Deus Fidhius, then, means God the Budha, and as such the All-wise, the All-sacred, the All-amiable, and the All-hospitable; and Hercules Fidhius, that is, Hercules the Budha, is, in sense and meaning, exactly the same.
The Latin word Fides, and the English Faith, are but direct emanations from the same communion. A thousand other analogies must suggest themselves now in consequence. In a word, if you go through the circle of natural religion and artificial science,—if you analyse the vocabulary of conventional taste and of modish etiquette, you will find the constituent particles of all the leading outlines resolve themselves into the physical symbolisation of the radical Budh.
What inference, I ask my reader, would he draw from the above facts? Unquestionably that at the outset of social life, mankind at large had used but one lingual conversation; and as the Irish is the only language in which are traced the germs of all the diverging radii,—nay, as it is the focus in which all amicably meet,—it follows inevitably that it must have been the universal language of the first human cultivators—the nursery of letters, and the cradle of revelation.
“How charming is divine Philosophy!
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo’s lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets
Where no crude surfeit reigns.”
CHAPTER XIX.
The Tuath-de-danaans, or Mahabadeans, being thus far proved as the first occupiers of Iran, it may be asked, How happens it that no Persian historians, anterior to Mohsan Fani, have noticed their existence? In the first place, I answer that they all have mentioned them, however unconsciously by themselves, or inadvertently by others. And even had this not been the fact—had not a single syllable been recorded, bearing reference to their name, the remote era, in itself, of their detachment from that country, would be the best possible apology for the omission.
The professed writers upon Persia belong all to a recent period; and the magazines which they consulted, for the scanty information which they furnish, were either Arabs or Greeks—the former a body of predatory warriors, whose only insight into letters arose from the opportunities which their rapines had supplied them; and the latter, a community who, insensible to the beauties of moral truth, took delight in distorting even the most commonplace occurrences into the most unnatural incredibilities and misshapen incongruities.
But independently of these causes, another more powerful one had before long co-operated. A rival dynasty, starting up from amongst themselves, succeeded, by the issue of a religious revolution, to effect their expulsion; and that once ascertained—the doors of admission ever after closed against their return—the victors were not satisfied with the monopoly of civil power, but they must wreak their vengeance still more, by the erasure of every vestige of the former sway.