[541] Buddu, the god of souls, is represented by several little images made of silver, brass, stone, or white clay, and these are set up in almost every corner, even in caverns and on rocks, to all which piles the devotees carry a variety of provisions, every new and full moon throughout the year; but it is in March they celebrate the grand festival of Buddu, at which time they imagine the new year begins. At this festival they go to worship in two different places, which have been made famous by their legendary stories concerning them. One of them is the highest mountain in the island, and called by the Christians Adam’s Peak; the other is in a place where Buddu reposed himself under a tree, which planted itself there for the more commodious reception of the deity, who, when he was on earth, frequently amused himself under its agreeable shade, and under that tree the pagans in Ceylon adore their Buddu, whom they really believe to be a god (Dr. Hurd).
Bodhesat receives a few handfuls of grass presented to him by Soitha (a Brahmin), which grass, when strewed on the ground under the Bo tree, there arise from the earth miraculously a throne of diamond fourteen cubits high, covered externally with grass; on which Bodhesat takes his seat, reclining his back against the tree, in order to accomplish his last act of meditations. Buddha having ascended into the air, and displayed his glory to all the worlds in rays of six different colours, in order to afford the gods a proof of his perfection, stands seven days with his eyes fixed on the Bo tree, enjoying the Dhyanes (Miniature, etc.).
“Yes, love indeed is light from heaven,
A spark of that immortal fire,
With angels shared, by Allah given,
To lift from earth our low desire.
Devotion wafts the mind above,
But heaven itself descends in love,
A feeling from the Godhead caught,
To wean from self each sordid thought.”—Byron.
[543] Book of Enoch, lxi. 8-10.
[544] Dr. Lawrence, present Archbishop of Cashel.
[545] Preface to translation of the Book of Enoch.
[546] “If this singular book be censured as abounding in some parts with fable and fiction, still should we recollect that fable and fiction may, occasionally, prove both amusing and instructive; and can then only be deemed injurious when pressed into the service of vice and infidelity. Nor should we forget that much, perhaps most, of what we censure, was grounded upon rational tradition, the antiquity of which alone, independent of other considerations, had rendered it respectable. That the author was uninspired will be scarcely now questioned. But, although his production was apocryphal, it ought not therefore to be necessarily stigmatised as necessarily replete with error; although it be on that account incapable of becoming a rule of faith, it may nevertheless contain much moral as well as religious truth, and may be justly regarded as a correct standard of the doctrine of the times in which it was composed. Non omnia esse concedenda antiquitati is, it is true, a maxim founded upon reason and experience; but, in perusing the present relic of a remote age and country, should the reader discover much to condemn, still, unless he be too fastidious, he will find more to approve; if he sometimes frown, he may oftener smile; nor seldom will he be disposed to admire the vivid imagination of a writer who transports him far beyond the flaming boundaries of the world—
———‘Extra
Processit longe flammantia mœnia mundi’;
displaying to him every secret of creation; the splendours of heaven, and the terrors of hell; the mansions of departed souls, and the myriads of the celestial hosts, the seraphim, cherubim, and ophanim, which surround the blazing throne, and magnify the holy name of the great Lord of Spirits, the Almighty Father of men and of angels” (Archbishop of Cashel).