they have every appearance of very great antiquity; and are found concealed in the recesses of their temples, evidently built many centuries before the Christian æra. And though the books in which they are found are scarce, yet they are sufficiently numerous, and spread over a sufficient extent of country, to render it impossible to interpolate them all, if they had been so disposed. Upon the impossibility of interpolating the old Hindoo books, I shall treat at large hereafter.
But how is the figure in the cave at Elephanta to be acounted for; that prominent and ferocious figure, as Mr. Maurice calls it, surrounded by slaughtered infants, and holding a drawn sword? If it were only a representation of the evil principle, how came he only to destroy infants; and, as I learn from Mr. Forbes’s Oriental Memoirs,[1] those infants, boys? He is surrounded by a crowd of figures of men and women, evidently supplicating for the children. This group of figures has been called the Judgment of Solomon; as Mr. Forbes justly says, very absurdly. But, at the same time he admits, that there are many things in these caves which bear a resemblance to prominent features in the Old Testament. Over the head of the principal figure in this group, are to be seen the mitre, the crosier, and the cross—true Christian emblems.
Again Mr. Maurice says, “All these circumstances of similarity are certainly very surprising, and, upon any other hypothesis than that offered by Sir W. Jones, at first sight, seem very difficult to be solved. But should that solution, from the allowed antiquity of the name of Chrisna, and the general outline of his story, confessedly anterior to the birth of Christ, and probably as old as Homer, as well as the apparent reluctance of the haughty, self-conceited Brahmin to borrow any part of his creed, or rituals, or legends, from foreigners visiting India, not be admitted by some of my readers as satisfactory, I have to request their attention to the following particulars, which they will peruse with all the solemn consideration due to a question of such high moment.”
We will now attend with solemn consideration to these particulars, offering such observa- as occur upon each, as they come in order.
But, gentle reader, if you please, we will, as we go along with the Reverend Gentleman, not forget what Lord Shaftsbury so shrewdly observed, that solemnity is of the essence of imposture.
“And first with respect to the name of Christna, (for so it must be written to bear the asserted analogy to the name of Christ,) Mr. Volney, after two or three pages of unparalleled impiety, in which he resolves the whole life, death, and resurrection, of the Messiah, into an ingenious allegory, allusive to the growth, decline, and renovation of the solar heat during its annual revolution; and after asserting that, by the Virgin, his mother, is meant the celestial sign Virgo, in the bosom of which, at the summer solstice, the sun anciently appeared to the Persian Magi to rise, and was thus depicted in their astrological pictures, as well as in the Mithraitic caverns; after thus impiously attempting to mythologize away the grand fundamental doctrines of the Christian code, our Infidel author adds, that the sun was sometimes called Chris, or Conservator, that is, the Saviour; and hence, he observes, the Hindoo god Chris-en or Christna, and the Christian Chris-tos, the son of Mary. Now, whatever ingenuity there may be displayed in the former part of this curious investigation, into which I cannot now enter, I can confidently affirm, there is not a syllable of truth in the orthographical derivation; for Chrisna, nor Chris-en, nor Christna, (as to serve a worthless cause, subversive of civil society, he artfully perverts the word,) has not the least approach in signification to the Greek word Christos, anointed, in allusion to the kingly office of the Hebrew Messiah; since this appellative simply signifies, as we shall presently demonstrate, black or dark blue, and was conferred on the Indian God solely on account of his black complexion. It has, therefore, no more connexion with the
- ↑ Vol III. Ch. xxxv. p. 447.
