Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s3.84

v2.c27.s3.84

The Goddess Ganga.—Ganga, the river-goddess, like the Nile, is the type of fertility, and like that celebrated stream, has her source amidst the eternal glaciers of Chandragiri or Somagiri (the mountains of the moon); the higher peaks of the gigantic Himalaya, where Parvati is represented as ornamenting the tiara of Iswara “ with a beamy moon.” In this metaphor, and in his title of Somanatha (lord of the moon), we again have evidence of Iswara, or Siva, after representing the sun, having the satellite moon as his ornament.¹ His Olympus, Kailasa, is studded with that majestic pine, the cedar; thence he is called Kedarnath, ‘lord of the cedar-trees.’² The mysteries of Osiris and those of Eleusis³ were of the same character, commemorative of the first germ of civilization, the culture of the earth, under a variety of names, Ertha, Isis, Diana, Ceres, Ila. It is a curious fact that in the terra-cotta images of Isis, frequently excavated about her temple at Paestum,⁴ she holds in her right hand an exact representation of the Hindu lingam and yoni combined; and on the Indian expedition to Egypt, our Hindu soldiers deemed themselves amongst the altars of their own god Iswara (Osiris), from the abundance of his emblematic representatives.