28 J. H. Rivett-Carnac—TZhe Snake Symbol in India. [No. 1, 
“The pieces (papers) you were so good as to send me were very valu- 
able and welcome. There can be no doubt that it is to India we are to 
look for the solution of many-of our difficult archzological questions. 
“« But especially interesting is your paper on the Ancient Rock Sculp- 
turings. I believe that you are quite right in your views, Nay I go 
further. I think that the Northern Bulb-stones are explained by the 
same combination. I therefore send you by this post a copy of the part 
for 1874 of the Swedish Archzological Journal containing Baron Herculius’ 
excellent dissertation on these objects. Though in Swedish, you can easily 
understand it, at least the greater part, by reading it as a kind of broad 
north-English. At all events you can examine the many excellent wood- 
cuts. I look upon these things as late conventionalized abridgements of 
the Linga and Yoni, life out of death, life everlasting—thus a fitting 
ornament for the graves of the departed. 
“In the same way the. hitherto not understood small stones with 1 or 
2 or 8 or 4 ete. distinct ewps cut in them (vulgarly called chipping-stones, 
which they never were or could be) I regard as the same thing for domestic 
worship, house altars, the family Penates.” 
I may note that this distinguished antiquary has adopted as a mono- 
gram for his writing paper a “menhir,” round which a serpent is coiled, 
evidently copied from old Scandinavian remains. 
Many who indignantly repudiate the idea of the prevalence of phallic 
worship among our remote ancestors, hold that these symbols represent 
the snake or the sun. But admitting this, may not the snake, after all, 
have been but a symbol of the phallus? And the sun,* the invigorating 
* Since writing this I have come across the following remarks by Tod in the Asiatic 
Researches: ‘ The Suroi were in fact the Sauras, inhabiting the peninsula of Sau- 
vashtra, the Saurastrene and Syrastrene already quoted from the Periplus, and the 
kingdom immediately adjoining, that of Tessarioustus, to the eastward. That the 
Svpo. of Saur’ashtra, and the Syrians of Asia Minor had the same origin, appears 
from the worship of Surya, or the Sun. I have little doubt, we have more than 
one “city of the sun’’* in this tract; indeed, the only temples of the Sun I have 
met with in India, are in Saur’ashtra. The temple raised to Bal in Tadmort in the 
Desert, by Solomon, where he worshipped ‘‘ Bal and Ashtoreth, the strange gods of the 
Sidonians,” was the Bal-nat’h, or Great God of the Hindus, the Vivifier, the Sun: and 
the Pillar erected to him ‘in every grove, and on every high hill ;”’ the Lingam, or 
Phallus, the emblem of Bal; Bal-nat’h, Bal-césari,{ or as Bal-Iswara, the Osiris of the 
Egyptians ; and as Nand-Iswara, their Serapis, or Lord of the Sacred Bull; Nanda, or 
Apis “the Calf of Egypt,” which the chosen people bowed to “ when their hearts were 
turned away from the Lord.” 
* Heliopolis (Suryaptira) was one capital of Syria. 
+ aati its ane Part bee Séelian idol: so Ferishta derives it, the idol Bal. This, the capital in 
future times of the unfortunate Zenobia, was translated by the Greeks to Palmyra; for it is but a translation 
of Tad-tar, or Tal-mor, and can have an Indian derivation, from Tar, or Tal, the Date, or Palmyra-tree ; 
and Mor, the head, chief, or crown ; p : 
+ Cesari, alion, Hence the royal appellation of the Ciesars; and Lion (Sin’ha) Lords of India, have 
the same meaning. 
