1836.] Note on Grecian Sculpture in Upper India. 569 



The Dionysiacs of Nonnus have been quoted by Colonel Wilford, 

 and analysed by Professor Wilson in our Researches — but without 

 hinting at their hero having been grafted on the pantheistic system 

 of India. Nishapur, De'va-Nahushanagar, and other towns, have been 

 pointed out as the site of Nysa, N'tcea, or Dionysiopolis, where the 

 extravagant rites of Dionysos' worship were celebrated with the 

 greatest pomp : — where, according to soma authorities, he was born — 

 where, according to others, he founded a city in honor of a damsel, 

 Nicea, whom he encountered in his expedition through Persia and 

 Bactria : — but all is vague and uncertain on the subject. The Indian 

 origin indeed of the religion of Bacchus, long ago asserted and 

 believed, has lately come to be suspected from the want of any 

 arguments in its favor but a few slight resemblances of names and 

 ceremonies. Professor A. W. Schlegel expressly denies in his 

 Indian Library, that the Greeks had, previous to the conquests of 

 Alexander, any idea of an expedition of Bacchus to or from India*. 

 The author on whose authority this opinion is repeated, Mr. T. 

 Keightley, thus traces the origin of the confusion : — 



" When Alexander and his army had penetrated to the modern 

 Ciibul, they found ivy and wild vines on the side of Mount Merus 

 and on the banks of the Hydaspes : they also met processions, 

 accompanied by the sound of drums and parti-colored dresses, like 

 those worn in the Bacchic orgies of Greece and Lesser Asia. The 

 flatterers of the conqueror took thence occasion to fable that Dionysius 

 had, like Hercules and their own great king, marched as a conqueror 

 throughout the east : had planted there the ivy and the vine, had 

 built the city of Nysa, and named the fountain Merus from the circum- 

 stance of his birth from the thigh of Zeus. At length, during the 

 time of the Graeco-Bactric kingdom, some Greek writers, on whom 

 it is probable the Brahmans imposed, as they have since done on the 

 Englishf, gave out that Dionysus was a native Indian, who having 

 taught the art of wine-making in that country, made a conquering 

 expedition through the world to instruct mankind in the culture of 

 the vine and other useful arts. And thus the culture of the vine 

 came to Greece from a land which does not produce that plant ! 

 This last is the absurd hypothesis which we have seen renewed in 

 our own days, and supported by all the efforts of ingenious ety- 

 mology !" 



Colonel Stacy's group may throw a new light on this curious 



question. There can be no doubt as to the personage represented 



by the principal figure — his portly carcass, drunken lassitude, and 



* Keightley's Mythology of Greece, 170. f Alluding to Col. Wilfoud. 



4 B 



