1879.] J. H. Rivett-Carnac—TZhe Snake Symbol in India. 29 
power of nature, has ever, I believe, been considered to represent the same 
idea, not necessarily obscene, but the great mystery of nature, the life 
transmitted from generation to generation, or, as Professor Stephen puts 
it, “life out of death, life everlasting.” The same idea in fact which, 
apart from any obscene conception, causes the rude Mahadeo and yoni to 
be worshipped daily by hundreds of thousands of Hindus. 
In a most interesting paper recently read at the Society of Antiquaries 
of France, some extracts of which I am now preparing for the Society, 
the authors M. M. Edouard Piette and Julien Sacaze have actually dis- 
covered the remains of phallic worship still existing among the people of 
the Pyrennees, the existence of which in Scandinavia, in days gone by, has 
already been brought to the notice of the Society by Dr. Rajendralala 
Mitra. These Archzologists have established the fact that to this day the 
menhir is still reverenced in the Pyrennees as the phallus. And referring 
to certain cromlechs in the neighbourhood, M. M. Piette and Sacaze hold 
that the circle, and central stone represent the “Sun.” The sun, they 
suppose, was the sacred symbol of these tribes, and they suggest that the 
tumuli and sacred places of the race, were raised in this form, just as we 
now build our churches in the shape of a cross and place the sign of the 
cross on the graves of our dead. Whilst I was writing these very remarks 
on the Kumdon markings, M. M. Piette and Sacaze were noticing the same 
points in regard to the tumuli of the Pyrennees. There are not wanting 
other remarkable points of resemblance between their paper and the Indian 
remains, with which M. Bertrand, President of the Society of Antiquaries 
of France, was much struck, and which induced him to send me, in Septem- 
ber 1877, the proof sheets of the Proceedings of the Society. ‘But the cir- 
cumstance to which, in connection with the serpent worship of the above 
notes, I attach the greatest importance is, that I find that in many of 
these groups of tumuli, the circle is found with the serpent coiled round it. 
“Thus Bal was the type of productiveness, and Ashtoreth, as destruction, most 
probably that of the Hight (Ashta) armed mother. A’shta-Tara-Devi’, or the radiated 
Goddess of Destiny, is always depicted as trampling on the monster Bhainsdstir, aided 
by her lion (when she resembles Cybele, or the Phrygian Diana) and in each of her 
eight arms holding a weapon of destruction: but I have ventured to pursue the subject 
elsewhere. I shall merely remark on the Suroi of Menander, that amongst the thirty- 
six royal races of Hindus, especially pertaining to Saur’ashtra, is that of Sarweya, as 
written in the Bhakha, but classically Suryaswa. The historian of the Court of Anhul- 
warra* thus introduces it: ‘And thou, Sarweya, essence of the martial races.’”’ No 
doubt, it was, with many others, of Scythic origin, perhaps from Zariaspa, or Bactria, 
introduced at a period when the worship of Bal, or the Sun, alone was common to the 
nations east and west of the Indus; when, as Pinkerton says, a grand Scythic empire 
extended to the Ganges. Here I must drop Apollodotus and Menander, for the history 
of their exploits extends no further than the Suroi.””—Zod in Asiatic Researches., 
* Nehrwara of D’Anyille and Renaudot. 
