In regard to the Buddhists of India, who claim an antiquity of fifteen thousand years, Sir William Jones, though he appears to have been horrified at the idea of following truth beyond the limits of bible chronology, is constrained to assign the period of Buddha, or the ninth incarnation of Vishnu, in the year 1400 before Christ, though according to Volney and others, it was 600 years earlier. Christna and Buddha are identical* in principle; both are incarnations of Vishnu, the second person in the Hindu Trinity, and were born of virgin mothers, and each was the son of a carpenter; both suffer death by crucifixion. Christna raised the dead, by descending for that purpose to the lowest regions. Both names signify Shepherd and Savior. The crucified Christna is represented in the aforesaid plate 98, with rays of glory surrounding the head, as is also the head of Buddha, which may be seen in the museum of the India House. To the rational mind, this glory will appear emblematical only of the sun himself in his radiant summer brightness, because it is manifestly so of no other object in nature.
* The Negro, Mannon now in the British Museum, corroborates
the opinion, that the sciences were once in the hands of the
Blacks. Mr. Higgins says, that though both Buddha and
Chrishna of the India House museum, are black, the latter is
easily distinguishable from the former, because he is not a
Negro.
Mr. Higgins goes on to show "the idle pretensions that the Brahmins, some way or other, have got copies of the apocryphal gospels, from which they have taken the history of the birth, life, and adventures of Chrishna. How wonderfully absurd," says he, "to suppose that all the ancient emblems and idols of Christna, in the temples and caves scattered over every part of India, and absolutely identified with them in point of antiquity, can have been copied from the gospels written after the time of Jesus! How wonderfully absurd, that the Brahmins, and people of this widely extended empire, should condescend to copy from the real or cast-away spurious gospels of a sect, at that time almost unknown in their own country; and many thousand miles distant from these Brahmins!"
The deified Hercules, the personified power of the sun, was known in very remote antiquity; yet according to Arrian, he was fifteen centuries later than Bacchus, who was the same as the Hindu deity Siva. The triplicate godhead of India, says Arrian, consisted of Brahma, Chrishna, and Seeva, three in one, and one in three viz., the Creator, Preserver, or Savior, and the Destroyer.* Now, Arrian wrote in the second century, in the time of the Emperor Adrian, when the New Testament of the Christians was not yet got up; and as for their Trinity, they did not fully imitate the Hindu in that triune point, until about the close of the fourth century.
* According to a passage of Arrian, quoted in the Edinburgh
Review, Chrishna was worshipped in the time of Alexander, at
what still remains one of the most famous temples of India,
that of Mathura, on the Jumna, the Matura Deorum of Ptolemy.
All the garbled statements, and mean subterfuges that could be invented by powerful priesthoods, in league with corrupt Rulers, have been brought into play to oppose and stifle the above incontrovertible facts. This unblushing effrontery is quite "in trade" with parties whose interest it undoubtedly is that these things should be known only amongst themselves, lest the "simple-minded" should be induced to suspect that they had been most egregiously duped by men whose very living depends upon deception. The wonderful resemblance,—the apparent sameness or identity—of the Indian and Christian mythics, must have shaken the well-settled faith of Sir William Jones; and so far, his love of truth got the better of his piety; otherwise, he would no doubt have been willing to suppress the alarming truth of the vastly higher antiquity of the Hindu allegory.* Why did he conceal the crucifixion part of the fable, and the fact of its being represented as taking place in the sky? It was in vain he expected that other writers on India, many of whom were equally well-informed, would be as disingenuous as himself.
The ancient hieroglyph of the cross itself is, beyond all contradiction, of the most remote antiquity in the different countries of India; and it is found on most of the Egyptian obelisks—all the three monograms of Osiris, and those of Jupiter Ammon,—the staffs of Isis and Osiris, etc. The pious and orthodox Mr. Skelton, in his "Appeal to common sense," confesses as follows:—"How it came to pass that the Egyptians, Arabians, and Indians, long before Christ came among us, paid such a remarkable veneration to the cross, is to me unknown; but the fact itself is known." In Dr. Clarke's "Travels," there is an engraved copy of a Phoenician medal, found in the ruins of Citium, and proved by him to be Phoenician, on which are inscribed, not only the cross, but the rosary or string of beads, attached to it, together with the figure of a Lamb. The Rev. Mr. Maurice, in his "Indian Antiquities," informs us that the two principal Pagodas of India, Benares and Mathura, are erected in the form of vast crosses.
The famous crux ansata, says Mr. Higgins, is to be seen on all the ancient buildings of Egypt; and is the mark alluded to by Ezekiel ix., 4. It is as common in India as in Egypt and Europe. Mr. Moor, in his "Oriental Fragments," tells us that, placed in a circle, it was an emblem of eternity, having equally neither beginning nor end. The signing of the cross** on the forehead of individuals, as a token of security for life, is of great antiquity. Cain, it seems, wore this mark of security.
* Mr. Barrow, the great astronomer, says that "The Hindu
religion spread over the whole earth; that Stonehenge is one
of the temples of Boodh; and that astronomy, astrology,
arithmetic, holy days, games, etc., may be referred to the
same original."
** St Jerome has observed that this mark, or letter, in the
true ancient Hebrew alphabet, was a cross. With the
exception of the sun himself the hieroglyph of the cross has
been more generally adored than any other object in nature.
Why? Because it is symbolic of two annual periods which
mainly affect the condition of man upon this globe—the two
equinoctial crossings by the sun.
Jablonski was of opinion that this figure, the crux ansata, was also an emblem of generation,—"nihil aliud esse quam phallum," etc. However, we have historical facts stating that the women of ancient Egypt wore ornaments of a character or form so very unequivocal, as to leave no doubt about the allusion. The proofs of the vast antiquity of the cross might be carried much farther, acknowledged and confirmed as they are in many instances even by divines themselves, who have deeply investigated the subject, and could see no way to elude the unpalatable truth, that the cross was an object of superlative sanctity and veneration amongst the eastern nations, not only long anterior to the time of the Emperor Tiberius, but in the most remote of the known ages of antiquity. Thus this mystical figure was emblematical of at least four things, viz., eternity, generation, the crossing of the equator by the sun at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, besides its allusion, in Egypt, to the rising and falling of the Nile.