1879.] J. H. Eivett-Carnac — The Snake Symbol in India. 29 



power of nature, has ever, I believe, been considered to represent the same 

 idea, not necessarily obscene, but the great mystery of nature, the life 

 transmitted from generation to generation, or, as Professor Stephen puts 

 it, "life out of death, life everlasting." The same idea in fact which, 

 apart from any obscene conception, causes the rude Mahadeo and yoni to 

 be worshipped daily by hundreds of thousands of Hindus. 



In a most interesting paper recently read at the Society of Antiquaries 

 of France, some extracts of which I am now preparing for the Society, 

 the authors M. M. Edouard Piette and Julien Sacaze have actually dis- 

 covered the remains of phallic worship still existing among the people of 

 the Pyrennees, the existence of which in Scandinavia, in days gone by, has 

 already been brought to the notice of the Society by Dr. Bajendralala 

 Mitra. These Archaeologists have established the fact that to this day the 

 menhir is still reverenced in the Pyrennees as the phallus. And referring 

 to certain cromlechs in the neighbourhood, M. M. Piette and Sacaze hold 

 that the circle, and central stone represent the " Sun." The sun, they 

 suppose, was the sacred symbol of these tribes, and they suggest that the 

 tumuli and sacred places of the race, were raised in this form, just as we 

 now build our churches in the shape of a cross and place the sign of the 

 cross on the graves of our dead. Whilst I was writing these very remarks 

 on the Kumaon markings, M. M. Piette and Sacaze were noticing the same 

 points in regard to the tumuli of the Pyrennees. There are not wanting 

 other remarkable points of resemblance between their paper and the Indian 

 remains, with which M. Bertrand, President of the Society of Antiquaries 

 of France, was much struck, and which induced him to send me, in Septem- 

 ber 1877, the proof sheets of the Proceedings of the Society. But the cir- 

 cumstance to which, in connection with the serpent worship of the above 

 notes, I attach the greatest importance is, that I find that in many of 

 these groups of tumuli, the circle is found with the serpent coiled round it. 



" Thus Bal was the type of productiveness, and Ashtoreth, as destruction, most 

 prohahly that of the Eight (Ashta) armed mother. A'shta-Taxa-Devi', or the radiated 

 Goddess of Destiny, is always depicted as trampling on the monster Bhainsasur, aided 

 by her lion (when she resembles Cybele, or the Phrygian Diana) and in each of her 

 eight arms holding a weapon of destruction : but I have ventured to pursue the subject 

 elsewhere. I shall merely remark on the Suroi of Menander, that amongst the thirty- 

 six royal races of Hindus, especially pertaining to Saur'ashtra, is that of Sarweya, as 

 written in the Bhakha, but classically Suryaswa. The historian of the Court of Annul - 

 warra* thus introduces it : " And thou, Sarweya, essence of the martial races." No 

 doubt, it was, with many others, of Scythic origin, perhaps from Zariaspa, or Bactria, 

 introduced at a period when the worship of Bal, or the Sun, alone was common to the 

 nations east and west of the Indus ; when, as Pinkerton says, a grand Scythic empire 

 extended to the Ganges. Here I must drop Apollodotus and Menander, for the history 

 of their exploits extends no further than the Suroi." — Tod in Asiatic Researches. 

 * Nchrwava of D'AnviUc and Eenaudgt. 



