“A war commenced; and in the very first battle Toor was slain by the lance of Manucheher. Selm retired to a fortress, from whence he was drawn by a challenge from the youthful hero, who was victorious in this combat, and the war restored tranquillity to the empire” (Sir John Malcolm).
[508] “Fifty-six years the Fir-Bolgs royal line were kings, and the sceptre they resigned to the Tuath-de-danaans” (Keating).
[509] We have as yet no accounts of the persecution and expulsion of the Budhists from India; and this circumstance of itself would allow us to infer, with great probability, that those events must have taken place at a very remote period of antiquity.—Asiatic Researches.
[510] Göttingen University.
[511] Vallancey, Coll. vol. iii. p. 163.
[512] Bryant’s Anal. vol. iii. 491-3.
[513] “The first origin of the Danavas” says Wilford, talking of the primeval inhabitants of Egypt, “is as little known as that of the tribe last mentioned. But they came into Egypt from the west of India, and are frequently mentioned in the Puranas, amongst the inhabitants near Cali.”
Is it not manifest that they were a colony of our Danaans? And is not this still more undeniable from the circumstance of a part of Egypt—doubtless that wherein the Danaans resided—having been called of old, as you will find by the same authority, by the name of Eria? See p. 68 of present volume.
[514] This explains what Hecatæus records, as to the ancient attachment between the Hyperboreans and the Grecians—“deducing their friendship from remote times.” And the offerings which the latter are said to have brought to the former were precisely of that nature (ανθηματα) which comports with the spirit of our Budhist pentalogue. See p. 112.
[515] As to the actuality of the visit, it is past anything like doubt, from Orpheus, or if you prefer Onomacretus’ poem called “Argonautica”; and his conviction of this it was which made Adrianus Junius, quoted by Sir John Ware, to characterise Ireland as an “insula Jasoniæ puppis bene cognita nautis.”