Chapter XX

But you will say that I have ventured nothing like proof, of the paradoxical affirmation propounded a short while ago, as to the _Tuath-de-danaans_ having been mentioned, by all Eastern writers, in connection with Persia; and yet unnoticed, the while, by themselves, not less than unheeded by their readers?

True: I but awaited the opportunity which has just arrived.

Are you not aware, then, how that all Oriental writers, when referring to Budha, who was born at Maghada, in South Bahar, state that he was the son of _Suad-dha-dana_? And have I not already shown you that _Suadh_ and _Tuath_ were but disguises of each other, and both resolvable into Budh?

Those first components, therefore, in each being the same, look at the entire compound words, _Tuath-de-danaan_, and _Suad-dha-dana_, and are not the rest, also, infallibly identical?

Admitting this, you reply, how could they, in that early age, make their way to Ireland? which, from its extreme position, must have been the very last place they would have thought of!

If the question refers to the route pursued, I decline its solution, as not necessary for my design. “A piece of sugar, or a morsel of pepper, in a neglected corner of a village inn, would be a certain proof,” says Heeren, “of the trade with either Indies, even if we possessed no other evidences of the commerce of the Dutch and English with those countries.” And when I have already made the coincidences between the two Irans and their inhabitants, their forms of worship, their language and mode of life, to be historical axioms, I surely cannot be expected to waste labour upon such a trifle, which sinks into nothing against _evidences_ of the actual fact.[277]

But if the length of the voyage be the obstacle insinuated, then would I find some difficulty to--do what?--keep my muscles grave: as if, forsooth, the adventurous sons of man could only, slowly and imperceptibly, and like so many ants pushing a load before them, introduce themselves, inch by inch, and in measured succession, into the diversified terraqueous globe spread abroad for their enjoyment!--when we have direct demonstration that such was far from having been the case in the instance of a colony which, starting from Tyre, and leaving behind on all sides the most inviting and delicious countries, planted itself down, perhaps from the mere spirit of romance, in the circumscribed little island of Cadiz, long before Carthage or Utica had existence even in name!

No, sir; we must not be so fond of derogating from the ancients all participation in those embellishments which promote society. Asia was the cradle of the whole human race; and thence, as its population overflowed, migratory herds in different states of civilisation, and with different forms of religious culture, poured in their successive colonies with multitudinous inundation into the other continental lands; but with more zeal, and with stronger preference, into those compact little nests which have been significantly denominated the “Isles of the Gentiles.”

Vessels rode over the briny surges with as proud a canvas as now receives the gale.[278] The model of the ark would be lesson sufficient to instruct an enterprising generation in the science of naval architecture: and we may well suppose that, of all pursuits cultivated by human art, this would have occupied the very foremost regard by a people just rescued, through its salutary instrumentality, from the desolating scourge of an all-swallowing abyss.

“Well, then, at all events,”--I fancy I hear you exclaim,--“you admit the story of the _deluge_?”

Certainly; and that of _Noah_, and the _ark_, and the _dove_, and the _raven_. But did I not, also, concede the story of the _giants_, and of the _serpent_? of the _sons of God_, and of the _tree of knowledge_? Nay, _have I not put the truth of those particulars beyond the possibility of scepticism_, much more of _denial_? But, believe me, that the _liquid_ which composed this “deluge” was more of the colour of _claret_ than it was of _water_;--that there was no more of _wood_ or _timber_ in the construction of this “ark” than there was in that of the “tree of knowledge”--that those two latter were congenial and correspondent to each other,--in their configuration and intention,--and that _flesh_ and _blood_ were the elements of which they were both composed.

“For all that meets the bodily sense, I deem
Symbolical, one mighty alphabet
For infant minds------”

Could the coincidence of measure[279] between the great Egyptian _pyramid_ at its base, and that of the Noachic _ark_, in ancient cubits,[280] have been accidental, do you imagine? And if not, what community of purpose, do you think, had been subserved by such numerical analogy?

The _triangle_, in the old world, was a sacred form. It represented the properties--capacity and dilatation--of the _female_ symbol. Lucian, in his _Auction_, states the following dialogue as having occurred between Pythagoras and a purchaser, viz.:--

PYTH. How do you reckon?

PUR. One, two, three, four.

PYTH. Do you see? What you conceive _four_, these are _ten_; and a perfect _triangle_, and our _oath_.

Now, Pythagoras, though a Samian, was educated in Egypt; and the religious mysteries, with which he had been there imbued, are what is so profanely ridiculed by this infidel scoffer.

It is not my province to justify the ceremonial of the Egyptians, any further than as indicative of gratitude to the Godhead; but the reflection must suggest itself to every observant mind, that they are never called _idolaters_ in any part of the Pentateuch; and Plutarch, in addition, _positively asserts_ that “they had inserted nothing into their worship without a reason,--nothing merely fabulous,--nothing superstitious; but their institutions have reference either to morals or something useful in life, and bear a beautiful resemblance, many of them, to some _facts_ in _history_, or some _appearance_ in _nature_.”

If we investigate the secret of this Pythagorean asseveration, we shall find that the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, thrice joined, and touching each other, as it were, in three angles, in this manner--

constitute an equilateral _triangle_, and amount also, in calculation, to _ten_. While the _inward_ mystery, couched under its figure, embraced _all that was solemn in religion and in thought_, being, in fact, the index of _male_ and _female_ united--the unit, in the centre, standing for the Lingam.

Look now at the form of the great Egyptian pyramid; and is it not precisely that of the above triangle? Is there not, also, an _aperture_ into it, about the middle as here?[281] And when to all, we add the notion of _wells_ of water withinside, is not the demonstration complete, that the goddess of the _Lotos_, the soft promoter of _desire_, the arbitress of _man_, and the compeer of the _angels_, was the honoured object of its symbolical erection?[282]

In 1 Pet. iii. 20, it is asserted that only “eight persons” were preserved in the ark. Let us suppose them to have been Noah and _his_ wife, with his three sons and _their_ wives. At a comparatively short interval after the date assigned to this event,--at most but 352 years,--on Abraham’s arrival in the land of Egypt, we find a flourishing kingdom, an organised police, a systematic legislature, and comprehensive institutions, diffused over its surface. All the other parts of the world, we must be ready to presume, if not equally enlightened, were, at least, as populous; and I put it to your good sense to decide, whether _eight_ individuals could, within that period, not only procreate so plentifully as to replenish the whole earth, but enlighten it, additionally, with such a coruscation of science, as no subsequent era has been since able to eclipse?

Indeed, the Scriptures themselves give us, elsewhere, to understand that St. Peter did not correctly interpret this history. “Come thou,” says Gen. vii. 1, “and _all thy house_, into the ark!” This gracious invitation, at so critical a juncture, would have been too welcome a proffer to be lost sight of by anyone who could make it available; and must not we suppose that the _domestics_ to whom the extension was addressed, with their several dependants and collateral offspring, would have been glad and happy to grasp at it with delight?

But the name of the type itself is worth a hundred deductions from equivocal premises. The _coffer_ of the law, the _coffin_ of Joseph, the _money chest_ of the temple, are all severally translated _ark_, and recorded in Hebrew by the word ןרוא _aron_: but the “_ark_ of Noah”[283] and Moses’s “ark of bulrushes”[284] are peculiarly designated, תבת _Thebit_, or תבה _tebah_.[285]

What is the meaning of these mysterious terms?

“Quo spectanda modo, quo sensu credis, et ore?”

As the _Tau_ of the Hebrews is, indifferently, in power, _T_ and _Th_, _Thebit_ has as good a right to be spelled with, as without, an _h_ at the end of it,--and, indeed, a better right, considering the elements whereof it is compounded. _Thebith_, then, is the proper and true sound, and the mystery of its import I thus unravel.

Its first syllable, _The_, signifies _sacred_ or consecrated;[286] and since the letters _b_ and _p_ are commutable--_bith_ is the same as _pith_, that is, _Cteis_ or _Yoni_. The words _The-bith_, then, together, in all the attraction of truth, intimate the _consecrated Cteis_; or the _sacred Yoni_![287]

But _Pith_, itself, is only a _conversion of Fidh_, the initial letters _P_ and _F_ being always interchangeable, and not more so than the penultimates _t_ and _d_. And _Fidh_, in its abstract and original position, such as we have early seen it, is _masculine_, the plural of _Budh_, conveying variously the significations of _Lingams_, _trees_, and _bulrushes_. Here, however, where it is _feminine_, its sex _reversed_, and the _anatomy_ of _nature_ pourtrayed by the _physics_ of _language_, the idea of the _bulrushes_ alone presents itself; and the _basket_ in which Moses was _saved_ from the waters, and which was made of such reeds, was appropriately denominated by this mysterious symbol, as a type of the _virginity_ in which the Messiah was to be incarnated, not less than of the _redemption_ which was to accrue from His sufferings.

Another stage has been thus advanced; and lo! the beautiful union which subsists, _as to design_, between the results of our discoveries, and the consoling assurances of pure Christianity!

Let us now proceed a little farther in this course--

“Sanctos ausi recludere fontes,”[288]

and connect these truths with the _Tuath_-de-danaans and the _Pish_-de-danaans.

“Noah was a just man,” observes the scriptural historian, “and _perfect in his generations_; and Noah walked with God.”[289]

The name of this patriarch implies literally a _boat_: the character assigned him is not so well understood.

To succeed in the investigation we must have recourse to the context: and here the first thing that strikes us is the observation “that the earth was _corrupt_ before God, and filled with _violence_; for all _flesh_ had corrupted his way upon the earth.”[290]

A passage in the New Testament will be the best comment upon this subject, where the patience of God with the iniquities of mankind being at length exhausted, it is said, that He “gave them over to a _reprobate mind_,” “to dishonour their own bodies between themselves.”[291]

But Noah did not participate in those unhallowed abominations, and he accordingly “found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”[292]

We now, therefore, see the propriety of the name assigned to his _ark_;[293]--and the intimation of approval conveyed by the divine command of “Come thou and all thy house into it,” was but another form of the injunction elsewhere conveyed, to the same effect, in the words, “Be ye fruitful and multiply.”[294]

_Noah_, then, and _Kaiomurs_[295] were one and the same person, the reformer of the human species, and the first monarch of the Pish-de-danaan dynasty. _Yavana_ was another name appropriated to him, and equivalent with _Noah_, excepting only that the former is literal, and the latter figurative. An advantage, however, arises from this difference, for when we know that _Yavana_ means the _yoni_, and _Noah_ a _boat_, and that both were equally characteristic of the same individual character, we conclude that the latter denomination was but the symbol of the former--that, in fact, it was the _lunar boat_,[296] or the _crescent_, the _concha Veneris_, and the type of _comfort_[297] that was veiled under the mystery of this ambiguous device.

This fact once explained, you have the immediate solution of those “semicircular implements” so universal throughout this island, and which Ledwich acknowledges “have created more trouble to the antiquarians to determine their use, than all the other antiquities put together.”

These are all made of the finest gold, and, as emblems of the _yoni_, which was the Raman _palladium_, used to have been worn as _breast_-plates by the priests and sovereigns. They would sometimes, also, exhibit them as ornaments to the _head_-dress: and when so designed the two terminating angles used to have been furnished with circular cups, whereby they would better adhere to the part: of such, likewise, we have the following specimen.[298]

_Yun_ is the usual mode of pronouncing _Yavana_; and as the veneration of posterity for the virtues of this legislator, at a moment when vice had threatened a general decay,[299] led them to consider him a god, he hence obtained the prefix of _Deo_ or _Deu_, which along with that of _Cali_, whose champion he showed himself, make up the romantic, emblematic and nominal representation of _Deucaliyun_.[300]

“Safe o’er the main of life the _vessel_ rides,
When _passion_ furls her sails, and _reason_ guides;
Whilst she who has that surest rudder lost,
Midst rocks and quicksands by the waves is tost;
No certain road she keeps, nor port can find,
Toss’d up and down by every wanton wind.”[301]

The struggles for ascendency between contending parties are not the growth of a day; still less are they unstained by the effusion of blood. _Deluge_ was no very extravagant hyperbole to apply to such a carnage; for independently of our knowing that _every_ visitation, whether by _fire_, _water_, or _sword_, was so denominated by the Easterns, we have the Scriptures themselves illustrating this use of the term in applying it to the description at a far later period of an equally severe and no less distressing catastrophe.

“Now, therefore, the Lord bringeth upon him the waters of the river, strong and many, even the King of Assyria and all his glory; and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks. And he shall pass through Judah; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck; and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of Thy land, O Immanuel.”[302]

But how, you ask, account for the marine strata, and other remains, found within the earth’s recesses?

I answer they were there embedded and inanimate, before ever man was placed above them as a denizen.

“It is clearly ascertained,” says Cuvier “that the oviparous quadrupeds are found considerably earlier, or in more ancient strata than those of the viviparous class. Thus the crocodiles of Harfleur and of England are found immediately beneath the chalk. The great alligators and the tortoises of Maestricht are found in the chalk formation, but these are both marine animals. This earliest appearance of fossil bones seems to indicate that dry lands and fresh waters must have existed before the formation of the chalk strata; yet neither of that early epoch, nor during the formation of the chalk strata, nor even for a long period afterwards, do we find any fossil remains of _mammiferous land_ quadrupeds. We begin to find the bones of the mammiferous sea animals, namely, of the lamantin and of seals, in the course of shell limestone which immediately covers the chalk strata in the neighbourhood of Paris. But no bones of the mammiferous land quadrupeds are to be found in that formation; and notwithstanding the most careful investigations I have never been able to discover the slightest trace of this class excepting in the formations which lie over the coarse limestone strata: but on reaching these more recent formations, the bones of land quadrupeds are discovered in great abundance.

“As it is reasonable to believe that shells and fish did not exist at the period of the formation of the primitive rocks, we are also led to conclude that the oviparous quadrupeds began to exist along with the fishes, while the land quadrupeds did not begin to appear till long afterwards, and until the coarse shell limestone had been already deposited, which contains the greater part of our genera of shells, although of quite different species from those that are now found in a natural state. There is also a determinate order observable in the disposition of those bones with regard to each other, which indicates a very remarkable succession in the appearance of the different species.

“All the genera which are now unknown, as the Palæotheria, Anapalæotheria, and with the localities of which we are thoroughly acquainted, are found in the most ancient of the formations of which we are now treating, or those which are placed directly over the coarse limestone strata. It is chiefly they which occupy the regular strata which have been deposited from fresh waters, or certain alluvial beds of very ancient formation, generally composed of sand and rounded pebbles.

“The most celebrated of the unknown species belonging to known genera, or to genera nearly allied to those which are known, as the fossil elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamos, and mastodon, are never found with the more ancient genera, but are only contained in alluvial formations. Lastly, the bones of species which are apparently the same with those that still exist alive, are never found except in light and alluvial dispositions.”

From all which, this philosopher draws the following just conclusion, namely:--“Thus we have a collection of facts, a series of epochs anterior to the present time, and of which the successive steps may be ascertained with perfect certainty, though the periods which intervened cannot be determined with any degree of precision. These epochs form so many fixed points, answering as rules for directing our inquiries respecting this ancient chronology of the earth.”

To return--“God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh is come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”[303]

Now, we see that the earth has _not_ been destroyed, and _this single circumstance, in itself_, ought to have been enough to show us that the whole register was but figurative. The _raven_ and the _dove_ were indispensable auxiliaries to the structure of the allegory: the former typifies the _massacre_ that prevailed during the period of the contest; and the latter, in its meek and its tender constancy, the invariable attendant, besides, of _Venus_ and the _boat_, characteristically pourtrays the overtures made for an accommodation, until, after a second embassy, the _olive-branch_ of peace was saluted, and the cessation of hostilities was the consequence.[304]

Behold, then, the folly of those dreamers who would make _Thebith_ so called, as if the _ark_ had rested upon it! Why, sir, in the entire catalogue of _local_ names, there is no one half so common as that of _Thebith_ and _Thebæ_! And surely you will not claim for your _ideal_ man-of-war, in addition to other properties, that of _ubiquity_ also, by making it perch upon all those places, at one and the same time!

No, these scenes have been all denominated from the form of religion which they recognised, and of which the _Pith_, _Yoni_, or _sacred Boat_, was the conventional sign: as the countries of _Phut_, that is, _But_, and _Buotan_, were so designated likewise, from their adopting the _opposite_ symbol, namely, the _Budh_, _Phallus_, or _sacred Lingam_!

Perplexed in this entanglement, and tossed about in “a sea of speculation,” Mr. Jacob Bryant, in some respects a clever man, after a fatiguing cruise of somewhat more than half a century, fell at last a victim in the general shipwreck.

“Your wise men don’t know much of navigation.”

The _Gentiles_, says he, worshipped Noah’s _ark_! Yes they did; but _not in the sense in which he understood it_.[305]

Another _axiom_ of his is, that the _Deluge_ must have really happened, because that the _tradition_ of it is _universal_! To this, also, I chime in my affirmative response, and proclaim, yea. But the _tradition_ of the _tree of knowledge_ is equally _universal_. And though the _ground work_ of _both occurred_, and was _substantively true_, yet was the _description_ of _neither_ more than a graceful _allegory_; while the salutary _alarm_ imparted under this guise, and the monitory _lesson_ suggested by its horrors, in _amusing_ the fancy, _edified_ it, at the same moment, by keeping before it a _picture_ of that _spiritual desolation_, which _sin_ leaves in the _citadel_ of the _soul_.[306]

“Moses,” says the apostle, “was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.”[307]

Now Strabo assures us that the Egyptians of his day were as ignorant as he was himself of the origin of their religion, of the import of their symbols, and of their national history. They pretended to retain some _evanescent_ traces thereof in the time of Diodorus; but so scrupulously exact were they in the concealment of their tenour, that to pry into them, profanely, was morally impossible.

Herodotus himself, who neglected no channel of information, found it no easy matter to glean a few _initiatory_ scraps from them. And even these were accompanied with such solemn denunciations, that his embarrassment is betrayed when but alluding to their tendency.

If, during Moses’s residence at Pharaoh’s Court, his opportunities of insight were greater, it is still self-evident that the accomplishments which he obtained were more of a secular character than of a religious cast--that the _courtier_ was the first object of the young princess’s directions, and the qualifications of the _statesman_ her next ambition for her charge. The _mysteries_ of the priests were too awful, and too sanctified, to be debased to the routine of a schoolboy’s rehearsal; and even when ripening age did bespeak a more chastened mind, the communication of their contents was obscured by the interposition of an almost impenetrable umbrage.

Thus palliated by types, Moses did, however, imbibe from the Egyptians all the knowledge which they then possessed of the nature of their ceremonies; and the record of the _Fall_, the _Deluge_, and the _Creation_ are the direct transcripts of the instruction so conveyed. But though it is undeniable, from their _symbols_, that the Egyptians must have been well apprised of the _constitution_ of those rites, yet am I as satisfied as I am of my physical motion, that the foldings of that _web_, in which they were so mystically _doubled_, was lost to their grasp in the labyrinths of antiquity.

Moses, therefore, could not have _learned_ from the Egyptians more than the Egyptians themselves had _known_. He related the allegory as he had _received_ it from them: and it is, doubtless, to his ignorance of its _ambiguous_ interpretation, _accessible only through that language in which it was originally involved_, that we are indebted for a transmission, _so essentially Irish_.

The _Pish_-de-danaan dynasty which rose upon the ruins of the _Tuath_-de-danaans, in _Iran_, was itself, in after ages, ejected from that country. _Egypt_ was the retreat of their shattered fortunes; and there, during their abode, under the name of the _Shepherd-kings_, they erected the _Pyramids_, in honour of _Pith_, or _Padma_-devi, but at an age long anterior to what may be presumed from Manetho.[308]

Previously, however, to their arrival in Egypt, Shinaar in Mesopotamia afforded them an asylum. Here it was that Nimrod broke in:[309] and as I have before but _transiently glanced_ at that circumstance, I shall now revert to it with more precision.

Between the tenets of the _Pish_-de-danaans and those of their _Tuath_-de-danaan predecessors, there was but a single point of dissentient belief. The language, the customs, the manners and modes of life of both were the same. To all intents and purposes they were one identical people.

But as the former had imagined that the _Yoni_ alone was the author of _procreation_, while the others claimed that honour for their own symbol, the _Lingam_, an animosity ensued, which was not allayed even by the consciousness, that _each_, secretly, worshipped the type of the _other’s_ creed.

The _goddess_, however, prevailed in the struggle, and her glories in Iran were great and far spread. Monarchs bowed at the nod of her omnipotence, and the earth swelled with the gestations of her praise.[310] “_Sed ultima dies semper homini est expectanda._” A rude and a lawless swarm of stragglers, headed by an adventurer of commanding abilities and determined heroism, _deluged_, in turn, the _Boatmen_, or the _Noachidæ_,[311] and swamped them in a _flood_, as _sanguinary_ and as _disastrous_ as that which they had, themselves, before, brought upon the adversaries of their zeal.

But it was not the _bloodshed_ of the scene that affected them half so much as the _insult_ offered by the erection of the _Tower_![312] And as no clue can be so adequate for the analysis of this _enigma_ as that which they themselves have bequeathed,--for it was from the _Yavanas_ or _Pish_-de-danaans that Moses had been taught the fact,--I shall place such before your eyes, in all the eloquence of a self-interpreting dissyllable.

מנרל is the name by which the scriptural record perpetuates this structure.[313] If you put this into English letters, and read them regularly, from left to right, it will be _Lidgam_. But the Hebrews read in the opposite direction, from right to left; and that is the very cause of the appearance of the _d_ in the word; for as _Magnil_--reading backwards--would produce a _cacophony_, the _n_ of the original was left out, and _d_ substituted, making _Magdil_: reinstate, therefore, the _n_, and enunciate the Hebrew word, as you would the Irish or the Sanscrit, and it will not only unmask the _secret_ of this long-disputed edifice, but _be_, _sound_, and _personate_, in all the nicety of accentuation, _Lingam_, and thus prevent all further controversy about the character of the _Tower_ of Babel.

“The waies through which my weary steps I guide,
In this researche of old antiquitie,
Are so exceeding riche, and long, and wyde,
And sprinkled with such sweet varietie,
Of all that pleasant is to eare and eye,
That I, nigh ravisht with rare thought’s delight,
My tedious travel quite forgot thereby;
And when I gin to feel decay of might,
It strength to me supplies and cheers my dulled spright.”[314]