apkil — sept. 1858.] Notes Antiquarian and Mythical. 61 



through a series of stages and developments up to the great cen- 

 tral creative unity, and so the reverse of a system of emanations, it 

 includes one main point of agreement with Buddhism, a capital 

 distinction between which and Brahmanism is, that whereas the 

 latter is always inclined to the idea of avatars or divinities descend- 

 ing and becoming visible in earthly forms, so Buddhism contrari- 

 wise elevates its sages and heroes through successive ascending 

 states to one of identification with pure deity. Buddhism too has 

 always been an eminently migratory creed ; Porphyry notices the 

 wandering propensities of its professors, and in this it again coin- 

 cides with the Cabiric divinities, Hercules, Jason, (Eneas, Dido, 

 and other mythical personages, all notable wanderers of old. Here 

 are lesser likenesses, besides that crowning one of identity of name 

 and function between the heads of the respective systems. All 

 may be mistake ; but when one recalls the unexpected agreements, 

 strange coincidences, and unaccountable correspondences with vari- 

 ous Buddhist peculiarities, that sometimes essential, sometimes 

 trivial, crop out in so many far separated countries, creeds, and 

 ages, one is almost disposed to listen to those keen partizans who 

 would extend the sway of Buddha from uttermost east to farthest west 

 — to Britain and Ireland ; not scrupling to claim even Stonehege as 

 a Buddhist temple. Shadowy glimpses in " the dim backward 

 and abyss of time" of a period in unrecorded antiquity when 

 Buddhism formed a vast, primitive, universally prevailing system, 

 into which, at or after the historic epoch, Brahmanism in the east 

 and manifold mythological religions in the west, broke and even- 

 tually overthrew. Fading for ever from the western world, in 

 which the vestiges of its predominence only perplex, re-appearing 

 at times in India, always to be subdued, but lingering in some of 

 the adjacent countries, the antique faith in its unapproached 

 strongholds of the remotest east, still counts its myriads of fol- 

 lowers, outnumbering those of any other creed. One is sometimes 

 tempted to speculations like those, were there any solid basis to 

 build them on. 



III. 



Analogies have been traced between Asiatic mythologies and 

 the religion established in ancient Scandinavia by Odin, who is 



