________________
VUKOBER, 1915]
THE ADVENTURES OF THE GOD OF MADURA
231
the aperture through which life or the soul is let in and which, immediately after, is hermetically sealed.
But Madura stands higher than all these, which after all represent only the anatomical parts of the body. But the body is at its best only matter and as such perishable. The soul is independent of the body. It survives the destruction of the latter even as the creating spirit survives the destruction of all these fourteen worlds. It is divine in essence, and such ig Madura, the soul of this cosmic body of the earth, of the fourteen worlds and of Brahma. This is what we may gather from the Tamil Purdna.
[Readers who are familiar with the Osirian myth will at once recogniso that this idea of the cosmic body, with a temple corresponding to each member of that body, is nothing more than an adaptation and elaboration of the fable about the mutilation or the body of Osiris, and the foundation of seats of worship on the spots where the dismembered fragments were alleged to have been interred.
Isis was the wife and Typhon or Set was the brother of Osiris. Typhon murdered his brother and out up his body into fourteen pieces .which were divided among the associates of his guilt. Isis recovered the mangled pieces. She made as many statues of wax as there were pieces. Each statue contained a piece of the body of the dead Osiris. Isis summoned the priests of the different cantons in her dominions and gave them each a statue, with strict injunctions that they should establish a form of worship in each division. (Lempriore's Classical Dictionary.) The account is sometimes varied in detail. I shall set out here a passage from Sir. J. G. Frazer's Adonis, Attis and Osiris, page 215, which is very pertinent to the real explanation of the matter in the Tamil Purana.
"Typhon rent the body in fourteen pieces and scattered them abroad. But Isis sailed up and down the marshes looking for the pieces. That is the reason, why there are many graves of Osiris in Egypt, for she buried each limb as she found it. But others will have it that she buried an image of him in every city pretending it was his body, in order that Osiris might be worshipped in many places. However, the genital member of Osiris had been baton by the fishes, so Isis made an image of it.
Such is the myth of Osiris as told by Plutarch. A long inscription in the temple at Dendereh, has preserved a list of the gods' graves, and other texts mention the parts of his body which were treasured as holy relios in each of the sanctuaries. Thus, his heart was at Athribis, his backbone at Busiris, his neck at Letopolis, and his head at Memphis. As often happens in such cases, some of his divine limbs were miraculously multiplied. His head for
xample was at Abydos as well as at Memphis, and his legs, which were remarkably numerous, would have sufficed for several ordinary mortals. In this respect, however, Osiris was nothing to St. Denys of whom no less than seven heads, all equally genuine, are extant."
Each loka was complete in itself, because the wax figures of Osiris were equally so as complete models, though each statuette contained only a piece of the mangled body.
The lokas represent the nomes of the Nile valley. The division into seven upper and even lower lokas was borrowed from the idea of the division into upper and lower Egypt.
To this day it is well-established in popular tradition that one and all of these big Siva compies of ancient foundation were raised on samadhis or graves.
The sad experience of Osiris in the Egyptian story, his slaughter and the rending of his mortal remains has been reproduced in Sanskrit in the Kalika-Purâna, with a suggestivo
