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Such, however, appears undoubtedly té jhave been the case; and this great southern bas-relief worthily closes a series of Takshac sculptures, which for the present we must be content to commence with Sanchi, though there is little doubt but that earlier examples will hereafter be found ;+ but whether that is the case or not, many intermediate illustrations will certainly be discovered when looked for, and so enable us to complete as curious a picture as anywhere exists of the latest form of the primeval worship of the world. Hinpv RELIieron. It*might have sufficed for our present purposes to have stopped when we had brought ‘the history of Serpent Worship in India to the point when the Buddhist scriptures were rescued from the keeping of the Nagas and revealed to mankind. As - this happens to be also the time when the Gateways were added to the tope at Sanchi, we might have left the sculptures to tell their own tale, and continue the history of Naga worship from that point. -It will add, however, very much to the clearness of what follows if we anticipate still further, and describe briefly what took place afterwards. Speaking broadly, the modern religions of India may be divided into two great | groups or classes, that of Siva and that of Vishnu. It is extremely difficult to offer even a plausible conjecture as to the origin of the former, or to guess when it first came into vogue. It has been attempted to identify Siva with the Rudra of the Vedas, and it may be so, but it is certainly a local, not an Aryan form of faith, and seems originally to belong rather to the south than to the north of India. It may have existed there as a native local superstition for any length of time, but it only rose to eminence on the decline of Buddhism. Its principal teacher if not its founder, in its present form, seems to have been Sankara Acharya, who may have lived in the eighth or ninth century.} There does not seem to be a trace of Tree Worship rized up with it, nor any real connexion with Serpent Worship. It is true Siva is occasionally represented holding a cobra or other venomous snake in his. hand; serpents are also sometimes twisted round his neck or entwined with his hair; but in all these instances the serpent is a weapon, an implement of terror, not an object of worship. As the * When I published, in 1845, my description of the Rock Temples of India, I fixed the date of the excavation ’ of Mahavellipore within the limits of the thirteenth century (pp. 58, 59). I have since seen no reason to alter this description. : { There are, I believe, older Naga sculptures in Cuttack, but whether this is so or not, it is interesting to find the three principal seats of Naga worship at three nearly equidistant points on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, Cuttack, Amravati, and Mabavellipore; exactly opposite to Cambodia, which as above explained was its principal seat in modern times. Sanchi seems to have been a sort of half-way -house between these places and the North, for all their traditions point to Takshaéila: as the original seat whence this form of faith was disseminated, and the Yavanas as the people by whom it was propagated. { Asiatie Researches, XVII. 139, 70 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. destroyer everything that can add to the terrible was represented with him. In his hands the. serpent is as a sword or trident, and, as his chaplet of skulls, merely meant: to,.overawe and impress the beholder. It never is many-headed, and never seems the guardian god. It is only earthly serpent taught to do the will of its master. . | Occasionally the: serpent does appear in a more religious aspect in connexion with this form of faith. He is sometimes represented as entwined round the Lingam,* ‘and in some~southern temples two serpents are sometimes seen erect with their heads. above: the Lingam, on either side as if worshipping it. In all these instances, however, the serpent is subordinate. It seems nothing more than we would expect to find in a country where Serpent Worship was at one time so prevalent that the apostles of the new: faith should represent the older as doing homage to the new god. .In so far as the materials available enable an opinion ‘to be formed, the amount and nature of the Serpent’ Worship we find mixed up with Sivaism'is just what we might expect when a new form of faith superseded an old one. Much of the more ancient worship passes into the new, partly because the _ priests desire to conciliate the votaries of the old, partly in order to exhibit the triumph of the new god, but more perhaps because nothing is so difficult to kill as an old superstition, and the more unreasonable it is the harder it dies. When we turn to the Vaishnava group of religions, we find a very different state of things. This religion is descended from a group of faiths in which the ‘Serpent always played an important part. The eldest branch of the family was the Naga worship, pure and simple; out of that arose Buddhism, as frequently hinted above, and on its decline two faiths—at first very similar* to one another—rose from its ashes, the Jaina and the Vaishnava. The first named was the purest.and most direct ' descendant of Buddhism, retaining more of its doctrinal purity, and less. of the local element, and consequently less Serpent Worship than the other. Still the Naga is almost always to be found in Jaina temples, and placed where it evidently was intended as an object of worship, but subordinate to the saint to whom the temple was dedicated. _ The Vaishnava faith, on- the other hand, arose ‘conterporaneously with the Sivite, on the ruins of Buddhism, but with much less of the appearance of being a local © ~ indigenous superstition; on. the contrary, it bears many marks of being a foreign introduction, as if imported at some remote period by some of the immigrant. races, and after rotting and fermenting for ages in the fertile soil of India, at last found the means of coming to the surface between the eighth and the tenth centuries. Garuda, Vishnu’s Vahana, the enemy of the Nagas, is almost certainly the hawk- headed deity of Assyria; and in all ithe avatars of Vishnu we find more traces of - western superstition than in anything Sivite ; but what interests us most here is, that | the Naga appears everywhere in Vaishnava tradition. There is no more common ‘representation of: Vishnu than reposing on the Sesha, as the seven-headed snake is called by the Brahmans, contemplating the creation of the world. It was by his assistance that the ocean was churned and Amrita produced. He everywhere * Asiatic Researches, IX, 270., and XVII. 285. HINDU RELIGION. 71 spreads his protecting hood over the’ god, or his avatars, and in all instances it is” the seven-headed heavenly Naga, not the earthly cobra of Siva.* The worship of the Tulsi plant, which is one of the commonest forms of Vaishnava ‘adoration, is another of those indications which poiut to a common origin for the two religions. It would of course be absurd to designate as Tree Worship the adoration of such a plant as Sweet Basil, but the descent from the “ Ficus religiosa” to “ Ocymum Sanctum” is just such a change as might be expected to take place when a dogma is transferred from an older and higher faith to one of a less elevated character. Both symbolize the worship of the vegetable kingdom, and are a part of that curious association of men with animals and plants which is so marked a characteristic of both the Buddhist and Vaishnava forms of faith. _ The strongest evidence, however, of the connexion between the worship of Vishnu and that of Buddha is found in the fact, that the Hindus, even to the present day, recognize Buddha as the ninth avatar of Vishnu. From a historical point of view they are no doubt correct in this; all the eight preceding avatars refer to events that certainly preceded the time of Sakya-muni, and when we understand them ‘they may point toa long chain of tradition out of which Buddhism arose, and into which Buddhism fell, which, when philosophically examined, may throw a flood of. light on the origin of Buddhism and of Indian religions generally.t At present it must suffice to point out that the group to which Buddhism vilonge comprises Tree and Serpent Worship as the base, combined With the association of men with animals, especially monkeys, either in consequence of the doctrine of metempsy- chosis, or as the origin of that belief. These grew into Buddhism, and then bifurcated into the Jainism and Vishnuism of modern times. It is extremely difficult in the present state of our knowledge, to say to what particular section of the Indian population this group of religions belongs. We know that they were anti-Aryan, yet they do not appear to belong to the Dravidian group. “The peculiar deity of the latter I fancy must have been Siva, and his worship is antagonistic in every essential to those religions composing this family. We must ‘pause till we know more of the ethnology of India before. we can decide this question in anything like a satisfactory manner. - Meanwhile, however, the similarity of this family of religions points to an identity of race which can hardly: be mistaken. For the present, Scythian is a term that might * Nothing is more common than to connect the’ worship of the Lingam with the impurities with which _ the Hindu religion is only too justly reproached. This, however, is a’ mistake. The worship of Siva is too severe, too stern, for the softer emotions of love, and all hig temples are quite free from any allusion to it. The contrary is the case with the Vaishnavas, who abhor the Lingam. Love pervades all their myths, and their temples are full of sexual feelings generally expressed in the grossest terms.