28 J. H. Eivett-Carnac — TJie Snake Symbol in India. [No. 1, 



" The pieces (papers) you were so good as to send me were very valu- 

 able and welcome. There can be no doubt that it is to India we are to 

 look for the solution of many of our difficult archaeological questions. 



" But especially interesting is your paper on the Ancient Rock Sculp- 

 turings. I believe that you are quite right in your views. Nay I go 

 further. I think that the Northern Bulb-stones are explained by the 

 same combination. I therefore send you by this post a copy of the part 

 for 187-4 of the Swedish Archaeological Journal containing Baron Herculius' 

 excellent dissertation on these objects. Though in Swedish, you can easily 

 understand it, at least the greater part, by reading it as a kind of broad 

 north-English. At all events you can examine the many excellent wood- 

 cuts. I look upon these things as late conventionalized abridgements of 

 the Linga and Yoni, life out of death, life everlasting — thus a fitting 

 ornament for the graves of the departed. 



" In the same way the hitherto not understood small stones with 1 or 

 2 or 3 or 4 etc. distinct cups cut in them (vulgarly called chipping-stones, 

 which they never were or could be) I regard as the same thing for domestic 

 worship, house altars, the family Penates.'''' 



I may note that this distinguished antiquary has adopted as a mono- 

 gram for his writing paper a " menhir," round which a serpent is coiled, 

 evidently copied from old Scandinavian remains. 



Many who indignantly repudiate the idea of the prevalence of phallic 

 worship among our remote ancestors, hold that these symbols represent 

 the snake or the sun. But admitting this, may not the snake, after all, 

 have been but a symbol of the phallus ? And the sun,* the invigorating 



* Since writing this I have come across the following remarks by Tod in the Asiatic 

 Eesearches : ' The Suroi were in fact the Sanras, inhabiting the peninsula of Sau- 

 r'ashtra, the Saurastrene and Syrastrene already quoted from the Periplus, and the 

 kingdom immediately adjoining, that of Tessarioustus, to the eastward. That the 

 Sypoi of Saur'ashtra, and the Syrians of Asia Minor had the same origin, appears 

 from the worship of Surya, or the Suu. I have little doubt, we have more than 

 one "city of the sun"* in this tract; indeed, the only temples of the Sun I have 

 met with in India, are in Saur'ashtra. The temple raised to Bal in Tadmorf in the 

 Desert, by Solomon, where he worshipped "Bal and Ashtoreth, the strange gods of the 

 Sidonians," was the Bal-nat'h, or Great G-od of the Hindus, the Vivifier, the Sun : and 

 the Pillar erected to him " in every grove, and on every high hill ; " the Lingam, or 

 Phallus, the emblem of Bal ; Bal-nat'h, Bal-cesari,J or as Bal-Iswara, the Osiris of the 

 Egyptians ; and as Nand-Iswara, their Serapis, or Lord of the Sacred Bull ; Nanda, or 

 Apis " the Calf of Egypt," which the chosen people bowed to " when their hearts were 

 turned away from the Lord." 



* Heliopolis (Suryapiira) was one capital of Syria. 



t Hence its name Bal-bec, Becisan idol : so Ferishta derives it, the idol Bal. This, the capital in 

 fntare times of the unfortunate Zenobia, was translated by the Greeks to Palmyra ; for it is but a translation 

 of Tad-tar, or Tal-mor, and can have an Indian derivation, from Tar, or Tal, the Date, or Palmyra-tree ; 

 and Mor, the head, chief, or crown . 



% Cesari, a lion. Hence the royal appellation of the Caesars j and Lion (Sin'ha) Lords of India, have 

 the same meaning. 



