ON MOUNT CAUCASUS* 5ll 



and says he could not divulge, what he had heard 

 concerning these deities in the sacred recesses of* 

 the temple, without being guilty of a sacrilege. The 

 name of this inferior deity is derived from the Sans- 

 crit Aitne'swara or Aitne'sa for Aitna-isa. 

 This god I do not find mentioned in the Purdnas j 

 but his consort Aitni'-de'vi, or the goddess Aix- 

 Ni', is repeatedly noticed in these sacred books. 

 She resided in an island, the dimensions of which 

 are declared to be thirty yojauasy or about 150 

 miles, an expression rather obscure. There on a 

 high mountain vomiting fire, was the slhdn, or place 

 of the goddess AiTNi' : indeed the whole island is 

 called Aitni-sthdn, and has no other name in the 

 Purdnas. This obviously is Mount JEtna^ and the 

 island of Sicili/, which was uninhabited, according 

 to the Paiiranics, on account of the dreadful erup- 

 tions of the mountain ; the crater of which was 

 considered as sacred according to Pausanias.* The 

 island (or tract of islands) of Lipara is mentioned 

 also in the Purdnas in which it is declared, that 

 the appellation of Laya-para is derived from Pa- 

 RA-LAYA ; because they who threw themselves into 

 the volcano, obtained Laya, or reunion to the su- 

 preme being. It is said to be ten yojanas or fifty 

 miles distant from Aitni-sthdn or Sicily. 



Aitni'-dl'vi is obviously the nymph called 

 i^TNA by the Sicilians : she was the mother of the 

 Pal ici, whose father was Jupiter with the title 

 of Adramus, supposed with good reason by the 

 learned to be the same with ther Babylonian 

 Adram-melech, whom I mentioned in a former 

 essay on Semiramisy Adramus is obviously derived 

 from the Sanscrit Adharme's'wara or Adhar- 

 me'sa : Is'a, Is'wara in Sanscrit-, Melech in 

 Chaldean, are synonimous ; and the lord Adharma 

 is an epithet of Siva. 



* Pausan Lacon. p. 107. 



2 K 4 Having 



