1849.] Brahmans and Buddhists. 97 



The pyramids, like all the temples of Belus in India, had no opening 

 whatever.* I think later excavations have proved that there were en- 

 trances to the pyramids of Egypt which had been shut up. The find- 

 ing of Sarcophagi under the pyramids seems to have settled the ques- 

 tion as to their origin. The Musalmans, observes Wilfold, aver that 

 the world is now under the 4th Buddha ; Zoroaster or Zarades or Zoroa- 

 des or Zarat, was the eldest Zoroaster, son of Oromazes, who was ac- 

 cording to Lindas, " The Spirit of Heaven," and who directed his 

 bones to be carefully preserved. He is supposed to have assisted at the 

 tower of Babel. The antiquity of relic worship can hardly be disputed. 



There were four Adams, and four Buddhas. Adam's body was entomb- 

 ed at his own request in a cave or vault called Alconuz, in a mountain in 

 the centre of the world (of course the Hindu Meru), and represented by 

 artificial hills. Adam's remains after the flood were divided amongst 

 his posterity. 



Let us now turn again to Faber, in his highly interesting account of 

 the Cabiri, a great deal of which however rests perhaps on probabilities 

 and controvertible etymologies. He says that the Mithratic cavern of the 

 Cabiri, was not always subterraneous, but sometimes lay concealed in 

 the centre of enormous buildings of the pyramidal form. Such was the 

 Tower of Babel, which was yet standing in the days of Herodotus, j* who 

 describes it as consisting of eight towers gradually tapering to the top, 

 with a temple at the top, and a shrine at the bottom, with a statue of 

 Jupiter Belus, or the solar Noah. The pyramidal form was probably 

 adopted in honor of the sun, and in imitation of the tapering flame, as 

 indeed the very name of pyramidal seems to imply this."f* 



Now if the temple on the top be reckoned as the eighth story, we 

 shall have an exact counterpart of a Buddhist Chaitya without the 

 surmounting umbrella. The temple of Jupiter Belus, stood exactly 

 where one of Buddha now does, in modern Chaityas in Ava and Siam. 

 As to the above definition of pyramid, the lexicons explain the word 

 pyramis without any such allusion to flame or fire, merely describing it 

 as globular or cylindrical or quadrilateral at bottom, but tapering up- 

 wards, or a geometrical solid figure, whose base is a polygon, and the 

 sides plain triangles, whose several points meet in one. 



* As. Res. Vol. X. p. 134. 



f Faber's Cabiri, Vol. II. p. 384, citing Herodotus, lib. I. c. 181-3. 



o 



