1864.] 



The Pillar Towers of the British Islands. 



571 



visited the beautiful British Islands, and at an early period acquired 

 the confidence of the Celtic inhabitants of the North Bast of Scotland 

 and Ireland. In both these countries many specimens of their 

 architecture exist ; — in the engraved stones of Eastern Scotland, and 

 the Pillar Towers of Ireland ; to execute which, a religious purpose 

 alone would urge such a population as inhabited Scotland and 

 Ireland, at the time of their erection. These Buddhist missionaries 

 were well known in Europe, and are repeatedly referred to, by the 

 primitive fathers of the Church, in the first centuries of the Christian 

 era. Clement of Alexandria, who lived at the close of the second 

 century, had heard of the monastic practices, and peculiar monuments 

 or topes of the Buddhists. He mentions the Brachmani, and the 

 Sarmani who worship Buddha, or Bouth, whom they honour as 

 a god: and about the middle of the following century, Porphyry 

 repeats information alluding to Buddhist practices, from Bardesanes, 

 who obtained it from Indian envoys sent to Antoninus. " There are," 

 he writes " two divisions of the Grymnosophists, Brachmans and 

 Sarmani." The former are so by birth, the latter by election, consist- 

 ing of all those who give themselves up to the cultivation of sacred 

 learning ; they live in Colleges, in dwellings, and temples constructed 

 by the princes, abandoning their families and property. They are 

 summoned to prayer by the ringing of a bell, and live upon rice and 

 fruits." Cyril of Alexandria mentions that the Samangeans were the 

 philosophers of the Bactrians, showing the extension of Buddhism 

 beyond the confines of India; and St. Jerome, who like Cyril, lived at 

 the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century, was acquaint- 

 ed with Buddhistical legends ; for he says that Buddha was believed 

 to have been born of a virgin, and to have come forth from his mother's 

 side. From Cyril of Jerusalem and Ephraim, who wrote in the middle 

 of the fourth century, we learn that Buddhism tainted some of the 

 heresies of the early Christian Church, which the latter terms the 

 Indian . heresy. Their accounts demonstrate that the Buddhism of 

 India was known to Christian writers between the second and the 

 fifth century of our era ;* but as no Towers of Safety were erected in 

 any part of Europe, except in Ireland and Scotland, we could not sup- 

 pose that the primitive Christians were the first architects. 



The Pillar Towers were erected by artists from the East, with a 

 * In H. H. Wilson's Works, v. 2, p. 313, et seq. 



4 d 2 



