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MAY, 1880.]
BUDDHIST SYMBOLS, &c.
135
son Vikramaditya-Satyasraya, the dikshita, of the Kaundinya gôtra, who is .... favourite of the world, the Great King, the .......... the four Vedas, and who is supreme king, the supreme lord, thus issues his the son of Bammaņdasvâmios, .........." commands to all people :-The village named (L. 44.)-[Land has been enjoyed] by [many] Mala vâra has been given .........", kinga, [commencing with Sagara); (&c.)! He with the enjoyment of it and with the relin is born as a worm (in ordure for the duration, quishment of all opposing claims, to Sarvaditya-l of sixty thousand years), (&c.)!
BUDDHIST SYMBOLS, &c. BY E. THOMAS, F.R.S., CORRESPONDANT DE L'INSTITUT DE FRANCE.
(Continued from p. 66.) I have lately availed myself of the opportunity, the attributes of the god of light in reduced of studying the collection of the Amaravati gradations to several of the minor members of Marbles, at present in the India Museum at South the Indian Olympus. Kensington, with a view to determine the nature In India at large the prevalence, if not uni. and bearing of the more popular symbolsversality, in primeval times, of the worship of the and devices appearing on these sculptures, 80 sun is attested by the survival of generic names, closely associated with the old homes of the the concurrent testimony of home tradition and Andhras-in the hope of illustrating and ex- inscriptions, the evidence of travellers, and the plaining the parallel emblems on the series of more material endorsement of sculpture. coins, pertaining to proximate localities, recently We can roughly complete a goodly circle of under consideration.
geographical proof from the earliest Sauras of My first impression, derived from a very Saurashtra, by way of the Temple of the Sun cursory examination of these sculptures, led me to at Multân, to Gaya and Orissa on the east coast, conclude, that whatever extraneous elements and back again to the written testimony of the might have been introduced from time to time, Western copper-plates, and the caste-marks on that the Tope itself had been primarily devoted the foreheads of the women in the oldest to the cause of solar worship. The dominant painting at Ajanta. circular pattern indeed was obviously sugges- To revert to the symbols on the Amaravati tive of such a purpose.
Торе. It need not be reiterated that the sun consti
THE WHEEL. tuted one of the earliest objects of worship among The leading and most important device among primitive nations, as in the ordinary course it the objects of worship is what it has hitherto would present itself to the untutored mind, as the been the custom in modern parlanoe, to designate "natural selection." How many races of men as the Buddhist wheel." To my apprehension intuitively adored the sun, or how many classes those carvings were not designed to represent the of the priesthood have taken "the light of the “Wheel of the Law," or any such fanciful world" as the basis of their religion, it would machine, but represent the conventional symbol be hard to say.
of the sun, in the form of a wheel, as indicating As the Greeks and Romans created many his onward revolution. At times it is difficult personifications of the sun-god, so the Indian J to discriminate the sculptor's intention, as to Aryans recognised its leading representative whether he designed to make the wheel like the deities by the various names of Sürya, Savitri, sun, or the sun like a wheel, but one of the most Aditya and Vishņa, besides assigning many of striking examples of the presiding motive is
sikanti, 1. 41, meaning not apparent, unless the word lines within its circumference, and these again were is a chronogram containing the date of 615. Saka 616, superseded by ornamental double lines with a circular however, was not in Vijay Aditya's reign; and I know of centre-boss. (Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, vol. I. no other instance in which a Chalakya date is expressed p. 141.). In this latter form it is figured at Bavian, in by this method.
Besociation with the half-moon and 7 planets (Layard, 5. sc., 'Brahmåndagvåmt.'
Nineveh and Babylon, 1863, P, 211). In Lajard's Culte de Burgess, Arch. Survey: Notes on Ajanta, 1879, Mithra (Paris, 1847), endless varieties of the symbolic forms pls. viii, ix, 1.
of the sun are collected, chiefly of more or less ornamental The earliest Chaldæan type of the sun was formed of patterns, but in one instance (pl. xi. fig. 6), the sun is rea simple ring or circle, like the Indian Sdrya-mandala, presented by a simple six-spoke wheel, with the worshipper but it wm speedily improved upon by the addition of cross- in front and the half moon to the left on a similar pedestal.
