BACCHU , the god of wine, the son of Jupiter and Semele. He is represented as always young, crowned with ivy or vine leaves, and sometimes with horns, hence called Cnrniger, holding in his hand a thyrsus, or spear bound with ivy : his chariot was drawn by tygers, lions, or lynxes, attended by Silenus, his preceptor, bacchanals, and satyrs. Bac chus is equally celebrated in Greece, Egypt, and In dia; and each of these countries claims the honour of having given him birth. He was a very important personage in ancient mythology, and is represented as the great promoter of civilization over the world. He is said to have settled men in society, and to have taught them agriculture, commerce, and navi gation ; hence he is reckoned the same as the Egyp tian Osiris. The muses have also been indirectly in. debted to him ; for it is said, that the first attempts at tragedy were made at the annual festivals in ho nour of Bacchus, (Hor. De Arte Poet. 220.) And many seem to have thought, that his influence was not less necessary than that of Apollo, to give birth to poetic inspiration : Enniug ipsc paler nunquanz nisi pubis ad arras Prosiluit diccnda.
Numberless conjectures have been offered to ex plain the fabulous history of Bacchus. Some sup. pose him to have been Moses ; Bochart imagines that he was Nimrod, and that his name is properly Bar Chus, the son of Chits ; Mr Bryant contends that he was Noah ; and Sir William Jones, with still greater probability, as we shall afterwards see, supposes him to have been Ramah, the son of Chus, or Cush ; and suggests, that his name may be derived from Bagis, one of the names of Siva.
One of the most celebrated of the exploits of Bacchus was his conquest of India : this circumstance would naturally lead us to look to that quarter of the world for some illustration of his history. Ac cordingly we learn from Arrian, ( /list. Ind. p. 318, 321.) that the worship of Bacchus, or Dionysus, was common in India, and that his votaries observed a number of rites similar to those of Greece : such as crowning themselves with ivy ; wearing the nebris, or spotted skins, like the Bacchanalians in the west ; and using cymbals and tabours in their religious ce remonies. On this account, when Alexander enter ed India, the natives considered the Greeks as be longing to the same family with themselves ; and, when the people of Nysa sent the principal person of their city, to solicit their freedom of the Grecian conqueror, they conjured him by the well-known name of Dionysus, as the most effectual means of obtaining; their purpose. " 0 king, the Nysstrans entreat thee to allow them to enjoy their liberties and their laws, out of respect to Dionysus." Arrian. Exp. Alex. I. v. p. 196.
But Sir William Jones, in his dissertation on the gods of Greece, Italy, and India, has shewn, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that the worship of Bac chus was not only common in India, in the time of Alexander, but actually is so at the present day ; and has demonstrated, that the Greeks must either have derived it from that country, or at least from some common source. As his. observations on this subject are both curious and interesting, we shall give them in his own words : " Two incarnate deities of the first rank, Rama and Crishna, must now be introduced. The first of them, I believe, was the Dionysus, or Bacchus, of the Greeks, whom they named Bromius, without knowing why ; and Bugenes, when they represented him horned; as well as Lyaios, and Eleutherios, the Deliverer ; and Triambos, or Dithyrambos,the Trium phant. Most of these titles were adopted by the Ro mans, by whom he was called Brunza, Taurifbrmis, Liber, Triumphus : and both nations had records, or traditionary accounts, of his giving laws to men, and deciding their contests ; of his improving navigation and commerce ; and, what may appear yet more ob servable, of his conquering India, and other countries, with an army of satyrs, commanded by no less a personage than Pan. It were superfluous, in a mere
essay, to run any length in the parallel between this European god and the sovereign of Ayodhya, whom the Hindoos believe to have been an appearance on earth of the Preserving Power; to have been a con queror of the highest renown, and to have command ed in chief a numerous and intrepid race of those large monkeys which our naturalists have denomina ted Indian satyrs. His general, the prince of sa tyrs, was named Hanumat : and with workmen of such agility, he soon raised a bridge of'rocks over the sea, part of which, say the Hindoos, yet remains; and it is- probably the series of rocks to which the Mussulmans and Portuguese have given the foolish name of Adam's (it should be called Rama's) Bridge. Might not this army of satyrs have been only a race of mountaineers, whom Rama, if such a monarch ever existed, had civilized ? However that may be, the large breed of Indian apes is at this moment held in high veneration by the Hindoos, and fed with devo tion by the Bramins, who seem, in two or three places on the banks of the Ganges, to have a regular endowment for the support of them : they live in tribes of 300 or 400 ; they are wonderfully gentle, (I speak as an eye witness,) and appear to have some kind of order and subordination in their little sylvan polity. We must not omit, that the father of Ha numat was the god of wind, named Pavan, one of the eight genii ; and as Pan improved the pipe, by adding six reeds, so one Lf the four systems of In dian music bears the name of Hanumat, as its inven tor, and is now in general estimation." Sir William afterwards observes, " the first poet of the Hindoos was the great Valmic; and his Ra mayan is an epic poem on the subject of Rama, which, in unity of. action, magnificence of imagery, and elegance of style, far surpasses the learned and elaborate work of Nonnus, entitled Dionysiaca : and I am confident, that an accurate comparison of the two E poems would prove Dionysus and Rama to have been the same person : and I incline to think that he was Rama the son of Cush, who might have established the first regular government in this part of Asia. I had almost forgotten, that Meros is said by the Greeks to have been a mountain of India, on which their Dionysus was born, and that Meru is also a mountain near the city of Naishada, or Nysa, called by the Grecian geographers Dionysopolis, and uni versally celebrated in the Sanscrit poems." These extracts throw great light on Grecian my thology. They prove clearly that the Greeks de rived the history of their Dionysus from India : they seem to account for the veneration paid to fauns and satyrs; and the mountain Meru, near Nysa, seems to have given rise to the ridiculous story of Bacchus being sewed into the thigh, (,amcac, meros) of Jupi ter. The difficulty, however, is only removed one step farther back ; for the Indian fables respecting Rama are still involved in impenetrable darkness.. Perhaps, however, some farther light may yet be thrown on this subject from the stores of oriental li terature. See Bryant's Mythology, vol. iv. 250, 273; v. 94; vi. 141. Asiatic Researches, vol. i. (g)