THE INDOSTANIC FAMILY. 37 



were originally a race of northern conquerors of fair complexion; while the 

 Sudras and other inferior tribes were an aboriginal and darker race."* 



Note. — On the Resemblances between the Hindoos and Egyptians, — History and the arts 

 discover many remarkable analogies between the Hindoos and Egyptians, whence they have been 

 supposed by some able waiters to be affiliated nations. That there was extensive and long-continued 

 intercourse between them is sufficiently obvious, and history speaks vaguely of conquest and migration. 

 Which was the dominant power ? The Egyptians very naturally decided this point in their own 

 favor; for they assert that Osiris crossed Arabia to the utmost inhabited parts of India, and that he 

 built many cities there. " He left likewise/' says Diodorus, "many other marks of his being in these 

 parts, which have induced the inhabitants to believe and affirm that this god (Osiris) was born in 

 India.^'t Thus it appears that in the age of Diodorus, the Hindoos not only worshipped, but claimed 

 as original to themselves, the principal divinity of the Egyptians. 



These resemblances may be traced throughout the mythology and usages of the two nations. 

 Apis, the Egyptian Bull, was the symbol of Osiris ; and the White Bull is the animal on which Siva 

 is represented on the Indian pagodas. Worship was bestowed alike on the Ganges and the Nile. 

 Both nations worshipped the sun and the serpent ; and even at the present time the objects held in 

 the greatest veneration by the Hindoos of the Vishnu sect, are the ape, the monkey, the bird called 

 Garuda, and the serpent Capella.J Among the symbols of superstition in each are seen the sphinx, 

 the lotus, the lingam and the cross. " The crux ansata which is constantly observed in the hands of 

 the Nilotic statues, is nothing but the yoni-lingam of the Hindoos; and it is a curious fact that in the 

 terra cotta images of Isis, dug up near her temple at Psestum, she holds in her right hand an exact 

 representation of the Hindoo Hngam and yoni combined.''§ 



Their affinity is also recognised in their almost exclusive vegetable diet, their use of a sacerdotal 

 language, their numerous ablutions, and by the institution of castes, which the Egyptians enforced 

 with as much rigidness as the Hindoos do now. Among them no mechanic or artificer could exercise 

 any other vocation than that which his parents had followed before him;l| and this system gave rise to 

 the same exclusiveness in their domestic arrangements which is so remarkable among the modern 

 Hindoos, who will not permit their viands or their vessels to be touched by a stranger ; for Herodotus 

 observes that the Egyptians would not use a knife belonging to a Greek, " nor will they even eat of 

 the flesh of such beasts as by their law are pure, if it has been cut with a Grecian knife.^'IT 



Similar analogies are discernible in the architecture of the two nations, whether it relates to their 

 motiolithic temples, or their subterranean sanctuaries, or the statuary and minor decorations of their 

 stupendous edifices. Even the obelisk is seen in the excavated temple of Kylas, in India; and the 

 antique pagodas of Tanjore and Chalambroom, are but sUght modifications of the Egyptian pyramid.^* 

 Dr. Russell mentions the interesting fact, that " the Sepoys who joined the British army in Egypt 



* Lib. of Entertaining KnowL Art. Hindoos, p. 103. 



f Booth's Diodorus, B. I, chap. 2. X Dubois. On the People of India, p. 54. 



§ Library of Entertaining Knowl. Art. Hindoos, I, p. 167. || Booth's Diodorus, B. I, chap. 6. 



^1" Euterpe, cap. XLL — This fact is also recorded in Genesis, wherein it is stated that "the Egyptians might not eat 

 l)read with the Hebrews; for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians." Chap, xliii, v. 32. 



** Maurice, Indian Antiq. vols. 2 and 3, passim. — Sir William Jones derives the name of the river of Egypt from the 

 Sanscrit w^ord nila, blue; and the Indus is called Mlab in the early part of its course from the blue color of its waters. 



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