At Vcllore, Ellore, or Ello•a, (Plates CIA. and CLII.) the sculptures, ke. arc still more extraordinary ; and all arc dedicated to the Lingam or Mandeu. The height of the grand pyramid is here 90 feet ; the smaller Ones feet ; the obelisks 38 feet. The elephants on each side of the court are larger than life ; and there is an apart ment for the Bull Nundcc. See C. W. Makes papet. Asiatic Researches, vol. vi. p. 383.
Sir W. Jones (As. Res. vol. i. p. 253.) is of opinion, that the Eswara and Isi of the Hindoos, are the Isis and Osiris of Egypt. He says, that the word Misr, the na• tive appellation of Egypt, is familiar in India ; that Tit hoot was the country, asserted by a learned Bramin, to 1.): that in which an Egyptian colony of priests have come from the Nile to the Ganges and Yamma (Jumna). And again, in his third annual discourse, the remains of ar chitecture and sculpture in India, prove an early connee• tion between this country and Africa, the pyramids of Egypt, the colossal statues of the Sphinx, and the Hermes Canis, which last hears a great resemblance to the Vara havatu, or the incarnation of Vishnu, indicate the style and mythology of the same indefatigable workmen, who formed the vast excavations of Canarah, the various tem ples and images of Buddah, and the idols which are con tinually dug up at Gaya.
Kempfer asserts, that the great Indian saint, Buddha, was a priest of Memphis, and having fled to India, intro duced the worship of Apis. (Kempler's !list. Japan. vol. i. p. 38, ed. 1738.) Athanasius Kircher is of opinion, that after Cambyses had murdered Apis, the most revered of the Egyptian deities, he committed wanton cruelties on the priests, and destroyed their magnificent temples, as related by licrodotus ; that the priests flying into the neighbouring countries of Asia, propagated the superstitions of Egypt.
The lotus was anciently in Egypt, and still in India, held sacred. Herodotus calls it the lily of the Nile. The
Egyptian priests had a sacred language, so have the Bramins. The Egyptians, according to Diodorus Sicu lus, were divided into five tribes, of which the first was sacerdotal. The Indians are separated into four, besides an inferior one, named Buzzer Sunkcr.
Father Loubere, who went ambassador from the king of France to the king of Siam, in 1687, thinks the super Stition of Boodh no other than the Sommonacodom, or stone deity of the Siamese, originally from Egypt. lle says, that their astronomers have fixed the death of Sommonacodom to the year B. C. 545, and that it was then their first grand astronomical epocha commenced. Now, by Usher, Cambyses invaded Egypt in 525. Lou bere adds, that the Siamese priests live in convents, which consist of many cells ranged within a large inclosurc ; that in the middle of the inclosurc stands the temple ; that pyramids stand near to and quite round the temple, all within four walls. See Loubere's Hist. of Siam, in Harris's Coll. of Troy. vol. ii. p. 482..
Sir W. Jones thinks, that the great statue of Naraycn, or the Spirit of God, who, at the beginning, floated on the as that statue is now to be seen in the great reservoir of Catmander, the capital of Nipaul, is the same as the Cneph of Egypt, under a different appella tion ; both statues are made of blue marble. See Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p.261.
Mr Call has published a drawing of the signs of the zodiac, which he found in the ceiling of a choultry at Verdapettah, in the Madurah country, viz. Brahma painted in pagodas, in the act of creation, floating over the watery abyss, reclining upon the expanded leaf of lotus ; Orisis found in the same attitude, recumbent on the same plant, in the Egyptian monuments. Maurice, vol. ii. p. 394.