symbol is authorized by Holy Writ; but when it is taken to represent the person of the Deity, then it becomes an idol, and its use is a breach of the divine commandment. The justness of this distinction the following instance will clearly shew.

When Solomon king of Israel built his famed temple at Jerusalem, he set up two pillars in the porch of the temple: the pillar on the right hand or entrance he called Jachin, a word significant of strength and of power effectually applied; the pillar on the left he called Boaz, meaning reign and dominion firmly established. Scriptural authorities © shew that the king builded according to plans and instructions which his father king David had communicated, having received them from the prophet Nathan, who had received them from God himself by special revelation. Hence it is evident that the form and the furniture of the temple were, like the tabernacle in the wilderness, such as the Deity especially approved: and consequently the use of these pillars and their symbolical import were approved also. Commentators are not agreed as to the import of these pillars. It has been suggested that they bear allusion to the two memorable pillars of fire and of the cloud which went before the Israelites at their exode from Egypt.d The allusion is, however, so remote as to appear almost improbable, more especially as no such structures were set up during the sojourn in the wilderness. The pillars may rather be understood to have been symbols of the import above stated, as the following authorities will shew.

The Hebrew word omad, by which these structures are named in Holy Writ, and rendered in our translation pillars,e signifies a column which stands, or is self-sustained, and supports other things. A pillar is, therefore, an apt repre

a 1 Kings vii. 21. 2 Chronicles ii. 7. Jeremiah lii. 21.

b Hutchinson, vol. xiv. p. 82.

d Pyle, Comm.

c 1 Chronicles xxviii. 11, &c.

e Parkhurst in voc.

sentation both of the power of the Almighty, and of the exercise of that power. The form and dimensions of the pillars of the temple are equally significant of the same sentiment. Taking the cubit to be the cubit of the sanctuary, or about twenty-eight inches, their height was about forty feet, and their diameter nine feet, proportions which exhibit great strength and stability. The top of each pillar was finished with a capital of what is called lily-work. This, it is presumed, was a combination of the flowers of the nymphæa lotos, an aquatic plant, the growth of warm climates, which was used not only by the Egyptian, but by the Indian theologues also, to represent the world borne up above the waters in its calyx. The same use of the flower may still be seen in many of the columns lately brought into our country from Egypt. The dimension of these capitals being four cubits, greatly exceeds the proportions of the capitals in the architecture of the Greeks and the Egyptians; but they were expressive of great power, and are not without their parallels in Indian architecture. These cups or calyxes of the lilies are called the bowls of the chapiters, which were bodies sustained in cavities formed in the upper surface of the capitals. These chapiters were spheres of the diameter of five cubits, for their height is stated to have been five cubits. Over the surface of both, were wreaths of pomegranates, forming nets of chequer-work, particularly dense on the belly, or that portion of the sphere which projected over the capital of the pillars. Such were the characteristics of these remarkable structures.

The import of these structures is very evident and certain. The pillars represented the sustaining power of the great God. The flower of the lotus or water-lily rises from a root growing at the bottom of the water, and maintains its position on the surface by its columnar stalk,

'Hutchinson, vol. ii.

which becomes more or less straight as occasion requires; it is, therefore, aptly symbolical of the power of the Almighty constantly employed to secure the safety of all the world. The chapiter is the body or mass of the earth; the pomegranates, fruits remarkable for the number of their seeds, are symbols of fertility; the wreaths, drawn variously over the surface of the chapiter or globe, indicate the courses of the heavenly bodies in the heavens around the earth, and the variety of the seasons. Such was the symbolical import of the pillars Icin and Boaz. in the porch or portico of the temple, for they suggested just ideas of the power of the Almighty, of the entire dependence of man upon him the Creator, and doing this they exhorted all to fear, to love, and obey him. The pillars Icin and Boaz were symbols worthy of their place in the porch, the entrance into the temple. To the contemplative they could not be without effect.

They were properly placed

In front, and before the entrance into a cave called the Indra Subba, or court of the god Indra, excavated in a hill near Ellora, in the province of Dowlatabad, stands a column of exactly the same import as the pillars above described. g It is raised on a quadrangular base of three feet. The shaft is round, fluted, and elegantly tapering; the top or capital consists of three prolate spheroids crowned by a small gibbous dome. The whole structure is elegant, and decorated with laboured sculptures. Near it, on the right side of the entrance, is an elephant, cut out of the same rock, as are the pillar and the whole of the subba or temple of the god, a work of wonderful labour and ingenuity.g

There can be no doubt that the import of the pillar is exactly the same as of those of the temple at Jerusalem. The base and shaft of the column represents the power of the Deity; the three spheroids the three regions of space, important objects in the Hindù rites. The dome atop is

Asiatic Researches, vol. vi. No. 10.

the abode of the god, according to the doctrine of the Sastra. The elephant is the vahana or vehicle of Indra, the god supreme, and, therefore, a personification of the world. The elephant, like the pillar, is also a symbol of the sustaining power, as is the contiguous pillar a symbol of the divine power. Thus do the pillar and the elephant accord in import with the Icin and Boaz of the temple of Jerusalem. The vast and solid structures which stand on either side of the entrances of many of the temples of Egypt, are most assuredly of the same symbolical import, as were also the more elegant obelisks, which were placed at the entrances of some temples.

The reverence shewn to columns, as symbols of the power of the Deity, was readily converted into worship paid to them as idols of the real presence. This change did not, however, take place without much violence and outrage practised by the advocates of the new doctrine towards their opponents. It was so, at least, in India, as may be gathered from the following figurative history given in what is called the Nara-Singa, or Man-lion avatara, recorded in the Sastra.

A youth named Paralodha, a name implying much purity and virtue, contended in opposition to his father, a monarch named Hiranyacasipù, that is, the monarch of the golden battle-axe, that the divine spirit was actually present in a certain pillar which the youth worshipped. This the father boldly denied. The youth repeated the assertion: "Then," said the father, "I thus defy your god of the pillar;" and immediately he struck it with his battle-axe. Instantly, says the fable, the pillar opened, and forth rushed a personage having the body of a man with the head of a lion, who, after a long struggle with the monarch, put him to a cruel death by tearing out his bowels. h

This fable contains a figurative history of the first use, at least in India, of upright stones and pillars as idols repreh Maurice, Anc. Hist. Hind. vol. ii. part 1.

sentative of the actual presence of the Deity. Hitherto, as may be learned from the earlier avataras of the Fish, the Boar, and the Tortoise, the Deity had been feigned to bear the form of animal symbols only; but by the Nara-Singa avatara it was positively insisted that inanimate bodies might with equal fitness be available for the same purpose, especially after the performance of certain rites of consecration. That this advance in the progress of idolatry was made in an early age of the world, is evident from the injunctions contained in the Mosaic Law, requiring the Israelites to destroy such objects. The idolatrous use of pillars was evidently adopted long before the exode of the Israelites, or more than fifteen hundred years before the Christian era. This fact strongly confirms the claim of Hindù records to great antiquity, which even the extravagances of their chronology cannot overthrow. The testimony of these records is of much importance, not only in respect of the history of idolatry in general, but particularly the history of the Celtic religion and Druidism. It shews the early date and origin of their worship of pillars and stones, beyond which the Druids never passed; for, notwithstanding their numerous personifications of the Deity in the different forms or powers of Nature, it does not appear that they ever adopted any idol either of the animal or human form, but addressed their acts of devotion to such objects only as claimed religious reverence in consequence of the Nara-Singa avatara.

The violence by which the votaries of the pillar established their doctrine and mode of worship, prevailed very successfully for a certain, perhaps a long period; but the power and influence of the sect was finally overthrown by the votaries of the Sastra, and the general establishment of Brahmenism, at least in the kingdoms and provinces of Hindosthan. The history of this revolution is recorded in the following avatara distinguished by the title of the Bamùn or Dwarf.

The god Vishnu, assuming the form of a person in stature