60 Notes Antiquarian and Mythical. [no. 7, new series. 



monastic discipline. Faber has this passage. " Both Cyril and 

 Clemens Alexandrinus agree in telling us that the Samandans were 

 the sacerdotal order both in Bactria and Persia ; but the Saman- 

 dans were the priests of Saman or Buddha, and it is well known 

 that the sacerdotal class of Bactria and Persia were the Magi : 

 therefore the Samandans and the Magi must have been the same, 

 and consequently Buddha, or Maga, or Saman must have been vene* 

 rated in those regions." Pagan Idolatry, B. iv. chap. 5. To this 

 conclusion (so notably Faberian in hunting a verbal resemblance) 

 that the Magi and Buddhists were the same, few would probably 

 now assent. With equal reason might it be asserted that the rude 

 Shaman priests and tumultuous Shamanite ceremonies of Northern 

 Asia, which have been shown by Mr. Caldwell, not merely to 

 resemble, but to be absolutely identical with, the popular devil- 

 worship of the rural Tamil castes, are the same with the philoso- 

 phic Samanal Buddhists. But with respect to the names Sama- 

 nal, Saman, the following passage from M. Adolphe Pictet on the 

 Cabiri may be adduced, carefully abstaining however from enter- 

 ing far into a subject so obscured by mysticism. " He in whom 

 this (the Cabiric) system finds its unity is Samhan, the judge of 

 souls, who punishes them by sending them back on the earth or to 

 hell. He is Master of Death, on the eve of the 1st November he 

 judges the souls of those who had died in the preceding year : 

 that day still goes by the name of Samhan's night. Samhan is 

 the centre of the association of the Cabiri ; sam, sum, cum, imply 

 union in a multitude of languages."*' Turning to Bottler's Tamil 

 Dictionary we find sub voce " Saman, the regent of death, same as 

 Yama," and Sami or Avhat is the deified sage or god of the Sama- 

 nar or Buddhists. This coincidence, functional as well as verbal, 

 is almost too strong to be accidental. No theory even has sought 

 to establish any connectisn between the mysterious worship of 

 " the great gods of Samothrace," and the Buddhistic system. If, 

 however, Pictet and also Schelling be right, in interpreting the Cabi- 

 ric theology as a worship of the primal powers of nature, ascending 



* The derivation from " sam" union, certainly seems preferable to Mr. Tay- 

 lor's derivation from Sooimono (unless that too be from the same root.) It is 

 noticeable that in the account of the contest the name of the Brahman (in truth 

 Siva in disguise) who defeated the Samanal is Sampan ton, i. e. "agreement," 

 upon which meaning of the name there is an equivogue in* the original story. 



