568 



mediately mentioned the female figure at Rochestown, and 

 stated that he had heard of several others in the same neigh- 

 bourhood, and he recommended an inquiry into the subject, 

 which led to the discovery of several more figures of the 

 same kind in different places. 



The "hylic principle," including the materials composing 

 the body, was little more than the locus, where the battle of 

 the two other principles was fought during the life of the as- 

 cetic;* and if he persevered to death in the practices pre- 

 scribed for the evolution of the pneumatic principle, and lost 

 his life in these observances, or in the fulfilment of the duties 

 which belonged to this system, his victory over the hylic or 

 psychic principles was complete, and he was said to have 

 arrived at " perfect virtue," and consequently became, ac- 

 cording to Asiatic views, an inferior, or little Bauddha, which 

 may, possibly, give us an original of the name of Monaster- 

 boyse ; in Irish, the monastery of Boaithin, or the little 

 Bauddha. The legend of St. Colum Cille, who struck his 

 crosier against the glass ladder, by which he went to heaven, 

 which belongs to this place, and which strongly corroborates 

 a Ceylonese legend, increases the suspicion, that the system 

 which was called here Christian, originally may have been 

 analogous to that ascetic system which existed under the 

 same name in Egypt and the East, and was closely allied to 

 Bauddhism, which was, and is, a system of Asceticism,f and 



* This doctrine is the same, or nearly the same, as that which is called 

 Dualism, which attributes creation and life to the action and reaction of two 

 principles, plus and minus, or positive and negative, which were personified by 

 the ancients under every species of antagonism. The fighting dogs and serpents 

 of the Irish are, apparently, manifestations of it, applied specially to the daily 

 strife, or " cross," of these two principles in the body of the ascetic. 



f When O'Brien's book was written our knowledge of the Bauddist system 

 was very limited. Now its antiquity, history, principles, and corruptions, are 

 better understood, through the labours of Mr. Princep, Fa-hian's Travels, 

 The Mahavansa, &c. 



