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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JUNE, 1879.
ARCHÆOLOGICAL NOTES. BY M. J. WALHOUSE, LATE M.C.S.
(Continued from p. 196, vol. VII.) No. XXII.-The Westward Spread of some mans, and the sick, and must not be used unless Indian Metaphors and Myths.
the loss of the accuser amounts to one thousand When Belshazzar the king made a great pieces of silver.” The procedure somewhat feast to a thousand of his lords, and with all his differs from that provided in the comment, the company drank from the golden vessels taken out accused being directed to adjure the balance of the house of God at Jerusalern, a hand came solemuly, thus:-"Thou, O Balance, art the manforth and wrote mystic words upon the palace- sion of truth; thou wast anciently contrived by wall, and he was greatly troubled, his counten- the gods. Declare the truth, therefore, 0 giver ance changed, and his knees smote one against of success, and clear me from all suspicion. the other. The interpretation of one of those If I am guilty, O venerable ! as my own mother, words of doom was, “Thou art weighed in then sink me down, but if innocent raise me the balances, and art found wanting." That aloft"-recalling almost the words of Job, "Let intimation referred to a custom of extreme me be weighed in an even balance, that God antiquity in the East. In the Asiat. Researches, may know mine integrity” (Job xxx. 6). Other vol. I. there is an account of trials by ordeals, comments specify of what woods the scales by the native chief magistrate of Banaras, should be made and .where placed "in a hall communicated by Warren Hastings, taken from specially constructed for them, in the gateway the Mitakshara, or comment on the Dharma of the king's palace, or by a crossing, and always Sastra, in which it is laid down that trial be made to turn to the east." by ordeal may be conducted in nine dif- From this idea of weighing the bodies of ferent ways, the first being by the balances, accused persons came the analogous idea of which is performed thus. The beam having weighing souls after death,-though it may well been adjusted, the cord fixed, and both scales be that the latter was the original idea, which made perfectly even, the person accused and a appears in almost every Eastern form of faith, pandit fast a whole day; then, after the accused and spread into every region of the West. In has been bathed in sacred water, the homa or the Zend-Avesta Mithra and Rashne-Rast oblation presented to Fire, and the deities wor- weigh the actions of men on the bridge Chinshipped, he is carefully weighed, and when he vat, which separates earth and heaven. In is taken out of the scale the pandits prostrate Proverbs xv. 2, "The Lord weigheth the themselves before it, pronounce a certain man- spirits;" and 1 Samuel i. 3, "By Him tra (from the Rig Veda, whereby the Spirit of actions are weighed.” In the Buddhist system Justice enters into the scales), and having Yama, the king of justice, has souls weighed written the substance of the accusation on a before him, while their good and evil deeds are slip of paper bind it on his forehead. Six produced by good and evil spirits. In the minutes after they place him again in the scale, Korán the Balance in whicb all things shall be and if he weigh more than before he is held weighed is frequently alluded to. It will be guilty; if less, innocent (a criterion, it would held by Gabriel, one scale will hang over seem, the reverse of that obtaining in Babylon); Paradise the other over Hell. But the most if exactly the snme, he must be weighed a third ancient traces are in the mythology of Egypt. time, when, as it is written in the Mitákshara, In the enlarged delineations from the Ritual there will certainly be a difference in his weight. of the Dead on the walls of the staircase in Should the balance, though well fixed, break the British Museum are several examples of down, this would be considered a proof of guilt. soul-weighing.' Osiris, the judge, seated,
Yajnavalkya in the Dharma Sastra, on holds the mystic cross; before him stands which the foregoing is a comment, is next in Thoth with roll and pen to record the judgment, authority to Manu, and in the passages relat- and behind him are the scales in which the ing to ordeals declares that "the balance is for good and bad deeds of the departed are being women, children, the blind, the lame, Brâh- weighed. On a sarcophagas in the Soane
