1845.] On the Buddhist Emblem of Architecture. 633 



refer to the sacrifice of bulls and oxen;* but then in that case, it 

 would have been the representation of the head of a live animal. Duteil 

 considers, that the circumstance of its being the head of a dead animal, 

 (referring to the instance of the representation being that of dead 

 Ram's head,) alludes to the destruction of the world by fire, when by the 

 precession of the equinoxes the sun shall again lead the opening year 

 in the constellation of Aries. (Diet, des Hierog.) Dupuis likewise 

 (Origine de tous les Cultes,) declares the worship of the Bull originated 

 at the period when that luminary opened the year in Taurus. Indeed 

 he considers that all the various religious myths referred to the sun. 

 That Hercules in his twelve labours was the sun in his twelve zodiacal 

 signs ; that Jason in search of the fleece of Colchis, was a mythologi- 

 cal allusion to the god of day entering Aries ; he supports the accu- 

 sation, brought by its early opponents, that Christianity was a species 

 of Mithraism, and declares that the birth of Christ was nothing but a 

 spiritualism of the sun in Virgo. Without disputing these positions, we 

 have still to account how this animal was held in such high veneration, 

 as to have had accorded to it, with others, this stellar apotheosis, neces- 

 sary to have enabled their version of the myth to have had an origin. 

 We see how Boodhism explains this by having employed them as types, 

 and the animal under discussion, as the representative of the highest 

 moral perfection that humanity is capable of; and I shall proceed to 

 show how perfectly in keeping it was that the crowning point of this 

 perfection should be held to be " Death." 



It is the Boodhithatwa " the perfector of wisdom," who alone is able 

 directly to attain Niebhan, " the not to be," without having to undergo 

 any more transmigrations. It is for this state of annihilation that 

 every Boodhist pines ; and it can be attained but by death alone. In 

 all those mysteries which were held in such high veneration by the 

 Antients, and the types of which have descended in a chain of unbroken 

 succession even to our own days, the attainment of the crowning point 

 of the craft was typical of Death. It was alone by passing through 

 the vale of its shadow that perfect light could be obtained. Apuleius, 

 in the eleventh book of his Metamorphosis, or Fable of the Golden Ass, 



* It is singular to remark how rapidly this mistaken idea was adopted by the Greeks ; 

 for we find very often the friezes of the Corinthian order occupied by a long sacrifi- 

 cial procession. 



