chapter viii
. These assertions are fair specimens of the harm done to philology, in uncritical England, by the one-sided and _ad captandum_ views of the ‘Sanskritists.’ Mr. Gerald Massey hardly exaggerates when he says (i. 135), ‘It looks as if the discovery of Sanskrit were doomed to be a fatal find for the philologists of our generation.’ The peculiar mixture of philology, in its specialist form, with the science of religion and the tenebræ of metaphysics has, it appears to me, done much harm to all three; but it delighted the half-educated public. It met with scant appreciation in acute France and in critical Germany, where the editing, or rather mutilation, of texts, has been severely chastised. But the Sanskritist, much to the discredit of Oriental studies and of philology in England, has given us an indigestion of Sanskritism; during the last great Oriental Congress in London he almost monopolised time and attention, to the prejudice of Orientalism in general. Apparently a protest is on the point of being raised; but, unhappily, Teutonism is still a scourge in Great Britain, and the typical Solar myth, ‘like Hermann’s a German.’
[614] Except, of course, in the bronze.
[615] Charles Rau (?), an American, by means of a bow, and without using metal, bored a hole through an axe of diorite: it occupied him ten hours a day for four months (Jähns, p. 6).
[616] In mediæval Romance ‘Ilios,’ ‘Ilion,’ and ‘Ilium’ were applied to the Palace of Priam.
[617] _Juventus Mundi_, by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, p. 529.
[618] May it not be the black hæmatite used in Cyprus? Compare the goose’s head, the sacred basket, and the frog, Egyptian symbol of embryonic man and of Hor-Apollo (Harpocrates), in General Palma (Appendix, p. 364). But is this able writer sure about his ‘hæmatite’?
[619] I.e. to one looking north and therefore west. The old Egyptians faced to the south (Hín or Khount), which they called ‘upwards’ or ‘forwards,’ in opposition to the North, which was the lower (Khir) or hinder part (Pehu). Thus their right was west (Unim) and their left east (Semah): the right leg of Osiris was the western side of the Delta. So Pliny (ii. 6) makes his observer front southwards. The Assyrian and Semites faced east (Kadam or front, opposed to Akhir or Shalam, the sun’s _resting_-place): hence their right (Yemen) was the south, and their left (Sham) was north. They introduced this fashion into Ancient India, where, consequently, Dakshina (_dextra_, the right hand) became the south, and survives in our ‘Deccan.’ The practice even extended to Ireland where Eiꞃin or Eꞃin (Erin, Ierne) has been derived from the Keltic iaꞃ, behind, the west; and in, an island, the isle lying west of France and Britain.
[620] Travellers who have inspected the excavations deride these pompous terms: the ruins look well in book-illustrations, but the reality is mean in the extreme.
[621] Dr. Schliemann shows the human umbilicus adorned with a cross. The significance of such phrases as ‘omphalos of the earth’ applied to Delphi and Paphos, is generally misunderstood. Any traveller in India who has seen a Lingait temple would at once explain it, as well as the illustration in Wilkinson (vol. i. ch. iv. p. 270) showing the Lingam-Yoni, whose worshippers are ‘cherubim’ (i.e. winged Thmei). Similarly the symbol of Chemosh of Moab and of sundry classical gods was a cone. The Dea Multimamma, Cybele, miscalled ‘Artemis’ (Diana) of the Ephesians, was a statue, not a cone, but it stood upon an inverted pyramid. The uninitiated as little understand the Crux Ansata or Egyptian Cross, the emblem of life and fecundity, which was adopted by the Coptic Christians. The sacred Tau (Tau of Ezekiel ix. 6) gave rise to the Maltese Cross in Phœnicia, and in Assyria became the emblem of Shamas the sun.
[622] I need hardly remind ‘Grecians’ that Tychius is supposed to have been a personal friend of the arch-Homerid.
[623] Upon this point Dr. Schliemann’s _Mycenæ_ is more explicit.
[624] It is, I need hardly say, still a disputed point whether the Homeric Greeks could or could not write. See