26 Some conjectures on the progress of [Jan. 



which created these theistic subdivisions in old Egypt, by study of the 

 Buddhist and Brahminical controversies,* in which dogmas on the one 

 hand, and philosophic speculations on the other, show how sects were 

 formed and new opinions started on the primeval basis of a hidden 

 cause ; — a soul or conscious vitality ; — and thence Her or Shiva, as the 

 case may be, — a triune God.f 



But let us go from the natural to the mythic idea. It was said, 

 years ago, by a very competent enquirer that, " the usual character of 

 human testimony is substantial truth under circumstantial variety ;"$ 

 and when such testimony is offered by witnesses unconsciously repeat- 

 ing the tale already told by others in another shape, why reject the 

 whole as fable? — or why, in the endeavour to analyse either part of it 

 separately, lose the spirit of the general tradition in which alone con- 

 sists the clue to its true meaning? "These old tales and histories 

 work according to their epoch so through and through each other, that 

 they become hard to separate," observes Goethe, " and the wider they 

 are sundered the greater the rents made in them."§ What are the 

 Orphic and Pythagoric theories of abstinence from animal food and 

 the shedding of blood (Sobeck Aglaophamus, Lib. II. c. II. de vitd 

 orphicd), but the Buddhist doctrine inculcated in the Asoka edict (As. 

 Soc. Jour. Vol. IX. p. 616) extant on its granite block in our Museum? 

 "What are the tales as to the origin of Cereal culture, and the pruned 

 vine, but like indications of the progress of a settled society supersed- 

 ing the wild habits of the nomad and the hunter ? 



The mystery of Bacchus and Ceres is expressed, mystically, with 

 reference to their mythic story, and, physically, with reference to the 

 things they typify, wheat and its culture on the one hand ; and on the 



* The new edition of the Pilgrimnge of Fa Hian in which my able friend, Mr. 

 Laidlay, honorary Secretary to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, has enriched with 

 his own valuable notes and illustrations all that Abel Remusat, Klaproth, and 

 Landresse had already given the world on this interesting text, has (ch. xvii. 21) 

 a compendious notice on this head affording easy reference. — H. T. 



+ The idea in which the hidden cause is taken by the Buddhists, with the sequence 

 of the soul, or life creative and eternal, opposed by its causative converse, death, 

 whose dominion is for a time only, gives the dual of a Godhead, Ormuzd and Ahri- 

 man, of ancient Persia, with the Manichsean and other dualistic creeds. — H. T. 



X Paley, Evid. Christ, ch. II. 289. 



§ Tag and Jahr Hefte, II. p. 19. 



