94 ESSAY ON THE 



off only one of the elephant-like tusks of Gan'es'a, which fell to the 

 ground, with a dreadful noise, and shook the v^^hole earth. Maha- 

 be'va and Pa'rvati, who were in fond daUiance, as indeed they al- 

 ways are, when alone, were alarmed. Parvati particularly was very 

 angry, and was goin^ to utter ^ dreadful curse against him, ^hen 

 Va'mana, an Avatdra of Vishnu, suddenly c^me fronj the White 

 Island, resplendent like ten millions of suns, in a white dress, and 

 with white teeth, '' Who are you ? what part of the world do you 

 " come from ?" said Pa rvati to him. " I am Va'mana ; alarmed by the 

 " noise, and the shaking of the earth, J come from the JVHte Island tq 

 " save Paras'u-Ra'ma." 



The Egyptians, according to Plutarch, said that Osiris was materi- 

 ally the lunar world, and that he dwelt in the moon. Osiris, of a black 

 complexion, is Vishnu, whose abode is in the White Island^ called also 

 Chandra-dwipa, or the island of the moon : and I think that, by the 

 lunar world of the EgyptiaJis, we are to understand the terrestrial moon 

 of the western mythologists, and the Chandra-dwipa of the Hindus. In 

 Tibet, they say, that the god of wisdom resides in the moon : and the 

 Manicheans, whose reveries have much affinity with those of the Hindus, 

 placed Christ, in his chara6ler of the divine sapience, in theinoon; 

 making it consubstantial with it, as the Egyptians did with resped; to 

 Osiris, and the lunar worlds 



VIIL In the Trai-ldcya-derpana, it is said, that CHACRA-VAlfiTTr- 

 Na'ra'yan'a resides in islands to the west. This is Vishnu, or Na'ra'- 

 yan'a, whirling the Chacra or coit. They call him also Nara-na'tha, 

 or the lord of mankind. In the White Islmd, says the author of thai 

 treatise^ is the Janma-Calpdnac, or birth tree of Jina^ or Budd'hAo It is 



