's of corn, seated on a 

 throne, nourishing and suckling a young child." Around 

 is generally a framework of lotus-fiowers. In passing it 

 may be noted that, as Isis had brought Horus to the earth, 

 he in return took her with him to heaven after his victory 

 over death. 



Ra, another Egyptian representative of the sun, was also a 

 virgin-born deity. He came from the side of his mother (as 

 we learn also happened in the case of the Buddha). Later the 

 Egyptians came to regard their kings as of a divine nature, 

 and attributed to them also a miraculous origin. Eenouf, 

 in his "Religion of Ancient Egypt," p. 161, says that 

 " the Egyptians believed that their ruling sovereign was 

 the living image and vicegerent of the sun-god (Ra). He 

 was invested with the attributes of divinitj-," and Ra was 

 regarded as his father, the mother remaining virgin. 



In India many Avatars, or incarnations of Vishnu — the 

 second jserson of the India Ti-iniurti or Trinity — are recorded, 

 in.somuch that the Indian jjundits (Moor tells us in his 

 " Pantheon ") rather despise their English rulers as being of 

 so recent a race that they know of only one Avatar-. In eacli 

 case the new-born god had a virgin mother. 



Crishna Jezeus was the eighth, and, according to manj', 

 . the greatest of the Avatars ; for while it was held that in the 

 seven preceding incarnations a portion only of the deity was 

 communicated, in this Vishnu himself descended in all the 

 plenitude of the godhead. Crishna was bom of Devaki, a 

 chaste virgin. Vishnu proclaimed his intention to thus visit 

 the earth "to relieve the oppressed world from its load," on 

 which a chorus of angels sang aloud. In the birth-throes of 

 this famous woman all nature shall have cause to rejoice. 

 " Eulogised by the gods," says the Vishnu Purani, " Uevaki 

 bore in her womb the lotus-eyed deity, the saviour of the 

 world." '■ The divine Vishnu himself," says the same .sacred 

 book ehscwhere, " adored by Brahma and all the deities, he 

 who is without beginning, middle, or end, being moved to 

 relieve the eaith of her load, descended into the womb of 



* Dr. luman, in his " Pagan and Christian Symbolisms," remarks 

 that the Virgin shown as the Queen of Heaven, nursing the infant, 

 and associated with the " crescent moon," could not be more com- 

 pletely identified than she thus is with the Egyptian Isis and 

 Horus. Higgins, in his " Anacalypsis " (vol. i. p. 30i), points out 

 that Isis was represented standing on the crescent moon with twelve 

 stars surrounding her head. If an ancient Egyplian returning to this 

 earth, as ancient Eg_vptians supposed tliey would, could travel 

 through Europe his heart would b3 rejoiced by the siglit of many 

 thousMiids of pictures which he would regard as representing Isis 

 and lloru;;, with their stars and moon. 



Devaki, and was born as her son ; Vasii deva — that is, 

 Crishna." Later this Purana remarks that " Crishna is the 

 very supreme Brahma, though it is a mystery how the 

 Supreme should assume the form of a man." 



All this, however strange it may seem to us, was the 

 natural product of a religion which originally involved the 

 worship of the sun as the Supreme (iod. The ever-recurring 

 new birth of the sun-god merged inxturally into the doctrine 

 of the incarnation, at longer interval.s, of a deity of whom 

 the sun was regarded in later times as onXy the symbol. 

 A saviour, or even .a teacher, who had not that sign of 

 divine origin which the sun-god had possessed would have 

 had small chance of being received with due veneration 

 among races who still retained all the superstitions of sun- 

 woi'shipping days. 



The next among the virgin-born saviours — the ninth 

 Avatar — among the Indians was Buddha, born of the 

 virgin Maya (estimated date about 500 B.C., following the 

 eighth Avatar by about 700 years). In a dream, Maya saw 

 a white elephant, emblem of the sun, enter her right side. 

 Tlie dream was interpreted to signify that the child which 

 should 1)6 boi'n to her should be the chief of all the world, 

 the Buddha, " able to save and deliver the world and men 

 from the deep sea of mis9ry and grief." This at least was 

 the account developed in later times ; doubtless there v.'as a 

 I'eal Guatama whose birth was as natural as tliat of all 

 other men. But when he took his place, after time enough 

 had elapsed for the real events to be forgotten, among the 

 deified benefactors or teachers of the past, he was held to 

 have had that characteristic origin which the sun god of 

 earlier ages had had, and which every deity who was to 

 receive the veneration of the world was bound (in those 

 times at any rate) to have. (A certain advancing keenness of 

 ideas is shown by the circumstance that the Grand Llama, 

 though vicegerent of God and representative of the Buddha 

 on earth, is not at present regarded as necessarily a virgin- 

 born being, as the Egyptians expected their king to be.) 



The Siamese had a virgin-born saviour, Codom, who was 

 placed by his mother in the folds of a lotus, and growing up 

 became a marvel of wisdom while still a boy. The date of 

 this divinity's miraculous birth is not recorded. 



The Chinese had a number of virgin-born deities, chief 

 among whom must be reckoned Folii or Fuh-he, born 

 346S B.C., the story of whose miraculous conception some- 

 what startled the Jesuit missionaries who first visited 

 China, for they found the miracles they had trusted in as 

 their best evidence counterbalanced by the much more 

 ancient miracles related of Full he. As with Horus, 

 Vishnu, and the rest, the lotus appears in the Chinese 

 story ; indeed, a favourite account of Fuh-he's conception 

 attributes it to the swallowing of the lotus coral fruit by 

 his maiden mother — another form, no doubt, of the idea 

 that the lotus was sacred to the sun-god. 



Among the Greeks and Romans the idea of virgin-born 

 divinities and heroes was so common that probably no new 

 religious teaching presented to them without this accom- 

 paniment would have had any chance of acceptance. Th's 

 was recognised by Justin Martyr in his famous and singu- 

 larly suggestive " Apology," addressed to the Emperor 

 Hadrian, in which he says, " We Christians, in asserting 

 the doctrine of the Incarnation, say no more than you 

 Pagans assert of those whom you style the sons of Jupiter ; " 

 and elsewhere he touches particularly on the case of Perseus, 

 son of Zeus by a virgin mother, and honoured as a god 

 at Athens. For, says Justin, " as to Jesus Christ's lieing 

 born of a virgin, you have your Perseus to balance that." 

 Of Mercury also, the son of Zeus, and a mortal mother 

 Maia, and to whom a magnificent temple was raised at 

 Cylleno, in Arcadia, the same Christian apologist remarked. 



