32 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
is provided with material suitable to its wants for study and delight 
in the field of literary adventure. 
It was my intention, had I been present at St. Petersburg, to 
have brought before the notice of the members of the Congress the 
explanation of a world-wide myth which I think I have discovered. 
I allude to the myth of the Solar Bow. We know that Apollo is 
always spoken of as the god of the silver bow. But besides this 
there are three celebrated personages who have been identified 
with the sun, each of whom has this bow-myth appended to or 
intermingled with his history. In the celebrated epic of the 
Ramayana we have the history of Rama (i.e. the Sun) seeking for 
his affianced wife Sita {i.e. the ploughed land), and only able to 
gain her hand by the proof of his strength and skill in drawing 
the celebrated bow of Janaka. Again, we all remember that 
Ulysses, who has been in his wanderings identified with the Sun, 
proving his claim to be Penelope's husband by drawing the bow 
which she had stored up in her well-locked treasure-house. And 
lastly, Buddha, again "the Sun," gained the hand of Yasodhara 
his wife by drawing the bow of his father Sinhahanu {i.e. the lion- 
jaw), which none other was able to lift. Now what do these bow- 
myths point to ? It seems to me that one of the earliest phenomena 
which men would observe, with a view to fix the seasons and 
settle the time of year, would be the course and shape of the sun's 
shadow cast by a gnomon. It is well known that in the earliest 
of the Chinese classical books (viz., the Shoo-King) there is especial 
mention made of the orders given by King Yaou to his ministers 
Ho and Hu to go forth and measure at the four quarters the sun's 
shadow, in order to fix the seasons, and enable the emperor to issue 
commands for the planting of seed, or the ploughing the land. 
Again, the Surya Siddantha, which is an old book of astronomy in 
India, is largely occupied by rules for ascertaining the length of 
the sun's meridian shadow at different times of the year. Once 
more, in Ceylon the rule for eating at noonday was to be inter- 
preted according to the length of the shadow ; so that, not to 
bring other instances, it is abundantly evident that great attention 
was paid in early days to the figure of the sun's shadow during 
different seasons of the year. 
Now if we, by means of some such rough instrument as that 
before you, which I will venture to call a skiagraph, trace out the 
shadow as to its shape for any given latitude, say 30° N., during 
