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of the dark-fortnight, that is on the twenty-second of Cheit (March—April), when the sun was in the constellation Uttarashadha Sagittarius, that is about 15,000 B.c. or the beginning of the cycler-year L He was the predecessor of Arishtanemi, who was, as we have seen, the Jain ruler of this eleven-months year. It was apparently at this epoch, when the Bronze Age began, that the Jain merchants ruling the Naga confederacy came from the West to the East. They made Parisnath on the Barrakur in Chutia Nagpur, formerly the sacred mountain of the Mundas, the holy High Place of the Jain Panris or Paris, the trading (pani) races, and fixed their headquarters in Chutia Nagpur, the mother country {chut) of the Nagas, and in the plains of Anga and Magadha forming the Western side of the Gangetic valley.
By the help of the Finn miners who accompanied them they obtained large and constant supplies of gold from the sands of the rivers, diamonds from the diamond fields, and opened up the copper mines at Baragunda on the Northern slopes of Parisnath, and at Lando in Seraikela in Singh- bhum. These were worked throughout the long period intervening between the opening of the mines and the establishment of Mussulman rule in Bengal, and hence the immense supplies of ore contained in these vast deposits have now been almost exhausted. But no one who has visited them can fail to be impressed with the magnitude of the works and the great trading energy of the race who superintended them. They made their capital at Dalmi on one of the gold-bearing rivers, the Subon-rikha or Suvarna- riksha, the channel (riks/ia) of the race (varna) of the Sus. And the ruins of the city they founded still exist on its banks, and from thence they ruled the whole of Bengal and Behar2. Their seaport was Tamluk, at the mouth of the
' Jacobi, Jaina Sulras, Kalpa Sutra, Life of Rishabha ; S.B.E., vol. xxii. pp. 281, 2S2.
2 Tamluk in Orissa was the ancient seaport not only of Chutia Nagpur, but of Behar, the country of Anga in the West of the Gangetic valley, and Kashi Benares. It was commercial goods from Orissa and the port of Tamralipti
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Hooghly and Rupnarain. Its Sanskrit name, of which the modern Tamluk is a corruption, is Tamra-lipti, the copper {tamra) port; and it was, according to tradition, the capital of the Peacock (mayura) kings of the Bhars or Bharatas, whose descendants still rule the adjoining semi-independent state of Moharbhunj. The original Mayura dynasty was succeeded, as maritime trade developed, by the Kaivarta or Kewut kings, a caste of fishermen and merchants, who make marriages by mingling the blood of the bride and bridegroom, in addition to the ordinary Sindurdan ceremony. That the country was originally ruled by races in touch with the Ooraon rulers of Chutia Nagpur is proved by the fact that the Kadamba almond-tree of the Ooraons is the sacred tree in the precincts of the ancient Tamluk temple of Kali, dedicated to Vishnu, the year-god of the peacock race, whose deification has been discussed in Chapter V. p. 281 L The name of this seaport shows first that the founders were of Dravidian origin like the Ooraons, whose native language is a Dravidian dialect, for the Sanskrit Tamra is a form of the Tamil Thambiram ; and secondly, it stamps the city as the seaport of the copper merchants of the Bronze Age, and proves that they must have been great exporters of that metal. This was originally used without alloy, as we learn from the copper razors of the barbers, the copper axes belonging to Colonel Samuells found near Baragunda, and the copper knives found by Dr. Schliemann in the oldest but one of the six superimposed Trojan cities. But it must have very soon been mixed with alloys of zinc and tin. These metals, and also copper, are found near together in Udaipur in Rajputana2; and it was there probably in the
that Tapassu and Bhalluka were bringing to Kushi in five hundred carts when they met the Buddha at his final transformation into the sun-god, Lord of Heaven, when the four bowls of sapphire and four of jet, the skies of day and night, brought by the four Loka Palu angels, ruling the four quarters of the heavens, became the one bowl or canopy of the sun-god, the universal ruler. Rhys D.avid, Buddhist Birth Stories: The Nidanakatha, p. no.
1 Hunter, Gazetteer of India, Tamluk, vol. xiii. pp. 172—173.
2 Ibid., Udaipur, vol. xiii. p. 401.
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adjoining country of Khatiawar, sacred to the year-god Krishna or Vishnu, that Indian brass and bronze were first made, and the ancestors of the Kassara or Kasbhara hereditary braziers probably accompanied the Jain Khati kings of the Peacock dynasty to Chutia Nagpur, where they established the brass trade of Manbhum, the district in which Dalmi is situated.
It was these trading kings who fought their way through India who founded the great merchant caste of Bengal, the Subarna or Suvarna Baniks, the Suvarna traders, the Bengal Shus. It is to this caste who boast their descent from the Kushika father-gods, Kasyapa, Gautama and Vyasa, and which is celebrated for the beauty of its women, that the great merchant families of the Pals, who gave the dynasty of the Pal kings to Bengal, Lahas, Des, Chandras, Sinhas or Sils, belong, and they show equal ability in literature and in commerceR Barbers occupy a prominent position among them as priests at their weddings.
It was apparently during the rule of the barber-priests and merchant-kings that Tamra-lipti was made the principal trading port between Bengal and Malacca, the great tin- producing country; and it was hence that tin was procurable much more easily than from Eastern India, for the only tin deposit in Chutia Nagpur is so poor in quality that it has never been worked. It was the exchange of the copper of Tamluk with the tin of the Malay miners, brethren of the Mallis of India, which made bronze the metal of India and inaugurated the Bronze Age of the Pandava kings.
The historical retrospect thus traced from the trade traditions, ritual and caste customs of the men of the Copper and Bronze Age, who burnt their dead, coincides exactly with that deduced from the Mahabharata and Harivansa. It tells us how the Suvarna, the race of Sus dwelling on the banks of the Indus, and in Saurashtra and Khatiawar founded in the West, the empire of the Yadu-Turvasu or
1 Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Subarnabanik, vol. ii. pp. 261—266.
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Yavanas, the sons of the barley (yava), who became the Ikshvaku kings of Patala, and afterwards of Patali-putra, the son of Patala {Patna). These Khati or Hittite Nagas founded from the artisan classes of village servants and cultivators the trading guilds or castes united by community of function. They under the guidance of the Finn mining races first established the Yavana or Yona rule from their capital of Yonagurh near the Girnar hill of Arishtanemi, the year-god of this epoch. He was, as we have seen, the ruling deity of the Ugra-sena or Ugro Finns, and of their King Kansa, the moon-goose, who, as king of the lunar dynasty, ruled the West of India as far East as Magadha, where Jarasandha, whose subordinate he was, reigned as central emperor, the Chakravarti or wheel-turning king.
He was the son of the mango, born, as we have seen, of the two Kushi or Kushite queens Ambika, and Ambalika, the Pole Star in Cygnus, and the Great Bear mother.
The rule of these ruthless conquerors was overthrown by Krishna, and the Pandava Bhima, who killed Kansa and Jarasandha, and made Krishna or Vishnu the year-god instead of Jarasandha’s god, the three-eyed Shiva of the three- years cycle, to whom he offered human sacrifices. It was after this victory that the Jain community of merchant- warriors established the rule of the Su-varna in Eastern India, and made the sons of Rishabha, the bull, supreme rulers of the land. It is as a survival of the imperial rule of the sons of Indra, the eel-god, who became the buffalo- bull, that the Rajas of Chutia Nagpur wear on the day of their coronation a turban twisted into a peculiar shape to represent the ancestral bull’s horns, and the maker of this turban holds a village granted to his ancestors free of all payments except the discharge of his duty of providing the official head-dress of the Raja.
It was from this amalgamation of the alien and indigenous races that the Bharata confederacy was formed under the rule of the Mayura or Peacock kings. Their leaders were the Licchavis, the sons of the Akkadian dog {lig), who joined
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the tiger-born Mallis to form the confederacy of the eighteen tribes of the Vajjians, sons of the tiger (vyaghrd), who ruled the country to the North-east of the Gangetic yalley. Their chief clan was that of the warrior Gnatikas J, or sons of the mother gfia, the Greek 7wrj, called the fire-mother in Rg.
iv. 9, 4. She is the “ even ” or queen mother of the Goidelic Celts who always burnt their dead, and who were thus the Pitaro Agnishvattah of this new confederacy. They were the dwarf Celtic race of miners, who, in Europe, became the Celts of Auvergne and Central France. In India they were the dwarf Asuras and Lohars, among whom the average male height is only about 163 centimetres, or 5 ft. 4 in., and their Cephalic index 75 1 2 3 4. It was they who introduced into India the Ooraon land tenures, giving an area of royal land in each village to the king, which, as I have shown in Chapter V. p. 287 ff, were very similar to those of the Goidelic Celts in Wales, both being founded on the earlier tenures of the Piets, the painted Pitaro Barishadah, to whom parched barley was offered.
This race of the fathers who burnt their dead was allied with the sons of the mother-fire-goddess, called in the Rigveda Matar-i-shvan, the mother of the dog (shvan), who came to India, according to the title of the Second Mandala of the Rigveda, as the Median collected race, the Saunaka, or sons of the dog-mother, and of Bhrigu the fire-father. These were the yellow Finns, who, as the race of Hari the mother-goddess Shar, furnished twenty-two of the twenty- four Jain Tirthakaras 3. These were the men of the new or young (kana) race represented by the Kanva priests, the reputed authors of the eighth Mandala of the Rigveda. Their representative parent Kanva was the nominal father of Sakuntala, mother of Bharata, bom on the Malli river Malini 4.
1 Jacobi, Jaina Sfitrus, Kalpa Sutra, 110 ; S.B.E., vol. xxii. p. 256.
2 Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Anthropometric Data, vol. i. pp. viii., xxxiv,
3 Jacobi, Jaina Sutras, Kalpa Sutra, 2 ; S.B.E., vol. xxii. p. 21S.
4 Mahabharata Adi (Sambhava) Parva, lxxi. p. 218.
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These Kanvas were priests of the Yadu-Turvasu and of the mountain-god Arbuda, whose shrine is the sacred Jain mountain Arbuda or Abu in Sirohi in Rajputana. This is the god called in the Rigveda the son of the Ahi Urna-vabha, the weaver of wool, the goddess-mother of the Ram-sun 1 who was slain by Indra, and who is named six times in the second and eighth Mandalas out of the seven times he is mentioned in the Rigveda. On his sacred mountain near the copper mines of Sirohi and the, tin and copper mines of Udaipur are two of the finest existing Jain temples. One of Adi-nath or Rishabha, the first Tlrthakara, and one of Nemi-nath or Arishta-nemi, the twenty-second Tlrthakara and ruler of this year 2 3 4. They are the upper and nether mill-stones of Jain theology, and it is under this symbol that the snake Jarat-karna and his counterpart Arbuda are worshipped in the Vedic ritual. They are the two pressing or grinding-stones which extract the sap of the sacrificial Soma, and in the ritual of the Soma sacrifice they are invoked in four Vedic verses : two to Savitar, the sun-bird Su, which is the root of Savitar, and two to Indra 3. After these are recited fourteen stanzas of the hymn Rg. x. 94, ascribed to the Rishl-Arbuda. In this hymn (stanzas 6, 7,
the pressing-stones are invoked as drawn by ten horses furnished with bridles and harnessed to ten poles, the ten sacrificial stakes indicating the ten lunar months of the cycle-year. Before the last stanza of this hymn, Rg. x. 76, ascribed to Jarat-karna, and x. 175, ascribed to Arbuda, are recited, and they are both addressed to the gravanah or pressing-stones, pierced with the holes through which the bar uniting them is inserted 4. In the titles of these hymns Jarat-karna is called the Airavata or elephant-bull, and Arbuda Urddhvagrava, the pressing-stone lifted up to
1 Rg. viii. 32, 26.
2 Hunter, Imperial Gazetteer of India, Abu, vol. i. pp. 8, 9.
3 Rg. i. 24, 3, v. 81, 1, viii. 81, 1, viii. 1, 1.
4 Ibid., x. 94, 11.
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heaven, and both are said to belong to the serpent (Sarpa) race of NagasT, Arbuda being the son or counterpart of Kadru the mother-tree (<dru) of the Nagas, the goddess Ka or Who ? This ceremony forms part of the ritual of the mid-day pressing sacred to the meridian-sun, to which Indra is summmoned as the chief god.
These father and mother-stones, the revolving heaven- drill which presses out on the nether mother-stone the life- giving sap of the Soma plants placed between them, are the pair called in the Mahabharata Jarat-karu, they who make old {Java). The male belongs to the sect of the Yaya-vara, the wandering mendicants, who were the early Jains, whose god was Yayati, the full-moon-god (Ya), father of the Yadu-Turvasu. The female was the sister of Vasuki, the snake-god ruling the summer solstice. The male Jarat- karu, as the dying sun-god who has fulfilled his yearly task of begetting his successor, leaves his mate when Ashtaka is begotten as the god of the eight (ashta), the sun-god of the true Soma of Chapter VII 1 2 3. He is the god of the eight-rayed star of day worshipped by the Akkadians as Din-gir and Esh-shu, words meaning both god and an ear of corn 3. They are, in short, the fire-drill and socket which gave birth to the sun-god born from the altar flame kindled by the wood of the mother-tree.
H. The story of the two thieves who robbed the treasure- house of heaven.
The name Arbuda given to the tree-mother-god means also the god of the Semitic Arba or four, the Hittite name which, as we have seen, appears in that of the Naga Gond kingdom, called Vidarba, or the double (vid) four {arba),
1 Ludwig, Rigveda, vol. ii., Hymns 785, 786, 7S7, pp. 412—415 ; Eggeling. Sat. Brah., iv. 3, 3, 1 ; S.B.E., vol. xxvi. pp. 331, note I, 332.
2 Mahabharata Adi (Astika) Parva, xlv.—xlvii. pp. 132—139.
3 Ball, ‘Akkadian Affinities of Chinese.’ Transactions of the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists, § China, Central Asia, and the Far East, p. 685 ; Hewitt, Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, vol. i. Preface, p. xxviii.
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the eight Gond tribes. The Hebrew history of this epoch of the deification of the four ruling gods, the four seasons of this year of eleven months, is to be found in the history of Caleb, the dog (kalb), the star Sirius. He was brother of Ram, the sun-god and grandson of Perez, the cleft, the male form of the Phoenician goddess Tirhatha, with the same meaning, who was, as we have seen, the fish-mother-goddess of the Phoenicians, mother of Shemiramot. He and his brother Ram were both descended from Tamar, the date- palm-tree. In the historical genealogies of the Chronicles various lines of descent are assigned to him. As the great- grandson of Tamar his father is Hezron, brother of Hamal, the star /3 Arietis, from which the sun was born in the cycle-year. Hezron died in Caleb-Ephratah, the city of ashes (ephra) of Caleb, which marks him as god of the city of the sun-god, in the year ruled by Sirius. In another genealogy he is the brother of Shuhah, Judah’s first wife, the bird (Shu) goddess, who preceded Tamar, and the ancestor of Ir-Nahash, the city (ir) of the Nagas, and the son of Jephunneh, the beautiful youth T. In short, he is the star Sirius, which was first the dog-star guarding the sun’s path along the Milky Way, then the young man, fifteen years old, who became afterwards the Zend Tishtrya (Sirius), the white horse of the sun, the Zend form of Indra, as the white buffalo, who made the black cloud, the horse’s head, give up the rains of the rainy season at the summer solstice2. He is in his second Avatar as a star-god ruling this year Tishtrya, the bull with golden horns, who intervened between Tishtrya, the bright youth, fifteen years old, Caleb’s father, Jephunneh, and Tishtrya, the white sun-horse.
It was he who killed the old trinity of Southern Palestine, the gods Shesh-ai, Ahiman, and Tol-mai. These words, as all Hebrew- scholars admit, are not Hebrew. They seem to me to be god-names imported into Hebrew theology
1 I Chron. ii. io—16, 18, 19, 24, iv. 11, 12, 15 ; Gen. xxxviii. 2.
2 Darmesteter, Zemtavesta Tir Yasht, vi. 10—24; S. B.E., vol. xxiii. pp. 96—102,
by the Turvasu, who brought the gods and national customs of India to the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean coasts. Thus Shesh-ai is the wet-god Shesh or Sek Nag, the spring-god of the Takka triad. Ahiman, the Egyptian Ahi, a name of Osiris and the Sanskrit form of Echis, the holding- snake, the European Vritra, the encloser, and the equivalent of the Takka Vasuk, or Basuk Nag, the snake-god Vasuki, while Talmai is the mother Tal, the female form of the Akkadian Tal-tal, the very wise one of the name of la z. He is the counter-part of the Takka Takshaka, or Taksh Nag, the biting-snake of winter. It was to these three seasons that Caleb, as the god of this year, added the fourth season of this year, and commemorated the institution of this new measure of time by calling Hebron the capital of the tribe of Judah, the parent-altar-fire of Caleb, Kiriath- Arba,the city of the four 1 2 3 4 5. This was the year ruled by four Akkadian stars of the seven Lu-masi 3 : (1) Kakshisha, the horn (shi) star (shal the door {kak) Sirius, the star of summer. (2) En-te-na-mas-luv Hydra, the divine (en) foundation (te) of the prince (na) of the black (luv) antelope {mas), the star of the rainy autumn. (3) Ta-khu or Id-khu, the creating {id) mother-bird (Mu), the winter-star. (4) Papil- sak, the sceptre {pa), the wet or great (sak) fire {pit), the star of spring 4. In the theology of this year Masu. the Hebrew Moses, the leader of Caleb and the Israelites, was the star Regulus sC~This was the year of the ape with the lion’s taiTdepicted on the banner of Arjuna when he defeated the Kauravyas, rulers of this year with Uttara, the North-god of the summer solstice, as his charioteer. This year was led by the dog of the Pandavas, the last surviving com-
1 Sayce, Assyrian Grammar, Syllabary No. 16.
2 Hewitt, Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, vol. i., Essay iii., p. 189, note 2.
3 R. Brown, jun., F.S.A., ‘ Euphratean Stellar Researches,’ ii., Tablets YV, A, I, iii., lvii., No. 6, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archceology, May,
1893, p. 328.
4 Hewitt, Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, vol. i., Essay iv., pp. 370—372.;
5 Sayce, Hibbert Lectures for 1887, Lect. i. p. 49.
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panion of Yudishthira when he went up to heaven at the close of his career to join his brethren, its dead seasons. His faithful dog was changed into the star Sirius, the chief minister of the god Dharma, the Pole Star god1, author of law and order (dharm), and of the unvarying sequence of national phenomena, the Egyptain goddess Ma’at, the Pole Star Vega in Lyra from 10,000 to 8000 B.c.
But in order to understand fully the story of Caleb and to realise his connection with this year, we must turn to the historical chronicles compiled for oral recitation and transmitted by the national reciters of the countries in which the trading Turvasu or Yavanas of India became the ruling powers. They brought with them their eleven-months year, which they established as the official year of all lands where they ruled, the sea-coasts from India to Britany. And in this last country we have seen that this year is commemorated in the calendar of the eleven rows of stones at Menec, near Carnac, in Britany, in which the year-gnomon- stone was oriented to the rising sun of the summer solstice. One of the historical stories in which they recorded the history of this year and its foundation on the substructure of the three-years cycle with its forty months, is the widely disseminated tale of the Two Thieves who stole the king’s treasure. Variants of this story, which is told in Herodotus ii. 121, of the robbery of the treasure of Rhampsinitus, king of Egypt, are found in India, in story No. 2 in the Katha Sarit Sagara, and No. 11 of Lai Behari Dey’s Folk Tales of Bengal2. But the two forms of this story, which was intended to portray graphically the history of the great revolution in time-reckoning wrought by the Indian and Phoenician trading guilds when they substituted the year of eleven-months for the three-years cycle, are those of Tropho- nius and Agamedes, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Trophonius and Agamedes were sons of Erginus, king of the
1 Mahabharata Mahaprashthanika Parva, iii. 17, p. 8.
2 For other variants see list in Frazers’ Patisanias, vol. v. pp. 176—179.
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Minyans, a form of the snake-god Ericthonius, the god Poseidon. They were noted builders, who built the sanctuary of their father Poseidon near Mantinaea, and the bridal chamber of Alkmene, the goddess of the moon-bow (alk, arc) mother, the sun-god Herakles I. But the building which indicates most clearly their historical position as star-year- gods of a year measured by nights, who marked the stages in heaven through which the sun-god was to run his annual course, is the treasury of King Hyrieus at Delphi, of which they were the architects. In this, like the pyramid thieves of the story of Rhampsinitus, they contrived that one of the stones could be removed from the outside so that they might enter and pilfer the hoard every night. This treasure was that of the god of the bee - hive or vault of heaven, called Hyrieus (vplevs from vpov, a hive, vpiov, honey-comb). This was the Pole Star god ruling the bee-hive of Mordvin theology, described in Chapter IV. p. 169. In this world’s temple of the bees, the star-gods of heaven, the priests and priestesses who uttered the commands and counsel of the father-god in oracles were the working-bees. These were the Greek Melissai, the bees, the official name of the priestesses of the mother-goddess of Ephesus, of Demeter and Persephone. The Semite prophet priestesses are commemorated under the name of Deborah, the bee of the date-palm-tree, the nurse of Rebekah, the mother of Isaac (laughter\ the blind god of the laughing corn of harvest, who ruled Israel with Barak, the lightning-god, the Centaur-god of the heavenly bow. She was buried at Bethel under the Oak of Weeping (A//on - bacuth)2, after Jacob, the supplanter sun-god, had destroyed the idols and false gods of the Pole Star god, his predecessor. Thus she was the mother-year-goddess, the queen bee, whose annual death was lamented at her year’s end, like that of Dumuzi. It was the prophet star-bees, the measurers of
1 Frazer, Patisanias, ix. 37, 4, 5, viii. 10, 2, ix. ir, i, vol. i.
2 Ibid., vol. iv. pp. 223, 224; Gen. xxxv. 1—8 ; Judges iv. 4!!. v.
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the year, who nursed the young Zeus in Crete as the son of Rhea, the tree-mother of the sons of the rivers. The hive of these holy bees, the over-arching heavens, was the tower of the three-year cycle, and it was in the age of the cycle-year that the article of the national creed was made requiring belief in the world as a bee-hive, whence honey was taken for the preparation of the inspiring mead and for generating physical and mental life on earth.
This conclusion will be made still more clear by examining the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The latter, whose number is the same as that of the months of the cycle- year, had buried their treasure in a cave, the dark amphitheatre of the night sky, the cave of Cybele. Ali Baba, who found it, was a poor wood-cutter with three asses, those which drew the car of the Ashvins, the three seasons of the year of the three-legged ass of the Zendavesta. His brother, Kasim, whose name means the collector of tribute in kind I, was wealthy and prosperous: They signify the two seasons of
the equinoctial year of the cycle, the despised season of winter, beginning at the autumnal and the wealthy season of spring, and summer beginning at the vernal equinox. It was at the autumnal equinox that the treasure was discovered. When Ali Baba came Upon the thieves he watched them from a hiding-place, and learnt that they opened the door of the treasure-house by saying Open Sesame, and shut it by saying Shut Sesame. Thus this discoverer is the ruling twin of the eleven-months year of the oil growers whose sacred plant was the Sesamum Orientale. When Ali Baba’s brother Kasim discovered his brother’s good fortune, and was told the secret of the pass-word, he took ten mules, the ten sexless months of gestation of the cycle-year, to the cave, which he opened by calling out Open Sesame, and shut it by saying Shut Sesame. But when after taking ten muleloads of treasure he wanted to return, he forgot the password, and called out Open Barley, showing that he was the
? Burton, Arabian Nights, vol, xii. p. 13, note 2.
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summer and autumn god of the barley - growers whose revenue he collected. He was found in the cave, and slain as the autumn harvest-god by the forty thieves of the cycle-year, and they divided his body into two parts, which they hung up on each side of the cave door as the twin door-posts of the holy temple of the Garden of God opening at the autumnal equinox, when the cycle- year began.
Ali Baba, the ruling twin of the eleven-months year, removed these gate-posts of the cycle-age, and was sought after by the thieves as the unknown destroyer of their carefully constructed clock of time. They were baffled and finally slain by Marjanah, the maid-servant of Kasim, whose name means red-coral. She, who was the slayer of the forty cycle-months or thieves, was the fish-sun-mother of the sun- god conceived at its close, who married Ali Baba’s son, the sun-god of the winter solstice *. She was the sea-mother- goddess, the counterpart of Thetis, the ocean-mud (thith), who, as the Black Demeter of Phigalia in Arcadia, with the horse’s head of the black-horse-god Dadhiank, bore the sun-god of this eleven-months year1 2 to Poseidon, the god who gave the sun-horses to Peleus.
When we return to the story of Trophonius and Agamedes, sons of Erectheus Poseidon, the Greek Ali Baba and Kasim, we find still further evidence connecting the robbery of the treasure with the substitution of the eleven-months year of the sun-god, with the horse’s head for the cycle-year. These twin robbers of the treasury they built were the counterparts of the Hindu Ashvins, the stars Gemini who ruled both the cycle and the eleven-months year, the two door-posts of the House of God. Agamedes, like Kasim, was caught in a snare, from which he could not be freed, and slain by his brother, who cut off his head to escape detection, as Ali Baba carried
1 Burton, Arabian Nights, ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,’ vol. x. pp. 209 ff.3 216, note i, 234.
2 Berard, Origine dcs Cnltcs Arcadiens, ii., Les Deesses, pp. 104—109; Frazer, Pausanias, viii., xlii. pp. 428, 429.
B b 2
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away his brother’s body. According to Pausanias, as Trophonius carried away his brother’s head the earth opened and received Trophonius in the sacrificial pit consecrated to Agamedes, the Hindu Pole Star goat (aja), in which a black ram was offered to him as the ram-sun-god of the cycle-year slain at its close I.
As for Trophonius, he is the god worshipped at Lebadea in Bceotia as Zeus Trophonius, the Phoenician Baal Tropha, the healing-god 2 3 4 *. His cave and grove, which were frequented by worshippers who sought advice from his oracles, and who wore at his shrine shoes made of the skins of animals sacrificed to him 3, were on the river Hercyna, that of the goddess Erycina, the Phoenician Erek Hayim, the preserving goddess, the star Virgo. She, according to the legend told by Pausanias, was the goddess holding the goose, the Hindi? Kansa, the goose-king of this epoch which fled from her to Persephone, who, as the autumn mother of the goose-god born from the sun-god, hid it under a stone 4.
This goose layer of the sun-egg was the Egyptian god or goddess who laid the egg of Nekekur the Great Cackler under the great sycamore-tree, in the sacred sun-city of On. She is called also the star (seb) god Seb, who laid the egg in the growth of which Osiris lives s. This egg laid by the star-god is the egg of the god Bes, a form of Seb, whose ancient name is Bes-bes the goose 6 7. He or she is called in the Book of the Dead the being within the sixteenth Pylon, or gate of the gods through which the soul of Ani passes, the Lady of Victory who burneth with flames of fire (Bes), creator of the mysteries of the earth 7. That is to say, she
1 Frazer, Pausanias, ix. 37, 2, 3, 39, 4, vol. i. pp. 490, 491, 493, 494, vol. V. p. 201.
2 Ibid., vol. v. p. 197 ; Berard, Origine des Cultes Arcadiens, pp. 293, 294.
3 Frazer, Pausanias, vol. v. pp. 202, 203.
4 Ibid., ix. 39, 1, 2, vol. i. pp. 492, 493.
s Budge, Book of the Dead, chaps, liv., lix. pp. 105, 108, 109.
6 Brugsch, Religion tend Mythologie der Alten AEgypter, pp. 172, 173, 576, 577-
7 Budge, Book of the Dead, chap. cxlv. 56, Translation, p. 250, Text, p. 344.
