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It would be well worth while, if anyone would take the trouble, to trace how long trees and groves continued to be objects of veneration after the Germans were converted to Christianity. One of the last and best known examples is that of the * Stock am Eisen” in Vienna, the sacred tree into which every apprentice, before setting out on his ‘“ Wanderjahre,’ drove a nail for luck. It now stands in the centre of that great capital, the last remaining vestige of the sacged grove round which the city has grown up, and in sight of. the proud cathedral of the Christian, which has superseded and replaced its more venerable shade. } t SARMATIA. If a line were drawn from the shores of the Caspian Sea north of the Caucasus to the mouth of the Vistula or Dwina in the Baltic, it would be coincident with: one of the oldest routes of communication between the east and the west, and one that probably was the road by which Serpent and Tree Worship were introduced into the north of Europe. It was the route by which Woden is said to have migrated westward in the first century before Christ, taking with him all that strange mythology which is connected with his name. It was on-this route that Hercules mct the serpent-maiden Echidna, arid where she gave birth to the Eponymous hero of the Scythian nation.$ Here, too, resided the Amazons, the female warriors, whose institutions seem so mys- teriously connected with Serpent Worship. At the far-end of this route Procopius tells * Loe. cit. 40. 43. Cresar, Ann. 2.12; 4, 78, . “ The Khonds use neither temples nor images in their worship. They cannot comprehend, and regard as absurd the idea of building a house in honour of the deity, or the expectation ¢hat he will be peculiarly present in any place resembling a human habitation. Groves kept sacred from the axe, hoar rocks and hill tops, fountains and the banks of streams, are in their eyes the fittest: places fer worship.”—Major Charteris MacPherson, Journal Royal Asiatic Society, vol. XIII. p. 235. ; : {1 Deutsche Mythologie, c. IV. pp. 57 to 77. : + The festival of the €hristmas tree at the present day, so common throughout the whole of Germany, ix almost undoubtedly a remnant of the Tree Worship of their ancestors. § Herodotus, IV. 9. ee INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. us that “in his day the barbarians worshipped forests and groves, and in their barbarous * simplicity placed “trees among their gods.’* In Sarmatia, according to Erasmus Stella, for some time they had no sacred rites ; “at length they arrived at such a pitch of wickedness that they worshipped serpents '* and trees.” The Samogite, we are told, worshipped the serpent as a god, and if uny adversity befell them, concluded that their domestic serpents had been negligently served. In Lithuania the people “ believed. vipers and serpents to be gods, and worshipped them with great veneration.” Jeiome of Prague, in the fifteenth century, necording to Silvius, saw these wretched idolaters offer sacrifices to serpents. Every honscholder had a snake in the corner of his house, to which he gave food and offered sacrifice. Cromer} charges the Prussians with the same idolatry, and Masius } mentions a ts town near Wilna where in his day (adhuc) serpents were worshipped by many {dhe inhabitants, and in Livonia it is characteristically added that the inhabitants were accustomed to sacrifice their. most beautiful captives to their serpent gods.§ ~ None of these indications are worth much in themselves, and the authorities on which they rest are not such as will bear the test of critical examination, but the yeneral impression they leave is, that Sérpent Worship must have prevailed in Eastern Europe to a ereat extent during the middle ages. It seems incredible that the authors named, and especially such a work as that of Olaus Magnus, should be so full of anecdotes of serpents and Serpent Worship in a country where nothing larger than a viper or adder naturally is found, if there were nof some foundation for their belief. Olaus: Magnus,|| quoting from Crantzius and Mechavita, states that the Poles wor- shipped. their gods, Fire, Serpents, and Trees, in wodds. This state of things, he says, lasted in Poland down to the year 1386, when the prince and his brethren were converted to Christianity ; but he adds, that though nearly extinguished, these superstitions still linger (1555) in remote parts of Norway and Wermelandia. In addition to this, however, we have evidence which it.seems impossible to doubt, that both Trees and Serpents were worshipped by the peasantry in Esthonia and Finland within the limits of the present century (see Appendix A), and even then with all the characteristics possessed by the old faith when we first become eens with it. SCANDINAVIA, Among the problems that perplex the investigator of northern antiquities there are few that present so many difficulties as those which concern the advent of Woden, and the origin of the religion of which he was the chief. At the first glance he appears to have many affinities with the Buddha of the east. The name (Boden) is not dissimilar, the name of the fourth day of the week being Wodensday in the north, Budhbdar in the east, and dies Mercurii in Latin, and the confusion that existed in the mind of the Romans betwe yreen Mercury as the chief god of the Germans, and this Woden, shadow out a thread of tradition which might point to a solution. Woden, * De Bello Gotico, 11.471, Bonn, 1833. — + De Rebus Polon. IIT. 43. t De Diis German. c. 29, § This paragraph is abridged from Deane’s Serpent Worship, p. 245, et seq. I have not been able to verify the references. : Lib. IIT. eh. 1. : ; § Der Ehsten aberglaubische. gebraiiche, &c., von J. W. Boecler, beleuchtet von F. R. Kreutzwald. St. Petersburg, 1854. SCANDINAVIA. 23 too, came from the east just at the time when we know that active missionaries were spreading the doctrines of Buddhism on all sides external to the central kingdom of India, within whose limits it had been previously confined: There certainly also was at that time an amount of Buddhism current among the western nations whose presence it is difficult to account for except on the assumption of some such migration. The more closely, however, the question is examined the less hopé docs there appear to be that a solution may be reached in this direction. There are not, perhaps, in the whole world two religions so diametrically and so essentially opposed to one another as Buddhism and Wodenism, nor two persons so different as the gentle Sékya Muni, who left a kingdom, family, and friends to devote fifty years of his blameless life to the attempt to alleviate the sufferings of mankind, . and Odin, “the terrible and severe God, the Father of slaughter: he who giveth “ victory and reviveth courage in the conflict: who nameth those that are to be ** slain.”’* The leading doctrinal characteristic of Buddhism in its early form is its atheism ; . the Scandinavian, on the other hand, had Woden, Thor, Freya,. and a host of minor gods, rulers of men during their lifetime, and continuing the active personal interference with the affairs of men after their elevation. Among the practical characteristics of Buddhism there was, first, the remarkable extension of the Jewish Commandment, “Thou shalt do no murder” into “Thou shalt not kill,” including in the prohibition everything that had life; while the greatest glory of the northern hero was the number of his enemies he had slain, and nothing escaped from his joyous Dbloodthirstiness. Another peculiarity of Buddhism was the negation of all worldly ‘pleasures and enjoyments. It is hardly ‘possible to conceive anything more incongruous than would have been’ the presence among the. roistering mead- drinking warriors of the north, of a ycllow-robed ascetic, sworn to celibacy, living on alms, and devoting his life to pious contemplation; his one hope and highest aspiration being, that after infinite transmigrations he might be so purified by suffering that be might eventually obtain absolute rest by annihilation and absorp- tion into the original essence of all things. How different this from the northern Walhalla. “The heroes,” says the Edda,; “who are received into the palace of * Odin have every day the pleasure of arming themselves, of passing in review, * of ranging themselves in order of battle, and ‘of cutting one another to pieces ; * but so soon as the time of repast approaches they return on horseback all safe “and sound to the hall of Odin, and fall to eating ‘and drinking. Though the ~ © number of them cannot be counted; the flesh of the boar, Seehrimnir,t is sufficient “ for them all; every day it is served up at table, and every day renewed entire. * Their beverage is ale and mead. One single goat, whose milk is mead, furnishes “enough of that liquor to intoxicate all the heroes. Odin alone drinks wine; “ wine is for him both meat and drink. A crowd of virgins wait on the heroes “at table, and fill their cups as fast as they empty them.” This, certainly, is not Buddhism, at least as that religion is known to us by anything that has hitherto been published on the subject. How far the revelations * Mallet, NortherneAntiq. (Bohn’s edition), p. 21. {. Mallet, Northern Antiq., p. 104, t Mallet, Prose Edda, 429. . : 2 I INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. of the sculptures of the Sanchi Tope may induce us to change our opinions of the eurlicr form of: that faith remains to be seen.