Forlong - Rivers of Life

486
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
the Gods and Titans,” being the contentions of Solars and Lunars, or Lingaites and
Yonites, but must add a few words here.
Titana were places famed for Solar wornhip, and were usually elevated and rounded
OIympi or Omphi. Bryant derives Titans from a woman’s breast, saying they meant
“Mounds of Light,” in connection with Ana or Ana-heta (perhaps Ana-teta) the mother
goddess; but fyf, Tit, is the black Nile mud, which being the fertile breast of Isis,
“the Delta,” is quite reconcilable with Bryant. The giants of Babel, it is said, were the
descendants of those Titans who fought with Astarte and Belus agaimt Jupiter and Kronus.
From India we have, very similar tales in connectlon with wars of the Sooras
and Asooras—one of the earliest events after the Aryans began to settle in India and forsake
a nomad life. The Kooroos are the Solar or Lingam-worshippers, and the Pandoos
the Lunar, or worshippers of Venus, Parvati, and the Saktis of all Gods. Stān-Eswār or
the “Standing-place of Siva,” where the race first settled, and which was probably for centuries
the head-quarters of their faith, had a very sacred Sivaik shrine, which was to Solar
Aryans and ancient Brahamanism what Ceylon is to Boodhism—its Paradie. Tradition
says that Raja Dilipa, a descendant of Kooroo, built the fort of Stan-Eswar,
near the holy lake, where Kooroo became an ascetic, a century and a half before Pandoos
were heard of. The ancient names of the lake were, 1 st , Brahma Sar, and 2d,
Rama-bad, which seems chronologically correct as to the faiths; the first being the
Phallic Brahma, and the second the Solar Rama, who was clearly Parasoo-Ram of
the sixth Avatār, who here slaughtered the early Phallic or Brahma-worshipping
Kshatryas.
General Cunningham points out that the lake is mentioned in the Rig-veda as the
spot when Indra found the Horse-head of the Dadicha which the Aswins had created,
and which was at one time the terror of the Asyooras or Zoroastrians. We may from this
perhaps understand, that Horse-worshipping and Phallic or Aboriginal tribes, made war
with Tatar Skythians or Zoroastrians and aboriginal Panjābis. Here Indra the Sun-
God conquered, “slaying his thousands” of Vritras with the bones of a horse’s head,
a tale which, reaching Babylon as it certainly would, may have furnished Ezra with
materials for Samson’s exploit with the jaw-bone of an ass!
Indra’s war must have taken place about a score of centuries B.C., yet the field of
bones was seen by Hwen Tsang, in the seventh century A.C., for he says the bones “were of
very large size!” So are pilgrims deceived, or they and their transcribers deceive us.
Five miles S.S.E. of Holy Stan-Eswar, is a celebrated tcmple to Soorya on a mound
round which clusters a village of Gaur Brahmans called Amin. Here fair Aditi seated
herself, longing for a son, which “here accordingly she obtained, giving birth to the
Sun,” 1 Mithras; of course the child issued from a cave, koond, or well, and in this all
who wish for sons must piously bathe on Sun’s day. The story seems to say that horse
and fetish-worshippers here gradually sprung into full vigour as Solarites. The holy
1 Anc. Geog. of India, I. 337, by M.-Gen. A. Cunningham, Archeo. Sur. to Gov. of India.