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it arofe, that Bealteine is ftill used for Mayday by the Highlanders of Scotland.

Two of thefe fires, according to Toland, were kindled on May-day in every village of the nation, between which the men and beafts to be facrificed were obliged to pass; one of them being kindled on the Carn, and the other on the ground.* Thefe fires were fuppofed to confer a fanctity upon those who paffed through them, as was the intention in the rites of Mithra, when the candidate for initiation was alternately plunged in baths of fire and water at once to try his refolution, and to purify him; a word derived from this very cuftom, for πυρ is the Greek term for fire. The ancient and barbarous cuftom of the Phoenicians in making their children pafs through the fire to Moloch, is by this practice of the Druids irrefiftibly brought to our recollection; and, as we know that they worshipped the Sun under the title of Moloch, so we are as certain that that worship and this rite were derived to them from their Eastern ancestors.

On the general devotion of the ancients to the worship of the Bull I have had frequent

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occafion to remark, and more particularly in the Indian History, by their addiction to it at that period,

Taurus,

Aperit cum cornibus annum

"when the BULL with his horns opened the vernal year." I obferved that all nations feem anciently to have vied with each other in celebrating that blissful epoch; and that the moment the Sun entered the fign Taurus, were displayed the fignals of triumph and the incentives to paffion; that memorials of the univerfal feftivity indulged at that season are to be found in the records and cuftoms of people otherwise the most oppofite in manners and the moft remote in fituation; I could not avoid confidering the circumftance as a strong additional proof that mankind originally defcended from one great family, and proceeded to the feveral regions in which they finally fettled from one common and central spot; that the Apis, or facred bull of Egypt, was only the fymbol of the Sun in the vigour of vernal youth; and that the bull of Japan, breaking with his horn the mundane egg, was evidently connected with the fame bovine species

of

of fuperftition, founded on the mixture of aftronomy and mythology.

It is remarkable, that one of the moft folemn feafts of the Hindoos, called that of Auruna, the day-ftar, falls on the fixth day of the new moon in May, and is dedicated, fays Mr. Holwell, to the Goddess of Generation, who is worshipped when the morning ftar appears, or at dawn of day, for the propagation of children, and to remove barrennefs. On this day, he adds, prefents are ufually made by parents to their fons-in-law, in token probably of the holy nuptial rite, and the day ends with a banquet. This ancient custom of making presents to friends, and relatives, and great men, on the first day of the new year, has defcended down to our own times, and the new-year's gift exhibits to us another remnant of Afiatic hilarity imitating the bounties of nature at the vernal seafon.

The fame Colonel Pearce, before cited, in a letter published in the Afiatic Researches, thus defcribes the annual Indian festival holden on the first of May: "I beg leave to point out to the fociety that the Sunday before laft was the festival of Bhavani, (a perfonification of vernal nature, the Dea Syria of Chaldea,

and

and Venus Urania of Perfia,) which is annually celebrated by the GOPAS and all other Hindoos, who keep horned cattle for ufe or profit. On this feast they vifit gardens, erect a pole in the fields, and adorn it with pendants and garlands. The Sunday before laft, he adds, was our firft of May, on which the same rites are performed by the fame class of people in England, where it is well known to be a relic of ancient fuperftition. It should feem, therefore, that the religion of the East and the old religion of Britain had a ftrong affinity."*

Mr. Finch, too, fpeaking of the great Meydan or fquare of Surat, defcribes what he calls a tall May-pole in the centre, round which, he says, the Hindoos make their paftime on the great festival-days.

To fatisfy ourselves that the race who erected the ftupendous circular temple of STONEHENGE were a tribe of Brachmans, of the fect of ВOODн, we have only to call to mind the peculiar predominant fuperftition of that tribe, which, according to Lucian, was the adoration of the Sun, as a fecondary deity, in

See Afiatic Researches, vol. ii. p. 333

See his Travels in Harris's Collection, vol. i. p. 84.

a circular dance, expreffive of his fuppofed revolution; and to attend to the mode after which that fect principally represented their favourite deity.

I have elsewhere observed from Vitruvius, that, in conformity to a notion of the ancients, when erecting temples to the pagan deities, that the properties and functions of the object adored should be attended to, all the temples to the Sun, the Moon, and the other planets, were built in a circular manner, because those orbs perpetually revolve in vast circles. Now Diodorus Siculus informs us that there was an island beyond Gaul, as large as Sicily, in which the Hyperborean race adored Apollo in a circular temple, confiderable for its fize and riches.* "By Apollo," says one of the best, but not the pureft writer of mythology in the prefent age, "in the language of the Greeks of that day, can be meant no other perfonage than the SUN;" and he thinks the island can be no other than Britain, which might be known to the Greeks by the vague reports of Phoenician mariners. The circumstance of its being thus particularized, Mr. Knight thinks, is a convincing

Diodorus Siculus, lib. ii. p. 130.

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