And thus we see that Budh and Pish were the actual regulators of the solar universe.
Time, however, dissolved the chain which linked together those mysterious absolutes: or, rather, the zealots of each contrived to sever an attachment, which was intended by nature to be reciprocal and mutual.[271] War, devastating, desecrating war, spread abroad over the plain! Human energies were evoked into an unknown activity! Men’s passions, always inflammable by the jealousy of partisanship, were here furthermore stimulated by the rancour of religion! And hearts were lacerated, and countries were depopulated in sustainment of the consequences of a physiological disquisition!!!
But what do you conceive to have been the topic at issue? Verily, it was whether the male or the female contributed more largely to the act of generation!—those who voted for the female side ranging themselves under the banners of Pish, and those for the male under the standard of Budh, while both equally appealed to heaven for adjudication of their suit, by arrogating to themselves the adjunct of De-danaans, or God-Almoners.
“Not but the human fabric from its birth
Imbibes a flavour of its parent earth,
As various tracts enforce a various toil,
The manners speak the idiom of the soil.”
Whether or not, however, the result is to be considered as decisive of the matter in dispute, one thing at least is certain, namely, that the Pish-God-Almoners obtained the victory; and the Budh-God-Almoners were thrown upon the ocean; over whose bosom, wafted to our genial shores, they did not only import with them all the culture of the East, with its accompanying refinement and polished civilisation; but they raised the isle to that pinnacle of literary and religious beatitude which made it appear to the fancies of distant and enraptured hearers more the day-dream of romance than the sober outline of an actual locality.
I shall now illustrate a part of those truths by the Indian history of the circumstances, as copied from their Puranas, by one who had no anticipation of my differently-drawn conclusions, and one, in fact, who did not know either the scene or the substance of the occurrence which he thus transcribes.
“Yoni, the female nature, is also,” says Wilford, “derived from the same root (yu, to mix). Many Pundits insist the Yavanas were so named from their obstinate assertion of a superior influence in the female over the linga or male nature, in producing a perfect offspring. It may seem strange that a question of mere physiology should have occasioned not only a vehement religious contest, but even a bloody war; yet the fact appears to be historically true, though the Hindu writers have dressed it up, as usual, in a veil of historical allegories and mysteries, which we should call obscene, but which they consider as awfully sacred.
“There is a legend in the Servarasa, of which the figurative meaning is more obvious. When Sati, after the close of her existence as the daughter of Dascha, sprang again to life in the character of Parvati, or Mountain Spring, she was reunited in marriage to Mahadeva. This divine pair had once a dispute on the comparative influence of the sexes in producing animated beings, and each resolved, by mutual agreement, to create apart a new race of men.[272] The race produced by Mahadeva were very numerous, and devoted themselves exclusively to the worship of the male deity; but their intellects were dull, their bodies feeble, their limbs distorted, and their complexions of many different hues. Parvati had, at the same time, created a multitude of human beings, who adored the female power only, and were all well shaped, with sweet aspects and fine complexions. A furious contest ensued between the two races, and the Lingajas were defeated in battle; but Mahadeva, enraged against the Yonijas, would have destroyed them with the fire of his eye, if Parvati had not interposed and spared them;[273] but he would spare them only on condition that they should instantly leave the country, with a promise to see it no more; and from the Yoni, which they adored as the sole cause of their existence, they were named Yavanas.”
It is evident that a mistake has been committed in the above narrative, making the victors the persons who were obliged to quit! and we know from testimony, adduced upon a different occasion, that instances of such confusion were neither unfrequent nor uncommon.[274] But even admitting it to be accurate, the apparent contradiction is easily reconciled; as it is probable that the contest was protracted for a long period of time, before it was ultimately decided in favour of one party; and, in the alternations of success, one side being up to-day, and another uppermost to-morrow, what could be more natural than that a colony of the Yavanas, or Pish-de-danaans,—which is the same,—should have fled for shelter to India, before that the auspices of their arms, propelled by the fair cause which they vindicated, had, at length, accomplished the overthrow of their adversaries.
This object, however, once obtained,—full masters of their wishes, and sole arbiters of Iran,—they were not satisfied with the mere extinction of all the symbols of their predecessors,—save and except the Towers which stood proof to their attacks,—but they established there instead a code, as well political as moral, more consonant with their own prejudices: and the wonder would be great, indeed, if, after this triumphant assertion of female power, gratitude and religion should not both combine in making the type of that influence—the sacred crescent, or yoni—the personification of their doctrines; and woman herself, all-lovely and all-attractive, the concentrated temple of their divinity upon earth!