Lord, and he is said to have descended on earth after a great deluge from which but few escaped, to restore arts and sciences to the race of man.1 He is also called Vagiswara or Vagisa, which is commonly pronounced Bagis 2, and is probably the same as Bacchus. "Parusha," says Mr. Colebrooke, "means the primeval man3, and a hymn in the Veda bears his name, in which he is represented as a sacrifice of the Gods, and the framer of the worlds; the moon was produced from his mind; the sun sprung from his eye, &c. Seven were the moats surrounding the altar." It is remarkable that the Indian Ararat, Meru, is supposed to be surrounded by seven seas. "By that sacrifice the Gods worshipped this victim; such were primeval duties, and thus did they attain heaven where former gods abide."5

1 Wilford's Dissertation on Egypt, As. Res. v. iii.

2 Moor's H. P. p. 45.

3 Asiat. Res. viii. 470. 4 Ibid. vii. 251.

5 This hymn is recited in honour of deceased ancestors: it mentions a universal sacrifice, which is plainly the destruction of mankind, though the victim and the priest are confounded together; the threefold being that rose above this world, and from whom all things were produced, is Noah, and the Gods who worshipped him were his descendants.

90

CHAP. V.

ON BUDDHA.

NOAH'S GRANDSON PHUT WAS BUDDHA, WHOSE NAME WAS CHANGED INTO FO AND PO; HENCE THE RIVER PADUS, AND HIS FOOTSTEP THE SREEPAD.

It would be strange indeed, if among a people like the Hindoos, whose writings go back so far in chronology, and whose history is full of traditions, and who pay such singular honour to their remotest ancestors - it would be passing strange, I say, if among them no memorial had been preserved, no mythological notice, no fabulous record of that illustrious ancestor, from whom Hindostan derives its name. We may reasonably expect, therefore, to find Hind under some other name, some name worthy of the founder of so vast an empire, and, according to the custom of eastern polytheism, honoured with religious adoration. Now if Hind was one of the sons of Ham, as the Mahaberit affirms, we shall doubtless find him enumerated among those sons in the Mosaic history. In Genesis, then, the name of one of his sons is Phut; he is the only one of whose progeny and their settlements nothing more is recorded. The other

three were founders of nations in the immediate vicinity of the Israelites; Cush in Babylonia, Mizraim in Egypt, Canaan in Palestine; and in like manner it may be supposed that the fourth branch of this aspiring family became the parent of another mighty nation, although too remote to interest those for whom Moses wrote his history. Now in the religion of Hindostan or the country of Hind', we find a person of the same name, with the sound only a little hardened, who was venerated not only in the Indian Peninsula, but throughout all Asia eastward of the Ganges. The origin of this worship is buried in unfathomable antiquity; but that Bud, or with the final aspirate Budha, is in fact the same as Phut', cannot be reasonably doubted by any one who considers the various transformations which it has certainly undergone in the different languages of the East. "His special name," says Upham, "Boodh, or Budhu, or Budha, is often called Boudh, Bod, Bot, and by the arbitrary substitution of F for B, and

1 Tradition often mistakes two names of one person for the names of successive generations. Hence one Indian version of this history is, that "Buddha the son of Indu married Ella (i. e. terra) a grandchild of Surya, or Mana, from which union sprang the Indu race. They deified their ancestor Buddha, who continued to be the chief object of worship untill Chrishna," who was of the same family, if not the same person under another name. Arrian mentions Boudslav and Kpodeúav, among their earliest ancestors. Trans. As. Soc. ii. 280.

2 A sarcophagus of Phutus was sent to the British Musem by Mr. Grey, in which the name of Buto, or Bhuto, appeared to form a part of the names of the deceased. It is extraordinary that Young should not have recognised the one in the other. See his letter to

Mr. Bankes, Journal of Science, xiv. 259.

P, Fo, or Pho, arising from the changes of the cognate letters B, P, T, and D. By the Japanese and Chinese he is called Abbuto and Buto." 1 "In some parts of India," says Moor, "it is pronounced Booda or Butta; he is the Bud or Wud of the Pagan Arabs; Pout in Siam; Pott or Poti in Thibet; But in Cochin-China; Fo, Foe, or Fohi in China; "2 and as Paulus is pronounced Taulus in the countries bordering on the Nile, so Pot or Pout was changed into Toth, Thoth, or Touth, i. e. Taautos. Thoth, it is well known, was the Egyptian Mercury, and Budha is the Hindoo name for the planet Mercury. Accordingly when the Sepoys of the Indian army under Sir David Baird marched through Egypt, they recognised their deity in the sculptures of that country. The Scandinavian Woden is only one step beyond the Wud of the Arabs, and the same day in the week was sacred to Mercury among the Latins, to Budha among the Hindoos (Budvar), and to Woden among the Scandinavians (Wednesday). Fo may seem still further off in sound than Woden; but a fact similar to that related of the Sepoys identifies the idolatry of the Indians and Chinese. "When the Chinese deputies to Ava beheld the Burman god Buddha Gaudma, they immediately recognised in Bud their own national idol Fo, and worshipped

1 History of Budhism, note to ch. ii.

2 Moor's Hindu Pantheon, p. 239. The religion of Fo, or as it is pronounced at Canton, Fut'h, is that of Bud'h.-Davis on the Chinese, ii. 79.

3 Wilford in Asiat. Res. vi. 533.

him accordingly. The mother of Bud was Maya, of Fo Maye; the Teeshoo Lama is considered an incarnation of Fo by the Chinese, and of Buddha in Thibet." Indeed there is no difficulty at all in accounting for the change of Bod into Fo. The Chinese reject all terminating consonants, and they have no sound of B in their language; in our own the substitution of V or F for B, is of very familiar occurrence in words derived from the German; thus eben becomes even, gabe gave, habe have; so also self is derived from selbst, half from halb, and the old English word lief from lieb. "Pout or Poot is the name of the planet Mercury in the Balic term for Wednesday, which is the day of Bod in all the Hindoo languages: the Tamulic having no B, begin the word with a P; the vulgar Siamese reduce it to Po."2 On the other hand the Scythians, from whom M. Paw supposes the Chinese to have derived their Budhism3, were like the Arabs, without any character to express P, and therefore used F instead of it; as in Farsi for Parsi, a Parthian or Persian. However, the truth is, that if the final consonant is to be suppressed, the Chinese Fo approaches much nearer to the original Hebrew word Phut, than the Indian Budha. That this parent of the Indian tribes could not be removed further than one generation from the sons

4

1 Symes's Embassy to Ava, ii. 398.

2 A. R. i. 170.

3 Recherches Philosophiques sur les Egyptiens et les Chinois. 4 Vallancey's Coll. D. R. H. p. 624.