According to another Sanscrit legend: “At one time in the history of the creation an attempt was made by Visvamitra to locate a southern pole and another bear in positions corresponding to the northern, this pole passing through the island Lumka or Vadavāmukha (Ceylon)” (Allen, p. 436). Professor Sayce writes: “In early Sumerian days, the heaven was believed to rest upon the peak of ‘the mountain of the world’ in the far northeast, where the gods had their habitations (cf. Isa. xiv, 13) [the mount of congregation in the uttermost parts of the north], while an ocean or ‘deep’ encircled the earth which rested upon its surface.” Von Herder referred to it as “Albordz, the dazzling mountain on which was held the assembly of the gods, and identified it with the holy mountain of God,” alluded to in the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel xxviii, 14; and Professor Whitney quoted from the sixty-second verse of the first chapter of the Surya Siddhanta, “the mountain which is the seat of the gods” and from the thirty-fourth verse of the twelfth chapter: “A collection of manifold jewels, a mountain of gold, is Meru, passing through the middle of the earth-globe, and protruding on either side;” commenting on which he says: the “seat of the gods” is Mount Meru, situated at the North Pole (p. 452).
The cult of Ishtar=Isis, associated with mystery and of Serapis=Osiris, had been instituted in Rome by Domitian (A.D. 82) who caused temples to be built for them. Curious instances of the spread of the cults of other countries throughout the Roman empire have come under my personal notice. In the Museum at Bonn, Germany, there is a Roman tombstone the inscription on which consists of a wheel above the name Jovis, the association of Jove with the wheel, being very remarkable and significant in connection with the present subject.
At Nîmes in the South of France, a curious statue of Mithra was found in the ruins of the Roman city. It consists of a Hermes, surmounted by a hairy, dog-like face. A great serpent is wound around the Hermes, the signs of the zodiac being sculptured between the coils. In the light of the present investigation the meaning of the symbolical statue seems too obvious to require explanation. It is strange that the recollection of seeing this statue at the age of nine with my father, who pointed out and explained the signs of the zodiac to me, is one of the most vivid of my childhood.
Hewitt states (p. 90) that, “it was successively immigrating races from the North ... who placed a king at the head of the confederated provinces formed from their confederated villages.... The confederate form of these kingdoms is shown in such names as Chuttisgurh which means the 36 gurhs or united provinces. But the final consolidated form of the pre-Aryan Indian village was that framed by the Kushites. It was they who placed the royal province in the centre of the kingdom.... It was on these principles that the government of the Ooraon village of Chota Nagpore was constructed. The Ooraon form of village government is that which has been preserved with less alteration from subsequent invaders than that of any other part of India, for the Ooraons, Mundas, Ho-kals and Bhuyas have always been able, under the protection of their mountain fastnesses, their political organization and their natural love of independence, to keep their country free from the interference of the hated Sadhs, the name by which they call the Hindus. But these people, who repelled and held themselves aloof from later invaders were of no less foreign origin than those who succeeded them, for they were all formed by the union with the matriarchal Australioids and patriarchal Mongols or Finnish and other Northern stocks, most of whom were formed into confederated tribes of artisans and agriculturists in Asia Minor and it was from the southern part of Asia Minor or Northern Palestine, that the Ooraons came. They themselves say that they came from Western India, from the land of Ruhidas [the land of the red men], but this means Syria, the country whose people were called Rotou by the Egyptians, and they were the race who introduced barley and plough-tillage into India and Chota Nagpore.”
Particular attention is drawn to Wylie's statements, quoted on p. [303], concerning the migration of Israelites to China, via Persia (about A.D. 58-75) and the native record that Christianity was the ancient religion of Ta-Tsin=Syria. Hewitt's identification of Syria as the “red land” causes the Ooraon and Chinese traditions to agree in assigning it as the common source of origin of their civilization. According to Professor Sayce it was “about B.C. 600 that the Phœnicians penetrated to the northwest coast of India,” and “tradition brought them originally from the Persian Gulf” (Ancient Empire of the East, p. 183).
This association of Tenos with seven-fold division is particularly suggestive because, in Pythagorean philosophy, the number seven was named Parthenos, Athene, also Apollo, Hermes, Hephaistos, Heracles, Dionysius, Rex, etc. These divinities, the second and third of which are specially known as patrons of cities, appear in a new light when it is realized that they were personifications of the number seven and, by extension, of the seven-fold cosmos, state and city. On p. [449], Plato's division of the Cosmos is cited. Reference to the history of Greek philosophy shows, however that the spurious existence of four or five elements had not always been accepted in Greece, that Thalês (640-550 B.C.) had laid down the doctrine of a single eternal, original element, water or fluid substance, and “assimilated the universe to an organized body or system.” Xenophanës (570-480 B.C.) conceived “nature as one unchangeable and indivisible whole, spherical, animated ... penetrated by or indeed identical with God.” It is usually accepted that it was Empedocles (444 B.C.) who first formulated the elements, earth, air, fire and water, to which later philosophers added a fifth, the all-embracing æther.
In a luminous monograph (Pythagoras und die Inder, Leipzig, 1884.), Professor L. von Schroeder, of Dorpat, Russia, quoting the authority of Professor Max Müller, Edward Zeller and Oldenburg, has conclusively shown that the five elements, earth, fire, water, air and æther (Sanskrit ākaçā) already occur in the Brahmanas; were taught in the Sāmkhya philosophy of the Kapila and were therefore known in India at least as far back as in the seventh century B.C. The idea of the five elements is so familiar to the Hindus at the present time that death is usually spoken of as “a dissolution into the five elements,” or a “going over into the Five.” Professor von Schroeder's conclusion is that Pythagorean philosophy derived the elemental divisions from India as well as its doctrine of transmigration, etc., and its science of geometry and of number, mentioning, in support of the latter assertion, the fact that Sâmkya, the name of the ancient Indian school of philosophy, signifies “number,” that its followers were therefore designated as “philosophers or teachers of numbers.” At the same time I point out that, according to Oliver, “a large portion of Egyptian philosophy and religion was constructed almost wholly upon the science of numbers and we are assured by Kircher (Oedip. Egypt, ii, 2) that everything in nature was explained on this principle alone.”
Returning to Professor von Schroeder's work I refer the reader to pp. 59 and 65, and notes for an extremely interesting discussion of the Greek name of the fifth element that figures in the work of Philolaus, the first who wrote a treatise on the Pythagorean system of philosophy. The name employed has been deciphered by different authorities as ὅλχας, ὁλχας, χυχλάς, ογχος, ὁγοτας, or ὅλας. The interpretation given is that the name (the first syllable of which recurs in the word Olympus) signified “that which moves or carries with it the universe.” Professor von Schroeder suggests that the name may be a corruption of the Sanscrit name for æther, the all-embracing element, âkâça. I venture to recall here the curious fact that, in ancient Mexico, the symbol, enclosing the four elements, is always designated as the ollin, a word associated with the idea of “movement” and of life=yoli.
In his work on the “Pythagorean Triangle,” the Rev. G. Oliver gives an extremely clear account of the Pythagorean philosophy and tells us that its central thought is the idea of number, the recognition of the “numerical and mathematical relations of things....” “The Pythagoreans seem,” says Aristotle, “to have looked upon number as the principle and, so to speak, the matter of which existences consist;” and again “they supposed the elements of number to be the elements of existence, and pronounced the whole heaven to be harmony and number.”
Concerning the universe, like many early thinkers, as a sphere, they placed in the heart of it the central fire to which they gave the name of Hestia, the hearth or altar of the universe, the citadel or throne of Zeus. Around this move the ten heavenly bodies ... the earth revolved on its own axis....