mundane, the chief characteristic of which was the principle of constant renovation by some hidden agency permeating the universe.

In a country like Egypt, where the vital phenomena of nature reproduce themselves with a cyclical exactitude, perfect in regularity, where the course of the sun is always equal, where the inundation of the river recurs year after year, exact to a day, it was not possible that any other notion should have sprung up. Every philosophical attempt to rationalise the myth would have a tendency to unravel it as symbolising the reproduction of the species and the almost daily renovations of external phenomena. Over and above all, the solar orb stood out as the embodiment of all these changes. It was therefore on him that the idea of godhead was fixed to the detriment of other elemental divinities.

TUR-THE SIX-FACED ONE.

Amon, Aten, Horus, Ra, Khepra and Toum were no others than distinctive phases of the same sun-god, each having its special attributes. These several characters made up in total the course of the diurnal life of the sun. Each name is only an appellative of a particular stage of his daily march, Ra was no other than the hidden essence of the orb, the vivifying essence —the Sakti शक्तिः, the गायनीAten was the disc——the चक्र, सुदर्शन - the habitation of this life-giving essence. Shou was the luminosity. Horus, the Kumara, the Balu of Dravidian personal names. He was the sun at the rise. Toum was the sun as he went down the horizon at set.

The interpretation of the legend of Osiris by the sacred College was developed on this parallel and

explained it as the story of the death and resurrection of the sun. Rising in the east in the morning and climbing to the meridian at midday, he loses himself in the evening in the shades below the horizon.

The shades of darkness are the wicked powers and the mutilation of the body of Osiris and dispersion of the members thereof (see the legend of Dáksháyani in the Káliká Purana) is only a poetical metaphor representing the physical phenomenon, so prominent in Egypt of the twilight, where for a long time after the set of the sun, the sky in the west is ablaze with long, bright and red reflexes of the sinking solar orb. Isis represents the unknown region below the horizon, in which the god picks up the mutilated parts of his body, which are put together again to form Horus, the new sun and the avenger of his father.

It was to lift the veil from this mystery of the unknown region that the earliest efforts of the Egyptian theologians were directed. Once a basis had been obtained as above, they had little difficulty in filling up minor details. The sun who disappeared at this horizon, only to reappear on another, had perforce to travel through this unknown region and illumine another world. And this other world, what else should it be if not that of the dead? since, when the sun set on our horizon, he should himself be accounted among the dead. The topography of the Nile valley lent itself the more readily to the sense of this idea, as the solar orb was seen day after day, surging up from the crest of the mountains on the Arabian side and sinking down into the desert from the tops of the Libyan mountains on the other side of the valley.

Vanquished by night, Osiris, considered as one of the manifestations of Ra who had shone in the firmament

all day long, now takes the name of Osiris-KhentAmenti or Osiris of the region of the west ( हाटकेश्वरः). He is the nocturnal sun, the sun of the Inferum, traversing the immensity of space on the other side, to reappear to gladden the outer world on the morrow, under the name of his son Horus. This happy solution of the problem had a two-fold interest attaching to it. It explained at the same time not only the mystery of Osiris but the mystery of man's life and death as well, as the sequel will show.

The cosmic system of the Egyptians postulated three planes or regions. The Heavens, inhabited by the gods, स्वर्लोकः ; the intermediate region (अन्तरिच

f) tenanted by the Doubles (of whom we shall speak hereafter), where the transmigrations were designed and worked out; the lowest, that of this habitable globe (:). The inhabitants of the celestial region navigated their river, just as in the valley the Egyptian plied his boats on the Nile, but with a certain difference. At night-fall, the celestial Nile from on high loses itself in cataracts among the passes of the western chain of the mountains of the sky.-ENDİAN These rapids are navigable at all times and the divine fleet sails on these waters and by a long circuit passes into the interior hemisphere, that of the invisible world, from which no one has ever returned (पातालगंगा.).

II.

AND THIS WORLD, WHERE SHOULD IT BE?

For a long time it was thought that the Egyptians believed it to have been subterranean, that the sun at set passed under the ground and that, in one word, he revolved in a continuous circle. The texts, however, which are mostly in point, show that the belief was in

another way. The Libyan chain of mountains of the west marked the limit of the earth and the celestial river, after making for itself a passage through the rock, turned brusquely to descend and flow quite like the Nile towards the north. The celestial fleet pursued its course down the river hugging the western bank. The navigation lasted twelve hours; after six of them, the fleet veered round, put to sail and retraced its course, but this time keeping close to the eastern bank and by degrees gained the base of the eastern range, over which Horus, the avenger of his father, remounted to the horizon. This course of life of every day, this eclipse every evening, this voyage every night, symbolised the life divine and by assimilation also the life human.

All the traditions which have gathered round the name of Osiris have here their place, and, because of his sufferings, the Good One (Osiris) was the better qualified to act as the guide and protector of the dear departed.

Before making his appearance in this world, man must have lived elsewhere just like the god and, when he dies, he returns to where he came from to live there his old life over again. His stay here is no more than a sojourn, a transient change of place, a mere chapter in the history of his life, every incident of which corresponds to some phase of the diurnal life of Osiris.

The birth of the individual is the same as the rise of the sun in the east. His existence here is the same as the diurnal course of the latter. The death of man the same as the disappearance of the god at nightfall. After death, the departed individuality is identified. with Osiris ; like him the departed sinks into night from which he emerges to the experiences of another existence, the same as Horus unto a second morning.

This explanation of the principle of creation served also as the solution of the problem of human existence. The idea with its application was probably complex but certainly very logical, if one may say so The first consideration which presents itself to the thinker is this How does life associate itself with things animate of this earth? This question was answered by the parallel of the daily revolutions of phenomenal nature in which the sun played the principal rôle. Ra was for ever the mysterious first cause, always efflorescent, who, hidden in his disc, expands all growth of life in this world. A chain of unbroken continuity binds the earth to his unquenchable hearth.

CHIG: THE ELONGATION OF THE SINGLE.

The atoms of universal life come down the descending chain from the solar orb to quicken all creation here, human, animal or vegetable. At death and decomposition of these entities, those atoms, always impregnated with the seeds of life in themselves, mount up again by the ascending chain to the fountain-source from which they drew their being, from where Ra sends them down. again to vivify new forms of life; and this process is repeated without end.

This cosmic theory was substantially the same as that propounded by Greek philosophers who drew their inspiration from the Pythagorean school and subsequently adopted by the thinkers of Alexandria. Grafted as this hypothesis was on the solar myth of Osiris, it necessarily led to some complication in its application to the human entity.

THE PROJECTION OF THE DOUBLE.

The Egyptian knew not only of a body and a spirit but of something else. Along with the body, he also