But if they belong not to the Christian ceremonial, they do to something else. They are the grand, distinctive, and indispensable adjuncts of Budhism; being the two animals into which, according to its doctrine of metempsychosis, the soul of Budha had entered after his death.
This was the origin of the Egyptian Apis: and who is not familiar with the honours lavished upon the sacred bull? To this day the elephant is worshipped in the Burman empire,[346] where the genius of Budhism still lingeringly tarries; and “Lord of the White Elephant” is the proudest ensign of power claimed by the successors to the throne of Pegu.
The human figures, then, of course, cannot be intended for “St. John or the Virgin Mary.” They represent Budha’s Virgin Mother, along with his favourite disciple, Rama. And thus does the testimony of Artemidorus, who flourished 104 years before Christ, a native himself of Ephesus, and who did not himself understand the mystery of that Virgin whom he historically records, receive illustration from my proof, while it gives it confirmation in return.
His words are—“Adjacent to Britain there stands an island, where sacred rites are performed to Ceres and the Virgin, similar to those in Samothrace.”
Initiation in the principles of this Samothracian ceremonial was thought so necessary an accomplishment for every hero and every prince, that no aspirant to those distinctions ever ventured upon his destination, without first paying a visit to that religious rendezvous. The solemnity, attaching to the ritual there performed, was not greater than the veneration paid to the place itself. All fugitives found shelter within its privileged precincts, and the name of sacred was assigned it, as the ordinary characteristic of such sanctuaries.[347]
“There are,” says the Scholiast upon Aristophanes, “two orders of mysteries celebrated in the course of the year, in honour of Ceres and the Virgin—the lesser and the greater; the former being but a sort of purification and holy preparation for the latter.”[348]
Who the Virgin was, however, none but the initiated ever presumed to investigate, the practice observed in respect to her, being the same as that which influenced the other ordinances of antiquity: and which made Strabo himself declare, that “all that can be said concerning the gods must be by the exposition of old opinions and fables; it being the custom of the ancients to wrap up in enigma and allegory their thoughts and discourses concerning nature, which are, therefore, not easily explained.”[349]
Proclus also says: “In all initiations and mysteries, the gods exhibit themselves under many forms, and with a frequent change of shape; sometimes as light defined to no particular figure; sometimes in a human form; and sometimes in that of some other creature.”[350]
With the clue, however, already afforded, we need not be deterred from approaching her fane. The allegorical name, under which they disguised her, was that of Proserpine: whom they represent “so beautiful that the father of the gods himself became enamoured of her, and deceived her by changing himself into a serpent, and folding her in his wreaths.”[351]
This was the Greek perversion of the narrative. They had received it from the Pelasgi, under the garb of a conception, by serpentine insinuation, in a virgin womb: and, the grossness of their intellects not allowing them to comprehend the possibility of an emanation, yet giving unqualified credence to the record, they degraded altogether the religiousness of the thought, and supposed that the Almighty, to effectuate his design, had actually assumed the cobra di capello form!