Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
fall all was darkness,” that so common manner of ending an occult or difficult
subject.
To show the worship of Tree, Serpent, and Sun, and therefore also of Phallic
forms of faith, I give here, enlarged from Mr Fergusson’s drawings, part of the
sculptures of the fine Boodhist ruin known as the Amravati Tope, as seen in R.
Asiatic Society’s vol. III. It is only given as distinct as the state of the stone
seems to authorise, but enlarged to shew
what it is thought to be, and no doubt is
intended to be, to the uninitiated, a tree; the
initiated, however, were supposed, I believe,
to see more than this, viz., the ferlilization of
this Ark—a floating sort of vessel—for Creation
is here evidently the object of worship;
and the artists have most successfully laboured
to show the Tree idea or the conjunction of
Fig. 5—TREE AND FIRE WORSHIP—AMRAVATI
BOODHIST TOPE
Ge and Ouranos.
In the original, the Sun, “chakra or
wheel (superfluous words I think), are overhead, and over the Sun the Dagoba-like
shrine, and serpent-crowned altar which I here give as Fig. 6, from another part of the
same holy shrine. In this second sculpture we see on the right and left the solar disk
and tree, with altars to themselves outside, but on either side of the main altar, on
which sits wreathed passion as upreared snakes. To show that there is no mistake in
the idea of this fable, I give a drawing of another portion of the sculpturings of the
Fig. 6—DAGOBA, WITH THREE EMBLEMS Fig. 7—NAGAS WORSHIPPING SERPENT AND CIST.
same holy Tope, also from Fergusson, where we see the ubiquitous Trisool, and ark or
cist, with Queens of Passion rearing proudly their wreaths of hooded anakes, whilst
others, as usual, fan the flames. The ark is unusually quiet in this case; no snakes
coiling in and out, as in the Phenician coins, but the Toth or Mercury is rendered
like the Ashtaroth a flaming column, of which we have many examples.