Gauri, Anna-deo or Anna-devi, and Anna-puma, filling with food,' or the nourisher, are the names applied to 'the mother of mankind,' when she ' places the repast before the messenger of heaven. Considerable resemblance is to be discerned be tween this festival of Gauri and those in honour of the Egyptian Diana at Bubastes, and of Isis at Busiris, within the delta of the Nile, of which Herodotus says, They who celebrate those of Diana embark in vessels ; the women strike their tabors, the men their flutes, the rest of both sexes clap their hands and join in chorus. Whatever city they approach, the vessels • are brought on shore, the women use ungracious language, dance, and indelicately throw about their garments.' Wherever the rites of Isis prevailed, we find the boat introduced as an essential emblem in her worship. Bryant furnishes an interesting account from Diodorus and Curtius, illustrated by draw ings from Pocock, from the temple of Luxor, near Carnac, in the Thebaid, of the ship of Isis carry ing an ark ; and from a male figure therein, this learned person thinks it bears a mysterious allu sion to the deluge. Colonel Tod, however, was inclined to deem the personage in the ark Osiris, husband of Isis, the type of the sun arrived in the sign of Aries (of which the rams' heads ornament ing both the prow and stem of the vessel are typical), the harbinger of the annual fertilizing inundation of the Nile, evincing identity of origin as an equinoctial festival with that of Gauri (Isis) of the Indo-Scythic races of Rajasthan.
Heavenly stranger, please to taste These bounties, which our nourisher, from whom All perfect good, unmeasured out, descends To us for food, and for delight hath caused The earth to yield. '—Paradisc Lost, book v. pp. 397,401.
The German Suevi adored Isis, and also intro duced a ship in her worship, for which Tacitus 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 (Mercury) were the chief deities of both the Celtic and early Gothic races, the Budha and Ella of the Rajputs ; in short, the earth, the prolific mother, the Isis of Egypt, the Ceres of Greece, the Anna purna (giver of food) of the Rajputs. On some ancient temples dedicated to this Hindu Ceres are sculptured on the frieze and pedestal of the columns the emblem of abundance, termed the cumacumpa, 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 the Egyptian god Canopus is depicted under the form of a water-jar or Nilometer, whose covering bears the head of Osiris.— Tod's Rajasthan i. p. 570.