Indian Boodh, who forbade human facrifices, is not fo very apparent in that line of Lucan's Pharfalia, "Immitis placatur fanguine diro THEUTATES." Lib. I. v. 439. The circumftance, however, of the Indian god's forbidding thefe cruel facrifices, is a proof of their existence in the early period of his reign; and one or both of the fubjoined arguments may be reasonably urged as a palliative for the continuance of a part of his votaries in these nefarious rites, either, in the first place, that they migrated before the order for their fuppreffion was publicly promulged; or, in the fecond, that the native Scythian ferocity, not being entirely fubdued by their commerce with the Brahmins and the gentler laws of the mild Veefhnu, obftinately, continued to practise a rite fo congenial to the original bent of a martial and fanguinary difpofition. If after this any doubt fhould remain in the reader's mind concerning the identity of the deity, let him advert to the fymbols which he bore, the mode by which the Druids represented him, and to that peculiar allegorical delineation of the doctrines which he taught the Oriental world in the figure of the ORB, ORB, SERPENT, and WINGS, which is engraved in not lefs confpicuous characters on the extenfive plains of Abury, in Wiltshire, than in the Thebais of ancient Egypt. Cæfar exprefsly fays, that the Druids worfhipped Mercury, and he doubtless afferted this from having obferved in Britain the ufual fymbols with which Mercury was decorated at Rome, the winged rod with the ferpents twined around it. But there was another mode of representing Hermes among the Afiatics, which was equally cuftomary among the Druids; and it is a circumftance of no fmall moment in this argument. It was by a statue called Herma, which was a fort of fquare or cubical figure of marble, or brass, without arms or legs to complete the fimilitude of either human or celestial being. Thefe cubical ftatues were placed in the vestibules of their temples, and were intended as expreffive emblems of the God of Eloquence and Truth, fince they were polifhed fquares, on every fide equal, which way foever they were turned. Paufanius tells us that the inhabitants of Phares, in Achaia, round the ftatue of their principal divinity Mercury, erected, in the forum of that city, thirty cubics of polished marble, in honour of that deity, whose symbol was 66 was a cube:* and Dr. Borlafe, fpeaking of the veneration of the Druids for the cube, obferves, “A cubic was their fymbol for Mercury, who, as the Meffenger of the Gods, was esteemed the index, or fymbol, of TRUTH, always like to itself, as it is with a CUBE.† There was another very remarkable fymbol of Taut, or Mercury, prevalent in Egypt as well as in India. It was the letter T, or, in other words, the crofs, or crux Hermis, in which form we find many of the more ancient pagodas of India, as Benares and Mattra, erected; and many of the old Egyptian statues, as is well known to antiquaries, are reprefented bearing this fymbol in their hand or on their breafts. D'Ancarville, and the generality of mythologifts, explain this fymbol as referring to the grofs physical worship to which the ancients were fo greatly addicted, and as an emblem of Jupiter Generator, or the deity in his creative capacity, in ancient Egypt and India, and which Mr. Bruce frequently met with in his travels through the higher Egypt and Abyffinia. I have elsewhere obferved the very fingular manner after which the Latin vulgate, * Paufanias in Achaicis, lib. vii. cap. 22. + Borlafe's Antiquities of Cornwall, p. 82. and, and, according to Lowth, probably the ancient copies of the Septuagint, have rendered the original of that paffage in Ezekiel ix. 4. Í will set a mark upon their forehead; rendering it in their verfion, I will mark them on the fore head with the letter TAU; which affords rooni to fuppofe it was a fymbol of a more facred import than is generally imagined in the early patriarchal ages. Now it is a fact not lefs remarkable than well attefted, that the Druids in their groves were accustomed to felect the most ftately and beautiful tree as an emblem of the deity they adored; and, having cut off the fide branches, they affixed two of the largest of them to the highest part of the trunk, in such a manner as that thofe branches, extended on each fide like the arms of a man, together with the body, prefented to the spectator the appearance of a huge cross; and on the bark, in various places, was actually inscribed the letter Thau. On the right arm was infcribed Hefus, (their Mars,) on the left Belenus, and on the middle of the trunk Tharanis.* * Confult Borlase, and the express authorities which he adduces for the truth of this curious fact, p. 108. VOL. VI. E The The teftudo alfo, or lyre of Hermes; fo congenial to the celebrated harp of the ancient Britains, that harp with which, Diodorus informs us, the Hyperboreans, in their island near Gaul, perpetually chaunted the praises of Apollo, in a magnificent temple of a circular form, fhould not be forgotten in this review of the parallel characters and fymbols of Hermes and of Buddha. From the whole weight of evidence collected from the page of hiftory, and from the united voice of tradition, acting together upon the mind of M. Le Clerc, one of the ableft mythologists that ever wrote, it was that writer's decided opinion, that the Theutates of the Gauls, the Hermes of the Greeks, and the Mercury of the Romans, was the fame perfon with the Thoth, or Taut, of Egypt; but a review of peculiar fymbols and circumftances above enumerated, and more especially his name being affigned to the fame day of the week in the aftronomical system of all these refpective nations, feems to place the fact beyond future difpute. Whofoever of the Noachida, the original prototypal character, of which these are the varied copy, might have been, his defignation in antiquity as the God of |