A comparative view of antient monuments of India, particularly those in the island of Salset near Bombay / as described by different writers. [Anon].

Richard Gough

Date:: 1785

Credit: A comparative view of antient monuments of India, particularly those in the island of Salset near Bombay / as described by different writers. [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$» \ Bacchus in India [sr], Thefe refembled thofe in the iflands oft Elephanta and Salset, in which laft is the temple of PoNt-r ser from whence M. AnquetH carried off a cow like thofe that reprefented Bacchus among the Greeks. And when they found in India firch monuments, when they met with there the figure of Brouma reprefented under the forms of their Bac- chus Myfes as at Elephanta, and when they faw thefe figures like thofe of Liber and Libera placed by the fide of each other, as we learn from Pliny* [a] they were at Rome, fome of them' could not help thinking that Bacchus was born in India. They, faw there the fame worth ip that we fee at prefent, and ex- plained thefe monuments as we do;, but they drew from each a.conclufion which the hiftory of India exprefly cont-radidts*, finee inftead of looking upon Bacchus as a native of this coun- try, it exp re fly fays, he was a ft ranger and came from the Weft [i]. The epoch of the arrival and conqueft of Bacchus in India, where their hiftorians fay he reigned fifty-two years [c], is fixed by M. Bailly \d] to 3605 years before Chri-ft. . This inge- nious calculation determines the time when Bacchus or Brouma, became a mythologic phantom, and . was iubftituted to the ob- jedt of worth ip which himfelf had introduced. It alfo reft rains within due bounds the high antiquity of the Indians, whole aft rorro mica 1 epoch is near 400 years pofterior to the firft of the 154 kings who fucceeded Bacchus, till the time of Alexan- der the Great [<?], and leads us to fufpedt that the Hercules who: *■. is laid to have reigned,, and been deified in India, was no other.... [2] Diod. ibr . [a] H. N. xxxviii. c. 4. • [ b~\ D’Ancarville, I. 97—101. Sec Died. Sic. II. p. 1 : [c] Diod. Sic. ib. [A] Hilt. deJ’A.ftron, anc..IV. § 73. eclairc. III. § S. p. 329. Pliny, N. H. vn.c, 31., c- than:$