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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
believe that the souls of the dead cannot cross over water, unless a thread of cotton be stretched from one bank to the other. If very wide, the thread is kept clear of the water by sticks planted in the river-bed. This is called the "string-bridge." In the South of India the Baḍagas of the Nilgiri Hills, according to Mr. Metz, have a like idea, holding that a "thread-bridge" separates the valley of death from the invisible world. He quotes this passage from the Badaga funeral chant, "Though his own sins, and those of his parents amount to 1300, let them all go to Basava's feet. The chamber of death shall be opened; the thread-like bridge shall remain firm, the door of hell shall be shut; he may go safely." In the Chaldon painting two gigantic demons hold up the bridge between them, like a beam studded with sharp points-a bridge of spikes over which several souls are seen attempting to pass. This bridge of spikes, less than a hand's breadth, over an infernal lake, thronged with hideous monsters watching for souls to fall amongst them, is alluded to in more than one popular legend of the first half of the 12th century, and has often been symbolically used by moral writers: it is enough to name Addison's 'Vision of Mirza.'
As a last instance of a far-travelled Indian story, it will be remembered how the youthful Buddha, as his mind was beginning to awaken, and his destiny pressing upon him, but before he had abandoned the luxuries of royal life in his father's palace, when one day driving in his splendid carriage, was struck by the sight of a loathsome, putrefying corpse. This shocking spectacle determined him to quit a world all whose pleasures had such an end. This story is reproduced in the medieval legend of "Les trois Vifs et les trois Morts," which I lately saw depicted, and rescued from whitewash, on the wall of Belton Church, near Yarmouth-a church of the 11th century. Three gallant youths, magnificently arrayed, and mounted on horses gaily caparisoned, suddenly find their course stopped by the sight of three decaying human bodies, and each utters a sentence expressive of his feelings. The same idea appears in several compositions of the Dance of Death, and indeed speaks from thousands of tombs and epitaphs of our own, no less than of bygone, days.
[JUNE, 1879.
Professor Max Müller in the 7th of his Hibbert Lectures remarks, "Whether the extraordinary similarities which exist between the Buddhist customs and ceremonial and the customs and ceremonial of the Roman Catholic Church, tonsures, rosaries, cloisters, nunneries, confession, and celibacy" [he might add myths and legends]" could have arisen at the same time-these are questions which cannot as yet be answered satisfactorily." I venture to think there is much material for an opinion. The Essenes were Buddhist monks in every essential, and as Pliny (V. 15) affirms, had been established for ages before his time on the shores of the Dead Sea. Prinsep has shown from the Aśoka inscriptions at Girnar that Buddhism had been planted in the dominions of the Seleucida and Ptolemies, to whom Palestine belonged, before the beginning of the third century B. C., and there is a consensus of evidence for direct intercourse between India and the foci of early Christianity, Alexandria and Ephesus. Professor C. W. King, of Trinity College, Cambridge, author of The Gnostics, &c., who has gone deeply into this obscure subject, affirms that all the heresies of the first four centuries of the Church may be traced to Indian fountain-heads. Imitating Max Müller's reserve, he adds, "how much that passed current for orthodox, had really flowed from the same sources, it is neither expedient nor decorous now to inquire." When masters who know most decide to say least, disciples may be wise to follow their example.
No. XXIII.-Some Non-Sepulchral Rude Stone Monuments in India, Persia, and Western Asia.
Though the vast majority of rude-stone monuments in India, as well as throughout Asia and Europe, are certainly sepulchral, there are a few which seem to have been constructed for other purposes. Such must be the trilithon mentioned at p. 192 of Dr. Hunter's Annals of Rural Bengal, and described as "three huge monoliths of gneiss of great beauty, two upright, the third laid across them. The stones are upwards of 12 feet in length, each weighing upwards of 7 tons, quadrilateral, 10 feet round, the horizontal stone kept in its place by a mortise and tenon. Origin unknown: worshipped by the Sântals at the west gate of their Holy City in Bhirbhum." This megalith seems to be
