Here, then, the grand northern chain is given to which the abode of the great patriarch of mankind approximated. In the Bhavishya it is stated, that “Vaivaswata (sun-born) Manu ruled at the mountain Sumeru. Of his seed was Kakutstha Raja, who obtained sovereignty at Ayodhya,[[5]] and his descendants filled the land and spread over the earth.”
I am aware of the meaning given to Sumeru, that thus the Hindus designated the north pole of the earth. But they had also a mountain with this same appellation of pre-eminence of Meru, ‘the hill,’ with the prefix Su, ‘good, sacred’: the Sacred Hill.
Meru, Sumeru.
This sacred mountain (Sumeru) is claimed by the Brahmans as the abode of Mahadeva,[[7]] Adiswar,[[8]] or Baghes[[9]]; by the Jains, as the abode of Adinath,[[10]] the first Jiniswara, or Jain lord. Here they say he taught mankind the arts of agriculture and civilized life. The Greeks claimed it as the abode of Bacchus; and hence the Grecian fable of this god being taken from the thigh of Jupiter, confounding meros (thigh) with the meru (hill) of this Indian deity. In this vicinity the followers of Alexander had their Saturnalia, drank to excess of the wine from its indigenous vines, and bound their brows with ivy (vela)[[11]] sacred to the Baghes of the east and west, whose votaries alike indulge in ‘strong drink.’
These traditions appear to point to one spot, and to one individual, in the early history of mankind, when the Hindu and the Greek approach a common focus; for there is little doubt that Adinath, Adiswara, Osiris, Baghes, Bacchus, Manu, Menes designate the patriarch of mankind, Noah.
The Hindus can at this time give only a very general idea of the site of Meru; but they appear to localize it in a space of which Bamian, Kabul, and Ghazni would be the exterior points. The former of these cities is known to possess remains of the religion of Buddha, in its caves and colossal statues.[[12]] The Paropamisan Alexandria is near Bamian; but the Meru and Nyssa[[13]] of Alexander are placed more to the eastward by the Greek writers, and according to the cautious Arrian between the Cophas and Indus. Authority localizes it between Peshawar and Jalalabad, and calls it Merkoh, or Markoh,[[14]] "a bare rock 2000 feet high [23] with caves to the westward, termed Bedaulat by the Emperor Humayun from its dismal appearance."[[15]] This designation, however, of Dasht-i Bedaulat, or ‘unhappy plain,’ was given to the tract between the cities beforementioned [24].
The only scope of these remarks on Sumeru is to show that the Hindus themselves do not make India within the Indus the cradle of their race, but west, amidst the hills of Caucasus,[[16]] whence the sons of Vaivaswata, or the ‘sun-born,’ migrated eastward to the Indus and Ganges, and founded their first establishment in Kosala, the capital, Ayodhya, or Oudh.
Most nations have indulged the desire of fixing the source whence they issued, and few spots possess more interest than this elevated Madhya-Bhumi, or ‘central region’ of Asia, where the Amu, Oxus, or Jihun, and other rivers, have their rise, and in which both the Surya and Indu[[17]] races (Sakha) claim the hill,[[18]] sacred to a great patriarchal ancestor, whence they migrated eastward.
The Rajput tribes could scarcely have acquired some of their still existing Scythic habits and warlike superstitions on the burning plains of Ind.[Ind.] It was too hot to hail with fervent adoration the return of the sun from his southern course to enliven the northern hemisphere. This should be the religion of a colder clime, brought from their first haunts, the sources of the Jihun and Jaxartes. The grand solstitial festival, the Aswamedha, or sacrifice of the horse (the type of the sun), practised by the children of Vaivaswata, the ‘sun-born,’ was most probably simultaneously introduced from Scythia into the plains of Ind, and west, by the sons of Odin, Woden, or Budha, into Scandinavia, where it became the Hi-el or Hi-ul,[[19]] the festival of the winter solstice; the grand jubilee of northern nations, and in the first ages of Christianity, being so near the epoch of its rise, gladly used by the first fathers of the church to perpetuate that event[[20]][25].