1

Brahmins, or at leaft educated in the fchool of Brahma, could then immolate, as was the conftant custom of the Druids after gathering the mifletoe, two white bulls that had never borne the yoke, did we not know that both the Brahmins and the Perfians were anciently addicted to the GOMEDHA JUG, or facrifice of the bull, in honour of the Sun. Nor can we wonder that the mifletoe, thus gathered, was afterwards offered to Taranis, or Jupiter; that deity who was fuppofed to prefide in Aries, as the guardian genius of the conftellation, and whose symbol, we have just observed, was the ram.

Mr. Volney, with that determined spirit of fcepticism which diftinguishes his writings, contends, that the feast of the Jewifh paffover, when the pafchal lamb was facrificed, derived its real origin, not from the awful event recorded in Scripture, but from the ancient Egyptian custom of obferving with feftival rites the period when the Sun arrives at the equinoctial line, and the Hebrew word PASCHA, which certainly fignifies paffage, he interprets as defcriptive merely of the Sun's paffing from one hemifphere into the other. The ancient Jews and their modern defcendants undoubtedly kept, and do keep, this most so

lemn feftival at the vernal equinox, beginning it on the evening of the fourteenth of the month Nifan, and continuing it in March, for seven days afterwards, including the twentieth, on which day the Sun actually reaches the equinoctial line. But, indepen dently of the folemn affeveration of Holy Writ as to the origin and defign of the paffover, the national records of the Hebrews, and their continued obfervation of it during fo many ages, with rites peculiar and appropriate to the profeffed intention, rites not otherwise to be accounted for, are unanfwerable proofs of the divine origin of that inftitution among them. With equal confidence and impiety he diftorts the expreffions, fo often occurring in Scripture, of the Lamb of God, of the coming of the Redeemer, and the regenerator of a fallen world, referring them to an aftronomical origin, and the millennium of Chriftians to that aufpicious period when the grand amonatasaσis fhall take place; after the Sun fhall have travelled through the zodiacal afterifms, and begin the new Annus Magnus in the first degree of the fign Aries.

There is, alfo, another annual feftival, celebrated on the fame day in both countries, which opens a not less extensive and curious

field for inquiry; and as the investigation will lead to a display of Oriental manners, founded on aftronomical fpeculation, I fhall discuss the subject at fome length.

This feftival was obferved with ceremonies wonderfully fimilar in countries fo remote ast Britain and India; for although I do not recollect that Mr. Knight on the ancient Phallic worship has noticed the fact, yet the reader may reft affured, that, on the FIRST OF MAY, when the Sun enters into the fign Taurus, Englishmen unknowingly celebrate the Phallic festival of India and Egypt; and he will, perhaps, be convinced of this, when he shall recollect what was intimated in a former volume of the Indian Antiquities, that the Greek word paλ205 fignifies a pole, and the splendid decoration of golden crowns, which, fomewhat after the manner of the gilded, falvers and tankards suspended around the English pageant, adorned that panλos, anciently dif played to public view in the Egyptian festival there alluded to.

THE FIRST OF MAY EQUALLY REGARDED

AS A PHALLIC FESTIVAL IN INDIA AND

IN BRITAIN.

WHEN we reflect that owing to the preceffion of the equinoxes, after the rate of feventy-two years to a degree, a total alteration has taken place through all the figns of the ecliptic, infomuch that those stars which formerly were in Aries have now got into Taurus, and thofe of Taurus into Gemini ; and when we confider alfo the difference beforementioned, occafioned by the reform of the calendar, we fhall ceafe to wonder at the dif agreement that exifts in respect to the exact period of the year on which the great festivals were anciently kept, and that on which, in imitation of primæval cuftoms, they are celebrated by the moderns. Now the vernal. equinox, after the rate of that preceffion, certainly could not have coincided with the firft of May lefs than four thousand years before Chrift, which nearly marks the æra of the creation, which, according to the best and wifeft chronologers, began at the vernal equinox, when all nature was gay and fmiling, and the earth arrayed in its lovelieft verdure, and not, as others have imagined, at the dreary

F 3

dreary autumnal equinox, when that nature muft neceffarily have its beauty declining, and that earth its verdure decaying. I have little doubt, therefore, that May-day, or at least the day on which the Sun entered Taurus, has been immemorially kept as a facred festival from the creation of the earth and man, and was originally intended as a memorial of that aufpicious period and that momentous e

vent.

Independent, however, of any particular allufion to that primæval event, which, after all, is but conjecture, the bull being in the Eaft the univerfal emblem of the fupreme generative power that made the world, the period of the Sun's ingrefs into that fign could fcarcely fail of being regarded with peculiar honours by a race involved in the depth of a grofs phyfical fuperftition and devoted to the Phallic worship. On the lofty eminences of the Carns, that were extended in a line over the whole coaft near which the Druids refided, and which were confpicuously raised in fight of each other, it was their cuftom, on Mayeve, to light up prodigious fires which illumined the whole region round about. These fires were in honour of Beal, or Bealan, the Irish and Celtic word for the Sun; and hence