XVII.

HESIOD'S HISTORY OF GREECE.

"KONGX OM PAX."

It must not be forgotten that, in contemplating the geographical facts, recorded so distinctly and undeniably upon the very mountains and rivers of Hellas, we have been equally contemplating her history, as connected with those people who gave names to these rivers and mountains. If, therefore, there be found in any of her early writers, records entirely discordant with such a state of society, it is evident that those writings must be either fabrications, grounded entirely upon pure inventions, or that they must be the perverted relics of an ancient history, which, the writers having lost the original language of the first settlers, were unable to comprehend. The travesty of language which runs through the whole circle of early Greek literature, has been amply elucidated in the geographical course which forms the substratum of this history. If, therefore, the Cyclopes, the Autochthons, the Athenian Grasshoppers, Cheiron, and many others have been found gross perversions of plain matter-of-fact, these names, and others which occur in the writings of Hesiod, and the Logographers, will justly come under the same category of corrupt orthography, and of corrupt history based upon that orthography; the representative to Hesiod of words apparently Greek, but in reality Sanscrit,

Vide Postulates, p. 22.

Thibetan, or the Pehlavi dialects. The outline, however, of history, given by such writers, may be perfectly authentic, while the features of individuals, princes, or people represented may be exceedingly distorted. Hesiod's "History of Greece," generally conceived to be a Theogony, or an account of the Generation of the Gods, is of this nature. It may, however, not incorrectly, be compared to the celebrated Long Walls of Pericles, which tell not only their own history, but that of preceding years, and of an ancient people. Here we find a frieze, there an entablature ; here is to be seen a sepulchral inscription, there the massive ornaments of a temple. Each disjointed piece worked into this wall tells, to a certain extent, its own tale: its relative age, the character of the people who wrought it, and many of the inscriptions still remaining may be read by the attentive and patient student of history. These observations, based upon a distinct view of the primitive population of Hellas, will prepare the mind for a description of Hellenic society, in perfect harmony with the members of that society. The great aggregate of the colonists of Greece has already been shown to consist of these two great bodies, the Solar and the Lunar races; each following the peculiar tenets of that faith to which the heads of their respective races gave so strong a bias, viz., either the Solar or the Bud'histic forms of worship. The former was more ancient in its establishment, but the latter more durable. The Lamaic nations, springing up apparently upon the frontiers of the kingdoms of Cashmir and Thibet, have by the population, already shown in Thessaly, been proved to have existed in the latter countries in high antiquity, and the record of the life of Zeus, as drawn by Hesiod, is but a garbled statement of plain facts, in perfect harmony with the existing state of Lamaism in Tartary. Whatever variations may have been introduced into this account by Hesiod, of a cosmogonic

DALE LAMAS.

1

255

nature, they all repose upon a false foundation, which I shall not unfrequently remove, to exhibit the ancient basis upon which his new temple was built. The presence of the people of the Himalayas, the population of Mons Adrius and Othrys, have been already shown; the immigration of the people of Balti and Skardo, and the adjoining provinces, has been distinctly seen; and now it will be necessary to contemplate the country of the "Great Lamas," "Dal-l'matia," lying contiguous to these denizens of the Adrius and Himalaya Mountains. The Lamaic system was, at the earliest periods of Greece, undoubtedly administered with great vigour. Its contests, however, for supremacy, were many, and vigorously conducted; and but for that Tartar population, which in common with the people of Lebanon, or the tribes of Leh, found so powerful an element in the colonisation of primeval Phoenician Egypt, it would have been impossible to insure its dominant influence over nearly the whole of Hellas. This system of religion will be found, as this history progresses, to have been so far modified, and so far compromised, as to be compelled to take its place in the asyla of the mysteries of Greece, in lieu of the open, and as it were state-position, it once occupied.

That Lamaic sovereignty, which was once wielded with the vigour of the triple crown in its most palmy days, had lost its imperial, and still more its despotic character; and an oligarchy of the Hellenic Bud'histic priesthood, had taken the place of the absolutism of one. That priesthood, too, was distributed over Greece, as a body influential not from its numbers, nor its special caste—for Brahminical caste never became established in Hellas— but from the ingenuity of its operations, acting by that principle of ancestral adoration which has ever distin

1 Dalé Lamas, or Great Lamas.

guished genuine Bud'hism, from Athens to China. It was thus that some of the best of the human affections were enlisted in the cause of a mild, though ingeniously politic, priesthood. Their faith, and the faith of those Athenians who were initiated at Eleusinian Mysteries, will in the sequel be shown to be identical with that of Pythagoras, of whom I propose giving some notices that will be of vital interest, as being corroborated by that admirable scholar and profound student, the late Mr. Colebrooke.

The Lamaic System, originating as I have before noticed, on the high tract of land in the vicinity of the Himalayan frontier of Thibet, had taken up a strong position to the north of Thessaly, on the Adrian or Himalayan Mountain, in whose neighbourhood the Dale Lamas have been distinctly shown. From this point it descended into northern Greece, where a powerful body has been pointed out as the Lamienses or Lama Tribes. The main point, however, whence this gigantic system of ancient Hellas was administered, was from that lofty mountain which was called O-lum-'pos by the Greeks, but "Ool-lam-'pos," or "the High Lama Chiefs," by the settlers. Its chief town or fortress, as it has been considered, was Puthuim, i. e. Budhyum or Budhaton, contiguous to which, on the west, was the town of Sa-l'mon, that is, Su-l'mon,1 "the High Lama-town." Immediately to the east lay the Sraces, called by the Greeks Thraces, a sect of Bud'hists so ancient and so extensive as to give a name to a vast tract of country in which they had settled. The doctrines of the Sracas, as well as of the Jainas, of which they to this day compose a component part, will be duly noticed.

1 Su, well, or high caste; Laman, plural of Lama, "The Great Lamas." The "a" in Lama, lost. (See Appendix, Rules i. and vi.) Another settlement is at Sa-Lamis, Soo-lamas. (See Appendix, Rule vi.)

2 See Appendix, Rule xxiii.

The country in which these Jainas or Sracas dwelt, was called "Biharia," Pieria, "the Land of Biharas" or Jaina Monasteries, a very little to the south of which was the Castle of the L'Hopatos, Lapitha, or Bhutias, religionists of the Bud'hist or Jaina faith. The great head of this vast system of hierarchic domination, which in these ancient days extended over the known world with an uniformity and vigour unparalleled but by the same system of Bud'histic Rome during the middle ages, was termed "Jeenos" by the Greeks, written "Zeenos," an appellation given to the Bud'ha Pontiffs of antiquity as well in Phoenicia as in Greece.1 The Greek term "Zeus" has been generally considered to be a form of Deva, Deus, and Theos. This, however, is not the case. It is simply the form "Jeyus," "The Victorious Zeus," inflected by the Greeks as Zeus, Zenos (Jeyus, Jeenos).2

The "Jino" is the generic name of the personage peculiar to the Jaina sect, who is ranked by them as superior to the gods of other sects, and is the special term always employed in the most authentic Bud'hist writings to express the ruling saintly Pontiff of his day.4 Such was the JENOS (ZEENOS) or JAINA PONTIFF, "the King of Gods and Men," that is, of the Devas (Priests) and people in Greece, long before the Homeric days. In

1 Zaan-im, xix. 33; Judges, iv. 2; Micah, i. 11. "Adopted into the Hebrew expression of the 'Jainas;' like the 'Srakes' (Thrakes), of the Greeks. Hesychius observes that the chiefs of ancient Greece were styled Zani-des, and Pausanias remarks that certain ancient statues near Mount Cronius were called 'Zanes.' "—Paus. i. v., p. 430.

2 The derivative or genitive case—as Zeenos (Jeenos)—at once shows its source. Zeus, Dios, exhibits the source, as Deva, Deos, Theos,—Zeus, Zeenos, exhibiting the Jeus, Jeenos, or Jaina, Bud'hist Pontiffs; and Zeus Dios (Deva), the Brahminical sway in Greece. This name of the supreme pontiff of the Bud'hists is now more generally written Jino, and in ancient days pronounced Jinos. The Greeks not having the sound of the letter "j" in their language, substituted the letter "z."

3 Wilson's Sans. Lex.—Jino.

4 See the Mahawanso, passim.