The Round Towers of Ireland

ain the origin of the doctrine of Budhism. The savants of France, the indefatigable inquirers of Germany, the affected pedants of Greece and Rome, and the pure

ntiquity of this and the Jaina sects, and the little historical light that has yet been afforded to disperse the darkness that ages have

orship; but it is now totally abolished, except that there may possibly yet be found some families of Indians who have remained faithful to Baouth, and do not acknowledge the religion of the Brahmins, and who are on that account separated from and despised by the other castes.... I made

rtainty of Budha is, that he was the founder of a sect which must formerly have prevailed over a considerable part of India, but whose tenets and forms of worship were in

doctrines ascribed to him, is a desideratum which the learned knowledge and indefa

ed at predominance in India, its rise in the first place, and more especially its ext

stood, but under different associations. It was that which Job alluded to when he said, "If I gazed upon Orus (the sun) when he was shining, or upon J?rêcha (t

ship as taught by Budha." There never was such a person as Budha-I mean at the outset of the religion, when it first shot into life, and that was almost as early as the creation of man. In later times, however, several enthusi

e indebted for so many common benefits. Those mysteries of faith to which the "initiated" alone had access, and which were disguised in the habiliments of symbols and of veils, were neither more nor less than representative forms of generation and production. These were the t

being both viewed in the same light, and sometimes even named by the same epithet, viz. tillage, were inculcated no less as beneficial exercises than as religious ordinances. Did a doubt remain as to the accuracy of this connection between the worship of the ancients and their sexual correspondence, it would be more than removed by attending to the import of the terms by which they mystified those celebrations, and which, with the sanctity attached to the parts themselves, will come consecutively under our review. One of them, however, is too apposite to be omitted here, and that is the term b

d,-I mean the Lingam,-thought they could never carry their zeal sufficiently far, unless they erected it into an idol of more than colossal magnitude-and those idols were the Round Towers. Hence

cise as it was pious in its intent-a Sabian veneration and a symbolical gratitude. I shall now give a summary of their moral code, couched in the following Pentalogue, a

y animal-from the meanest

shalt no

lt not comm

t not tell a

t drink any into

ence, arose from their doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which they believed should continue ever in action,

n with the Godhead, whence it had originally derived-it is manifest that such tenderness for the entire animal creation arose from the apprehension of slaying some relation in that disguise.-Or, did we ascribe it to no higher motive than a sympathy with fellow-c

that drags the gra

weet and delightful to all

and hence the whole fraternity were called Danaans or Almoners.[124] By "Bavana" was understood the thoughtfully pronouncing those three words, Anuzza, Docha,

e compound Tuath-de-danaan, I shall reserve for a more befitting place. Meantime I h

y, and the "antiquary of antiquaries," Camden himself,-with a thousand others unworthy of recognition,-have been all consecutively shipwrecked upon its unapproachable sand-banks. But the most miserable failure of all is that of a namesake of my own, the a

of our vocabulary has never had a term whereby to express that metal at all,-that by which we now designate it, namely, iarun, being only a modern coinage from the English word,-as the general voice of antiquity speaks trumpet-tongued

ust Hibernia, their Latin inflection; and it would afford me a considerable portion of merriment to behold any champion for this

lect, who would state that Erin is but a metempsychosis of the word Green? Will it be believed that such is the sober utterance of the author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? But lest

iment to her sister, Britain, has borrowed an adjective from her rainbow, which, however, she had not the good manners to preserve pure, but allowed to deg

ebanks that have intermeddled with her holy tools, and disjointed the symmetry of her fair proportions, knowing no more of the foundation of languages than they do of the origin of spirit, have sunk it into a pandemonium of hackling, mangling, and laceration, at which "the satirist," perhaps, may laugh,

9] the opinions offered by the several persons who wrote before him upon the question, and none of them giving him satisfaction, he freely ack

to quote at full length the extract from Avi

obus in Sacra

i-solibus cu

das multum c

gens Hiber

sus insula Al

ted by the men of old. A rich gleby soil distinguishes this favourite of the waters; and the race of

all conversant with letters, whether it was as a vernacular epithet, or not rather in compliance with his hexameters and the rules of metrical versif

by the Germans, Germania; and that tenanted by the Arcadians, Arcadia? Consequently, the land inhabited by the people styled Hibernians must, by un

hristian era, and cites the authorities whence he der

with his own eyes and senses verified those facts. From the remote annals of the

ountrymen in general, is thus irrefutably premised, we shall be the more ready to do justice to that observation made by Tacitus, when, in his Life of Agricola, talking of I

r eagles to Britain; and, after effecting the subjugation of that heroic island, it is no small incentive to our vanity to see their historian constrained to confess that the exhibition of a similar project against the liberties of Ireland was more with a view to overawe, t

to establish the fact; for even admitting his cognisance of the identity of these two terms, he must yet of necessity be unacquainted with the root whence they both had spr

as intermediate, is the characteristic denomination which all our ancient manuscripts affix to this country. There is no exception to t

will the circumstance of his applying to it in another place, the variation Iris, detract from this fact; as it is evident that he only manufactured this latter, having occasion to use a nominative

the proficiency made by his subject in literary pursuits, says that he betook himself to Ireland, which he designates as a

equivalent to Iranians, that is inhabitants of Iran, Iren, or Irin, whichever of them you happen to prefer. And as these are n

tive inhabitants called Iran also, and spelled as ours, with an initial E. The prefixing of this letter, in both instances of its occurrence, whether we regard the Eastern or the Western hemisphere, was neither the result of chance, nor intended as an operative in the import of t

Ireland; and such is the softness and mellifluence of its enchanting tones, and its energy also, that to soothe c

so denominated from Iar, the West-unless, indeed, they can substitute East for West, and show that Persia was denominated from Iar also.[139] Entangled in this dilemma, the amiable old General Vallancy, without intimating, however, that it was what extorted his remark,-after rigidly maintaining through a se

s applied to that quarter: one by Professor Heeren, of the G?ttingen University; the other by "a learned priest of the Parsees," as recorded by Sir John Malcolm, the late lamented author of a hist

term of Iran, and the inhabitants, inasmuch as they possessed fixed habitations and laws, wer

while tracing the foundation of a name, descriptive of two localities at opposite points of this mundane ball, one boldly asserts, and the other more than insinuates, that its r

; whereas, the professor, who betrays a respectable insight into geology, and fearing that the womb of Persia could not conceive so hard an ore, wishes us at once to believe that it acquired its ancient epithet from the fixedness of that metal; and thus would one ex ab

, "that Iran is the plural of Eir, and means the country of believers." And aga

, was a Pehlivi word, which signified believer; Eeran was its plural: in Pehlivi, the a or an prefixed is a privative, as in Greek or Sanscrit; and consequently, An-Eeran meant unbelievers. The king of Eeran and An-Eeran he interp

ard for any knowledge which we do not ourselves understand. I do not mean, however, to vindicate Feroze's interpretation; on the contrary, I purpose to show that it is not only imperfect, but incorrect; yet while doing so, I am bound to acknowle

country of believers; if so, the singular must mean the country of a believer; but he tells us afterwards, that Eer signifies a believer alone, consequently Eeran must

will, I doubt not, readily disabuse him of a radical misconception. Eeran is not a plural at all, but a compound word: its constituents being Eer and An,[144] of

s," obtained not its name from that circumstance, but from a widely different one. Tur[145] means prolific, whether as regards population or rural produce; and An, as before, a territory-the whole betokening a prolific te