3Q2 THE COPTIC ELEMENT IN 



Teutonic deity Wodan or Odin.'"® Professor Miiller is aware that 

 Sir William Jones was not alone in this belief; but that, together 

 with other orientalists, a large number of northern European 

 mythologists, and among them, some who possessed far greater oppor- 

 tunities of judging in the matter than Sir William Jones, have 

 homologated the opinion of that distinguished father of Eastern 

 learning. I have looked into some, and carefully studied other 

 works to which Professor Mtiller refers the student of Buddhism, 

 such as the Rev. Spence Hardy's Manual; and although such stiidies 

 have left me in doubt as to the time when the Buddhist system was 

 fully organized, they have confirmed me in the belief that away in 

 the distant past, long before that period of development, there lived 

 a Gotama Buddha, who is identical with the German and Scandi- 

 navian Odin. At present, however, we are not dealing with 

 mythology, biit with that language of which Professor Mtilier 

 fancifully calls it a disease. The same writer says truly " God was 

 most likely an old heathen name of the Deity. "^^ Now we are 

 acquainted with the old heathen names of the Deity among the 

 northern peoples who make use of this word ; and the nearest to it 

 of these names is that of the Lombard and Westphalian Guodan?^* 

 In the Germanic languages the name appears in. such forms as to 

 ehow either that the initial g is not an essential part of the root, or 

 that it marks the original presence of a letter similar to the Hebrew 

 'y>, which might be retained as a broad vowel, a simple breathing, or a 

 guttural. I hold to the latter opinion, and find the rendering by the 

 broad vowel in Odia, Oden, 0?9inn of the Scandinavian. Grimm 

 connects Gwydion, son of Don, of the Welsh mythology*" with Odin, 

 making them the same person. It is hard to distinguish this personage 

 from .^ddon, who is Buddwas, and who came originally from the 

 region of Gwydion.*^ .^ddon presents us with the same form of the 

 root as Odin, while Gwydion is guttural, like Guodan. The prefix of 



38 Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. i., Art. ix., on Buddhism, Art. xi., Letter on the 

 Meaning of Nirvana. 



*' Science of Languages, Series ii., Lect. vi. 



89> In Florence of Worcester's Chronicle, A.D. 849, it is said of Gaetwa, an ancestor of 

 Woden, that the pagans formerly worshipped him as a god. The Church Historians of 

 England, London, 1853, Vol. ii., Part i., 209. The same statement is made by the historian, 

 Nennius, who calls him Gaet. Six Old English Chronicles. Bohn, 396. 



«> Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, IST. 



41 Davies, British Druids, 118. 



