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equally with physical and spiritual foes ; both are denominated 

 THE SUN ; both descend to the shades, and both raise the dead to 

 life. 



There is also another great personage in Asiatic antiquity to 

 whose history, as related by Herodotus, that of Creeshna bears, 

 in many parts, a striking similitude, I mean the great Cyrus, or 

 CAT COSROE of the Persians; a name apparently connected with 

 the Indian ; for, its primitive is Coresh, an old Persian name for 

 the sun, whence Creeshna might have been originally formed. In 

 that case, we may apply to our black deity of India that celebra- 

 ted line of Milton : 



DARK with excess of LIGHT thy skirts appear. 



The account of Cyrus in Herodotus is, in some instances, so 

 minutely particular, that a doubt can scarcely be entertained of 

 his having seen some ancient legend concerning Creeshna, and 

 consequently additional evidence is thence brought to the truth of 

 Herodotus, who could only have seen it in those Persian annals 

 which he asserts he consulted in writing his history ; a circumstance 

 extremely probable, since the remotest annals of India and Persia 

 were the same. Let any man coolly read the remarkable, though 

 generally exploded, relation of Herodotus concerning the birth and 

 exposure of the infant Cyrus, through the jealous dread and hatred 

 of his grandfather, to whom it was announced in a dream that he 

 should be dethroned by that grandson ; let him consider the ac- 

 count given in that author of his being rescued from the threatened 

 doom by the tenderness of the herdsman Mithridates and his wife 

 Spaco ; the exchange of Cyrus for their new, but still-born, son, 

 who was exposed in his stead on the mountains of Ecbatana ; his 

 being trained up in the scenes of pastoral life at their farm, and 



