GO 



A Note on Boodhism and the Cave Temples of India. By Thomas 

 Latter, Lieutenant, Bengal Army. 



It is a matter admitting of little dispute, although that portion of 

 history is not so clear, as it might have been, had we been more in- 

 dustrious in our researches — that there was in very antient times a 

 very intimate connection between ^Ethiopia and India. Our chief 

 authorities on this point are of Indian origin ; — and even when allud- 

 ed to by Latin, or Greek authors, the information is declared as 

 having been derived from Indian sources. The Indian authorities, 

 however, invariably assert that ^Ethiopia was first visited and settled 

 from India, and they enter not only into details connected with the 

 circumstance, but likewise pretend at the same time to give the 

 whole of the early history of that country. It is not my intention 

 here to adduce authorities, to prove the falsity of their assertions, but 

 I will only state that, taking it as a fact that a connection existed in 

 early ages between the two nations, the very circumstance of all the 

 reminiscences and remembrances of the incidents and facts of the 

 occurrence existing, according to the Brahmins, on the side of India, 

 is about the most powerful argument that could be adduced to prove 

 that she, and not ^Ethiopia, was the visited party — for it is a notori- 

 ous circumstance of every- day occurrence, that where families or indi- 

 viduals have separated from the mother- country, they long continue 

 to treasure in their memories, and hand down to their descendants, 

 all the ancestral traditions and recollections of the parent- stock ; 

 whereas the senior branch that remain at home rapidly lose sight of 

 the young oft- shoots. Bearing on this subject likewise, is the cir- 

 cumstance of the similarity existing between some of the figures of 

 the Deities of the antient Egyptians, and those of the Hindoo idols 

 of the present day — as was evinced by the well-known circumstance 

 of the Hindoo Soldiers of the Bengal brigade, despatched to Egypt, 

 to assist in the expulsion of the French under Buonaparte, having 

 worshipped and acknowledged as identical with their own idols— the 

 sculptured figures which they found in that country. 



From the circumstance of the oldest temples of India being cave 

 temples, (the antiqueness as it were of their type being in proportion 

 to their position Westwards,) and the earlier of the statues of Boodh 



