Forlong - Rivers of Life

360
Fig. 158.—THE ARKITE FOOT IDEA
AND ASIATIC SHOE.
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
to which we turn to have our desires gratified.” In Egypt, says Mr. Leslie, 1
(who is very innocent of my subject), prostration in prayer was called T-B—reduplicated
into T-b, T-b, so that “prayer came to be called Tb-Tb, which was also the name
for sandals or shoes, that is the little ships in which we place our feet when we make a
journey or go on a voyage; the Egyptians call by nearly the same name—Tb-t—the
Hippopotamus, 2 or river-beast sacred to their Arkite goddess, Isis.” I had
worked out the same idea of “the little ships in which we
place our feet,” and even lithographed the accompanying Fig.
158, long before reading these remarks of Mr. Leslie, and
was gratified and assured to find so learned an author had
arrived at the same conclusions, whether before or after me
matters not, but by quite a different road. My attention had
been frequently called to the study from actual Foot-prints of
the gods and incarnations of gods, long before I had read of,
or at least paid attention to this feature in theological or
learned works. It soon became evident to me that these ever-recurring “marks”
of the gods were solar and phallic, perhaps from the guides (usually priests), when
calling my attention to a holy Foot-print, using the word Nishān, which though
strictly a “mark” is also the sexual mark. The foot of Boodha is usually solar, as seen
in Plate VII. 3, but then all solar deities are phallic, and serpent ones, more or less
disguised. I had observed also, that as no followers of any faith ever destroyed a
Maha-deva, so none touched a Foot-print, but there may be exceptions in these days
of enlightenment, when sacrilege is not so uncommon.
The unmistakeable Boodhist talisman on the top of the Adām or Lingam peak of
Ceylon and on the holy summit of Hindoo Mount Aboo or Ara-Boodha, have been alike
safe whether Hindoos or Mabomedans ruled these mountains, and in every land men
would fight and die for Foot-prints, as they would for other sacred symbols. Most people
reverence only the foot-prints of their gods, but heroes also have had this honour paid
them, and these have thus become connected with civil and political rites. Col. Forbes
Leslie, in his “Early Races,” says he has found foot-prints among all nations and faiths,
and in ages prehistoric and modern, from the foot-print on Adām’s Peak to that on Calais
pier, where Louis XVIII landed in 1814! If on a high conical hill, the mark is trebly holy,
and next to this in sacred order, those foot-prints found on Karns or Conical Mounds.
That on Adām’s Peak is called Sama-nala, which some Boodhists say was formed there
by Godama, in the 6th century B.C. 3 The Hindoos here, however, assert a prior claim and
with more reason, as their early Brahma was a Hermes, and the name Sama-nala seems to
signify the god of the Nal or hollow rod, who was a god of Cones, and “High places,”
which the good Sakya avoided, preferring deep sylvan shades, and places for meditation,
to bleak, rocky summits. Moslems and Christians claim the Nishān as belonging
1 2
Origin of Man.
[Solar-Phallic, and of a Venereal nature? — T.S.]
3
I give a drawing of the mountain further on.