Temples of India. 67 



about to be published in the Transactions of the Society, I shall not 

 enter into the subject here. With reference to the next step, the 

 symbolising metaphysical ideas and mental qualities by means of 

 animals, we find it one to which the antient Egyptians were most 

 particularly addicted ; as the Hawk emblematised to them the splen- 

 dor of a God— so did the Basilisk or King-snake, that of a King ; 

 " Truth," we are told was symbolised by an Ostrich, or a feather of 

 that bird, because all her plumes were believed to be of equal 

 length : not a single deified idea exists in the whole Pantheon of 

 Egypt that had not got its Fetich Cognisance. Coincidences might 

 be shewn between the ideas that were symbolised by certain animals 

 in the minds of the antient Egyptians, and those of the modern 

 Boodhist. Some of the explanations in that line given by Hor- 

 Apollo, which have been sneered at by some authors, and the whole 

 work branded as an imposition by others, would find a curious corro- 

 boration. 



Another mode in which Boodhism is fond of symbolising its ideas 

 is by colors, especially by the reflected light of Jewels, to this also 

 were the ancient Egyptians attached as evinced by the Urim and 

 Thummim — the play of those divinatory " Lights of Truth" — bor- 

 rowed from them by the Hebrews. I should far exceed the bounds 

 which I have already transgressed were I to attempt to do justice to 

 this perhaps the most interesting part of my subject, I shall content 

 myself, therefore, with merely having mentioned the fact, and adding 

 that to the mind of a Boodhist every planet has its corresponding 

 Fetich, and every one of these animals has its representative Jewel, 

 and typifying color. 



I have thus endeavoured to sketch the separate channels that 

 superstition, the falling from the worship of the true God, took 

 in the two families of Shem and Ham. But my subject would 

 be incomplete, if I did not mention one cult, which they shared 

 in common — one that took its rise from so striking and evident 

 a circumstance — that it is probable neither borrowed it from the 

 other. I allude to the worship of the Regenerative powers of 

 Nature. The mind of some Savage of a more contemplative and 

 intellectual nature than his fellows, must soon have become struck 

 with the circumstance, that whilst when viewed at a distance the 



