racter of the Indian Boodh, who forbade human sacrifices, is not so very apparent in that line of Lucan's Pharsalia,

THEUTATES."

"Immitis placatur sanguine diro

Lib. I. v. 439.

The circumstance, however, of the Indian god's forbidding these cruel sacrifices, is a proof of their existence in the early period of his reign; and one or both of the subjoined 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 suppression was publicly promulged; or, in the second, that the native Scythian ferocity, not being entirely subdued by their commerce with the Brahmins and the gentler laws of the mild Veeshnu, obstinately continued to practise a rite so congenial to the original bent of a martial and sanguinary disposition. If after this any doubt should remain in the reader's mind concerning the identity of the deity, let him advert to the symbols 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 less conspicuous characters on the extensive plains of Abury, in Wiltshire, than in the Thebais of ancient Egypt.

Cæsar expressly says, that the Druids worshipped Mercury, and he doubtless asserted this from having observed in Britain the usual symbols with which Mercury was decorated at Rome, the winged rod with the serpents twined around it. But there was another mode of representing Hermes, among the Asiatics, which was equally customary among the Druids; and it is a circumstance of no small moment in this argument. It was by a statue called Herma, which was a sort of square or cubical figure of marble, or brass, without arms or legs to complete the similitude of either human or celestial being. These cubical statues were placed in the vestibules of their temples, and were intended as expressive emblems of the God of Eloquence and Truth, since they were polished squares, on every side equal, which way soever they were turned. Pausanius tells us that the inhabitants of Phares, in Achaia, round the statue of their principal divinity Mercury, erected, in the forum of that city, thirty cubics of polished marble, in honour of that

deity,

deity, whose symbol was a cube:* and Dr. Borlase, speaking of the veneration of the Druids for the cube, observes, "A cubic was their symbol for Mercury, who, as the Messenger of the Gods, was esteemed the index, or symbol, of TRUTH, always like to itself, as it is with a CUBE.†

There was another very remarkable symbol of Taut, or Mercury, prevalent in Egypt as well as in India. It was the letter T, or, in other words, the cross, 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 represented bearing this symbol in their hand or on their breasts. D'Ancarville and the generality of mythologists explain this symbol as referring to the gross physical worship to which the ancients were so 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 Abyssinia. I have elsewhere observed the very singular manner after which the Latin vulgate, * Pausanias in Achaicis, lib. vii. cap. 22. + Borlase's Antiquities of Cornwall, p. 82.

and,

and, according to Lowth, probably the ancient copies of the Septuagint, have rendered the original of that passage in Ezekiel ix. 4. I will set a mark upon their forehead; rendering it in their version, I will mark them on the forehead with the letter TAU; which affords room to suppose it was a symbol of a more sacred import than is generally imagined in the early patriarchal ages.

Now, it is a fact not less remarkable than well attested, that the Druids in their groves were accustomed to select the most stately and beautiful tree as an emblem of the deity they adored; and, having cut off the side branches, they affixed two of the largest of them to the highest part of the trunk, in such a manner as that those branches, extended on each side like the arms of a man, together with the body, presented 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 inscribed Hesus, (their Mars,) on the left Belenus, and on the middle of the trunk Tharanis.*

* Consult Borlase, and the express authorities which he adduces for the truth of this curious fact, p. 108.

P

VOL. VI.

E

The

The testudo also, or lyre of Hermes, so 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, should not be forgotten in this review of the parallel characters and symbols of Hermes and of Buddha.

From the whole weight of evidence collected from the page of history, and from the united voice of tradition, acting together upon the mind of M. Le Clerc, one of the ablest 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 same person with the Thoth, or Taut, of Egypt; but a review of peculiar symbols and circumstances above enumerated, and more especially his name being assigned to the same day of the week in the astronomical system of all these respective nations, seems to place the fact beyond future dispute. Whosoever of the Noachide, the original prototypal character, of which these are the varied copy, might have been, his designation

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