Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s4.t2.78

v2.c27.s4.t2.78

“ Est-ce l’Inde, la Phénicie, l’Éthiopie, la Chaldée, ou l’Égypte, qui a vu naître ce culte ? ou bien le type en a-t-il été fourni aux habitans de ces contrées, par une nation plus ancienne encore ? ” asks an ingenious but anonymous French author, on the origin of the Phallic worship.¹ Ramesa, chief of the Suryas, or sun-born race, was king of the city designated from his mother, Kausalya, of which Ayodhya was the capital. His sons were Lava and Kusa, who originated the races we may term the Lavites and Kushites, or Kushwas of India.² Was then Kausalya [603] the mother of Ramesa, a native of Aethiopia,³ or Kusadwipa, ‘ the land of Cush ’? Rama and Krishna are both painted blue (nila), holding the lotus, emblematic of the Nile. Their names are often identified. Ram-Krishna, the bird-headed divinity, is painted as the messenger of each, and the historians of both were contemporaries. That both were real princes there is no doubt, though Krishna assumed to be an incarnation of Vishnu, as Rama was of the sun. Of Rama’s family was Trisankha,⁴ mother of the great apostle of Buddha, whose symbol was the serpent ; and the followers of Buddha assert that Krishna and this apostle, whose statues are facsimiles of those of Memnon, were cousins. Were the Hermetic creed and Phallic rites therefore received from the Ethiopic Cush? Could emblematic relics be discovered in the caves of the Troglodytes, who inhabited the range of mountains on the Cushite shore of the Arabian straits, akin to those of Ellora and Elephanta,⁵ whose style discloses physical, mythological, as well as architectural affinity to the Egyptian, the question would at once be set at rest.