Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s3.77

v2.c27.s3.77

The German Suevi adored Isis, and also introduced a ship in her worship, for which Tacitus ¹ is at a loss to account, and with his usual candour says he has no materials whence to investigate the origin of a worship denoting the foreign origin of the tribe. This Isis of the Suevi was evidently a form of Ertha, the chief divinity of all the Saxon races, who, with her consort Teutates or Hesus ² (Mercury), were the chief deities of both the Celtic and early Gothic races: the [574] Budha and Ila of the Rajputs; in short, the earth, ³ the prolific mother, the Isis of Egypt, the Ceres of Greece, the Annapurna (giver of food) of the Rajputs. On some ancient temples dedicated to this Hindu Ceres we have sculptured on the frieze and pedestal of the columns the emblem of abundance, termed the kamakumbha, or vessel of desire, a vase of elegant form, from which branches of the palm are gracefully pendent. Herodotus says that similar water-vessels, filled with wheat and barley, were carried in the festival of Isis; and all who have attended to Egyptian antiquities are aware that the god Canopus is depicted under the form of a water-jar, or Nilometer, whose covering bears the head of Osiris.