Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
than Boodha is here. This is unmistakably, Maiya, Queen of Heaven, surrounded by
Serpents. the symbols of fiery seraphs of passion, as Moses is said to have called the
biting Serpents of the desert; her sea teems with seraphic life, and two Serpent-
princesses, with Serpent-wreaths like her own, though smaller; stand by adoring this
Fig. 38—CHINESE MAIYA IN A SEA OF SERPENTS
queen-mother of all mankind. Mark, however, the prominent feature of the picture;
she herself is engrossed in worship; and apparently between her two uplifted hands is
a cone, column, or Lingam. The Fecundatrix herself has the body of a fish from the
waist downwards, and from the sea of fecundity in which she sits rises on one side the
too symbolic TORTOISE, and on the other SIVA’S HANDS, both in evident adoration.
Fergusson thinks that this picture is only of the 13th century B.C., and adds in regard
to the Chinese pictures in this work—which are shown as having three, five seven, and
nine Serpent-hoods, that in India, from the 3d to the 13th century A.C., it was usual
to have three, five, and seven, but never till the 13th century A.C. to have a Serpent
terminus to the human body. The pictures or sculptures of such may, indeed, be of
only the 13th century A.C., but the original idea. must go very far back into
pre-historic times, say to 4000 B.C. at least, when woman, fish, and Serpent, were
continually associated together, and indeed are identical as they still often are
so. I am not prepared to dispute the correctness of the number of hoods to