334 



Dr. Moore's Lost Tubes. 



meaning" Yet it will be seen that "Wilson points out that "Nanaia 

 is a personification of the Moon, the Artemis or Diana of the 

 Greeks ; and that the goddess is referred to under that name in a 

 book so accessible as the Apocryphal second book of Maccabees, as 

 one of rhe deities worshipped by Antiochus, one of the progenitors 

 or predecessors of the Greek Bactrian Kings. Professor Wilson 

 adds : — " It is very likely that her worship extended along the 

 south coast of the Caspian, and thus reached some of the Indo- 

 Scythic tribes, by whom it was imported rather late into India. Of 

 the migration of Nanaia thither there is every probability that the 

 memory survives in the Bibi Xani, or Lady Nani, who is reverenced 

 by the Mahomedans, and worshipped as a form of Parvati by the 

 Hindus in various parts of Afghanistan " 



The figure of Nanaia on the Bactrian coins is clearly and undoubt- 

 edly that of a female, yet Dr. Moore shuts his eyes to this fact, and 

 pronounces it, as well as the very distinct and quite different male 

 figure of Helios, to be the representation of Godama, the Buddhist 

 incarnation. 



But I think we have had enough of this foolish book. The Rev. 

 Mr. Taylor thinks that Dr. Moore is right in some of his conjec- 

 tures, and that he has " not wholly missed his mark." This is 

 quite possible ; out of a hundred random reckless shots one may 

 have been successful. 1 remember enough of the Greek I learned at 

 School to be able to quote the first example in the Syntax of the 

 Eton Grammar : — 



■XoWaKi rot feat iitvpos avrjp KaTaicdiptou erne, — a foolish man has 

 frequently said an appropriate word, — or as we may translate it on 

 the present occasion. " Perhaps even Moore may have hit upon a 

 truth.*' I will not follow the bad example of our author, and pro- 

 fess my firm belief that the name Moore is derived from the Greek 

 Ittbpos— in the vocative case fx^pe — but I do most positively de- 

 clare that such a derivation would be quite as reasonable and quite 

 as probable as most of those contained in the Lost Tribes, or the 

 S axons of the East and West. 



E. B. 



