From the same authority I give a representation of Sin, the moon god of the Assyrians, in which we have a possible development towards the trisula form. In this the god is male, but it agrees with the other illustrations by showing the male within the female emblem.1

We are all familiar with the well-known legend of "The Man in the Moon," who was placed there as a punishment for gathering sticks on Sunday. After what has been said about the male power in the crescent, it will strike any one that this is either a very curious coincidence, or it is a survival of the old idea which has come down to the present day. I give an illustration of this, said to be in a church at Conway. Here again we have a development which produces a form similar to that of the trisula.

Reference may be here made again to the golden hand of the sun in the crescent, which has been already referred to. In this we have a form closely approximating to the trisula, and evidently from a development such as the theory of this paper suggests. The lingyoni of the Saiva worship might be brought forward as another illustration. In this case the female power is not represented by a crescent; but if that symbol took the place of the yoni, a perfect trisula would be the result.3

The Turks have adopted the crescent, embracing the sun or a star, and often in the form of a pentalpha; the crescent in this case is supposed to have been derived from the old Byzantine symbolism; and traces of this symbolism are still to be found in the Eastern Church. The Russian Church, which owes its origin to Byzantium, places a crescent under

1 Pl. IV. Fig. 1. I am aware that in some cases the moon was called male. This would be an important point to deal with, but its full consideration would be rather complicated to go into here. It is sufficient for my purpose that the moon was generally considered to be feminine. My own impression is that the two powers were so intimately connected as symbols, that the name of the one became the name of the other, or of both. We have many instances of this in language; the use of the word "throne," when we mean the "monarch" who sits in it, is a good illustrative example.

2 Pl. I. Fig. 14.

3 The Vaisnavites, already noticed, who have the trisula painted on their foreheads, explain it as male and female, but they have somehow or another transposed the gender of the symbols.

the cross,' an arrangement which is much older than what is called the "triumph of the cross over the crescent," that being the usual explanation. The Abyssinian Church also places a curved form under their large processional crosses, which looks as if it were derived from the crescent.2

These examples are produced merely to show that if a crescent form is adopted, and a symbol, solar or otherwise, is placed within it, how easily the trisula symbol might be evolved.

Many other illustrations might be given which would help to support the theory of the origin of the trisula I have ventured to suggest. I cannot affirm that the theory has been established into a certainty. All I can say is that the view of the case here presented is the one which seems to me to be the most probable, and that which is in the greatest conformity with the data I have produced. The illustrations given will show that the trisula had from a far back period a wide acceptance as a symbol over a large geographical space. How to account for this is a difficulty which belongs to many other matters connected with mythology and symbolism. Whether ideas in the past were carried from one nation to another by means of commerce, conquest or immigration, or had separate developments, is a problem in many cases I think we are as yet far from being in a position to solve in a satisfactory manner. Whatever may have been the origin. of the trisula, if its existence in countries so widely separated could be explained, the solution would be a most valuable contribution to our knowledge of mythology.

1 See Pl. III. Fig. 1.
2 See Pl. III. Figs. 2, 3.

ART. VIII.-Notes on the Early History of Northern India. Part IV. Essay on the Pre-Vedic History of India and the Identity of the Early Mythologies of Europe and Asia, founded on a Study of the Brahmanas and of Sacrificial Observances. By J. F. HEWITT, ESQ., M.R.A.S.

In the previous papers of this series I have tried to trace in outline a truthful sketch of the general course of early Indian History. The evidence I have consulted and set forth has led me to believe that the government, social institutions, and the fundamental principles of the religion of the country all originated among tribes for the most part of Dravidian race, who came into India from the Euphrates valley. In dealing with this evidence I have tried to trace the origin of the tribes who successively and simultaneously ruled India, the races to which they belonged, and the religious beliefs they held. In doing this I have also adduced proofs to show that the same races who introduced civilized and stable government into India performed the same task in the countries of Western Asia, in Egypt, Greece, and Italy. In the course of my argument I have laid stress on the value of early religious and astronomical history as a guide, not only to the social history of India, but to that of all countries ruled by immigrant tribes of Akkadian race. My conclusions as to Indian history were formed chiefly from a study of the Mahābhārata and Rigveda, and these authorities were largely supplemented by references to Greek and Latin historians, to Akkadian and Assyrian history, and by information derived from the present state of the country, its religious movements and social institutions.

The most valuable and conclusive evidence I have found

in the course of my inquiries is that derived from the discovery that the Hindus not only measured time in very early ages by a year reckoned by lunar months of twentyeight days each, but that the measurement of time and the accepted popular and official theology were most closely connected together. I have, I believe, in the previous papers of this series, proved that the lunar year was used by the people of India for ages before they adopted the solar year, which has now for thousands of years been the official measure of time. It was from a comparison of the Brāhmaṇas with the Mahabharata and the writings of Indian astronomers that I have been able to show (1) That the most ancient gods of India were those who became afterwards gods of time; (2) That the fifty great gods of the Akkadians, early Hindus and Greeks, were the dominant gods of the two original years, the year of ten lunar months of twentyeight days each, which was afterwards extended by the result of astronomical observations to the full lunar year of thirteen months. I have further pointed out that Assyrian and Egyptian chronology prove that the solar year was first adopted about 4700 B.C., and that the beginnings of the very

1 I must here note what further inquiry has shown me to be an error in my discrimination of the fifty great gods. I treated them as being divided into the twenty-seven Nakshatra, or phases of the moon, which in the Hindu sacred calendar represented the lunar year, the lunar year of thirteen months and the ten months of the year of gestation. This is the division in the Mahabharata. But I have shown in the Appendix to this essay that the Nakshatra were originally twenty-eight in number, and that they represented the days of the lunar month, and that the twenty-seven Nakshatra used to denote the sacrificial year among the Hindus were only adopted as a measure of the year when the five years cycle reconciling the solar, lunar and sidereal year was formed. There is no evidence that this cycle was ever used in Greece, and consequently the fifty daughters of Endymion and Danaus must mean fifty-one gods including the father, namely, the twenty-eight days of the lunar month, the thirteen months of the lunar year, and the ten months of the year of gestation. These fifty great gods and their father, which include, as I show in the Appendix, Priam and his fifty sons, must have been distributed all over the world long before sun worship and the solar year were introduced, and the interpretation given in the Mahabharata as to their number only proves that the whole system of measuring time by the moon had been so engrained in the public mind that it was necessary to connect the new solar measurement of time with the older lunar system before the innovation would be accepted by the people and by their priestly guides, whose instincts were essentially and even obstructionally conservative. But both the lunar and solar systems of time measurement took their rise in the Euphrates valley, and from thence penetrated into other countries. Such modifications as were made in those countries where astronomical studies were subsequently pursued principally consisted in endeavours made by adopting cycle measurements to adjust the difference of lunar and solar time.