CHRISTIAN RELIGION IN INDIA. 123 



crama'ditya marched from his capital city Patali- 

 putra, or Pat)ia, to wage war against Nri-sinha, 

 King of Pratishfhdna. 



VI. The cross, though not an ohject of worship 

 among the BaudcVhas, is a favourite emhleni anrl de- 

 vice with them. It is exactly the cross of the Mani- " 

 cheans, with leaves and flowers springing from it, 

 and placed upon a mount Calvarij, as among the 

 Roman Catholics. They represent it various ways; 

 but tlie shaft with tlie cross bar, and the Calvary 

 remain the same. The tree of life and knowledge, 

 or the Jamhu tree, in their niaps of the worki, is 

 always repiesented in the shape of a Manichean 

 cross, eighty-four Ybjanas (answering to the eighty- 

 four years of the life of him who was exalted upon 

 the cross), or 423 miles high, including the three 

 steps of the Calvary. 



This cross, putting forth leaves and flowers, (and 

 fruit also, as I am told) is called the divine tree, the 

 tree of the gods, the tree of life anrl knov^^iedge, ' 

 and productive of whatever is good and desirable, and 

 is placed in the terrestrial P^/W/.^e. Agapius, ac- 

 cording to Photius,* maintained, that this divitie 

 tree in Paradise, was Christ himself In tlieir de.- 

 lineations of the heavens, the globe of the earth [s 

 filled up with this cross and its Calvary. The divines 

 of Tibet place it to the S. W. of Aleru, towards the 

 source of the Ganges. The Manicheans always re- 

 presented Christ crucified upon a tree among the 

 foliage. The Christians of India, and of St. Thomas, 

 though they did not admit of images, still enter- 

 tained the greatest veneration for the cross. They 



* Phot. Biblioth. p. 403. 



