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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[DECEMBER, 1895.
those of the fierce tutelary demons have a faming halo. The Lana god is born with a halo of glory.? A flame-like process issues from the crown, or through the sature, of the Ceylon Buddha. In India, the guardian king shares with Buddba the glory of a nimbus. In Greece, the victin, or the god in the victim, shone. From the three Persian youths, who were sacrificed to Dionysos Omestes, before Salamis (B. C. 480), a bright flame blazed. In the guardian Brahmaņa fire burns. "If there is no Gre," says Manu, to "let the worshipper place the offering in a Brahmao's hand, for the priests say, "Fire is a Brahman'." Again! Manu says:-"An offering in the fires of a Brahman's month, which are kindled by austerity and knowledge, frees from misfortune even froin great sin." From the early Egyptian Etruscan and Roman oncircling cloud the guardian's gleam became localised into the Christian nimbus or head circle, and again, in the form of tho Martyr's aureole, went back to the vesica piscis, enveloping the whole figure.12 That light was the source of the guardian virtue of the Egyptian good-spirit, the hawk-headed snake Chneph, appears from the Egyptian saying: "When Chnepl opens his eyes the land is flooded with light; When Chnepl closes his eyes the land is hid in darkness."13 During the centuries before and after the Christian era a mighty flood of Sun-worship spread over A sin, Egypt and Europe under the influence of the religions of Mithras Serapis and Christ. It is as the greater and the lesser lights that the Sun and Moon have earned universal worship. The Accadians or early Babylonians (B. C 3000) worshipped the sun as fires and hold tire to be one of the chief of guardiaus. This faith lasted into later Babylon, where Bel or Morodach was the orderer of good for man, the healer, the scarer of evil spirits. 10 The Tibet Lama, gazing at the rising sun, says: --" The glorious One has arisen ; the Sun of happiness bas arisen; the goddess Marichi has arisen ; keep me, goddess, from the eight terrors, - robbers, wild beasts, snakes, poisons, weapons, fire, water, and precipices.17 When the days lengthen with the northing san, when the nights brighten with the waxing moon, evil influences are driven from among men. With a sonthing sun and a waning moon the guardian power weakens, and the danger from evil spirits again presses. The horror reaches a climax when, as among the Mexicans, unless some mystic le-birth of light comes to his aid, at the end of one of his cycles of fifty-two years, the sun will rise no more and evil spirits will destroy mankind. 19 The light by the woman in child-birth, by the youth at baptism, by the bride and bridegroom at marriage, by the sick, by the dying, and by the dead : the light at the tomb, the lamp in the place of worship, the feasts of lights, of lanterns, and of candles, shew how at every crisis in the life of the individual, at all seasonal changes that endanger public health, the guardian virtue of light puts to flight evil influences. So Herrick in his charm-song:10 "Light the tapers here to fright far from lience the evil sprite." A lamp is an essential offering to the images in a Tibetan Buddhist temple 30 So in the statue of St. Genevieve of Paris (509) an impplies a bellows to blow out the saint's candle, and a demon tries to quench the lantern of St. Gudala of Brussels (712).31 When an Australian tribo passes into a strange land, they kindle bark and sticks to clear and parify the air, 23 that is, to scare the local spirits. When
strange prow is wrecked on the island of Timorlaut, between Timor and New Guinen. the natives burn the boat to scare the foreign deinons.23 In the procession of Isis, the Egyptian priest cloansed a boat with an egg, salphur, and a lighted torch.34 The Japanese bogse is purified by fire.25 The ancient Greek signal for battle was the throwing of torches in
6 Waddell's Buddhism in Tibst, p. 837. Op.cit. p. 86.
& Op. cit. p. 343, n. 4. • Plutarch's Themistocles, xiii.
10 Manu, Vol. III. p. 13. 11 Op. cit. Vol. II. p. 98. 13 Smith's Christian Antiquities, pp. 1399, 1899, 1401.
13 King's Antique Gems, p. 364. 16 Op. cit., pasnim.
15 Lenormant's Chaldean Magic, p. 219. 16 Op. cit. pp. 60, 61: 184-186; Budge's Babylonian Life and History, p. 128. 17 Waddell's Buddhism in Tibet, p. 218.
18 Mayer's Mexico, p. 129. 19 Hesperides quoted in Story's Castle of St. Angelo, p. 214. 20 Waddell's Buddhism in Tibet, pp. 425-427. 31 Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, Vol. II pp. 778, 779. 93 Frazer's Golden Bough, Vol. I. p. 168.
25 Op. cit. Vol. II. p. 187. # Brown's Great Dionysiak Myth, Vol. I. p. 194.
Japanese Manners, p. 339.
