for the reason I have stated; it was a symbol of fecundity. It was, therefore, that during the Lupercalia at Rome, women voluntarily submitted to blows, inflicted by those who ran about the streets with thongs of goat's hide: from the nature of that animal, the blow was thought to promise fruitfulness, and easy delivery : — Nupta, quid expectas? non tu pollentibus herbis, Nec prece, nec magico carmine mater eris. Excipe fœcundæ patienter verbera dextræ; Jam socer optati nomen habebit avi.

OVID. Fast. lib. ii. 425.

:

This is the meaning of the dotted leaf which appears upon vases; and when the spotted crown or girdle (whether tied or untied): was presented to a seated female, it denoted the re-admission of inert nature into the circle of existence. This may be seen upon a vase, in D'Hancarville, vol. ii. plate LI. where a female is seated upon a terminus, beneath the shade of an umbrella with her left hand she inverts a speculum, referring, as I before observed, to the tidos or simulachrum animæ, at that moment in the lower regions, whilst the vivifying Dioscurus presents the dotted untied girdle. This one example will furnish a solution of numerous others that might be adduced. But I am here presented with an opportunity of turning to a more pleasing subject, and at the same time of doing justice to a very well judged assertion of the missionary Paolino, who, struck with the apparent correspondence of many Indian ceremonies with others which. he had formerly noticed upon the Greek vases, declared, that a satisfactory explanation of the latter could not be given, until they were compared with the manners of the Orientals.*

In the very entertaining narrative of Captain Turner's embassy to Tibet we are informed, that "between people of every rank

* Paolino's Travels, p. 255. English edit. 8vo.

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" and station in life, the presenting a silken scarf constantly forms an essential part of the ceremonial of salutation. If persons of equal rank meet, an exchange takes place; if a superior is approached, he holds out his hand to receive the scarf, and a simi"lar one is thrown across the shoulders of the inferior by the "hand of an attendant at the moment of his dismission. They "are commonly damasked, and the sacred words, Oom Maunee paimee oom*, are usually interwoven near both ends ;" and again, "trivial and unmeaning as this custom may appear to Europeans, long and general practice has here attached to it the highest importance. I could obtain no determinate information as to "its meaning or origin; but I find that it has, indeed, a most ex"tensive prevalence. It is observed, as I have before noticed, in "all the territory of the Daeb Raja; it obtains throughout Tibet ; "it extends from Turkestan to the confines of the great desert;

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* Hom-mani-peme-hom, in Alphab. Tibetan. these words I would render, fiat, Manes loto (insidens), fiat. Mani, of whom and of his parents, Patecius and Carossa, we have a very imperfect account in the work of Father Giorgi, I apprehend to have been originally the Indian Menu, the Egyptian Menes, and our patriarch Noah : since, in the East, the same personages are revived at different periods, agreeable with the scheme of the Metempsychosis. This the Buddhists of Tibet believe to be carried on by means of the lunar ship, which ferries over the souls of the approved to the pure regions. Alph. Tibet. p. 238. 372. Hence we may infer that the deluge, and the subsequent renewal of the human race were accepted by early nations, as a type and assurance of a future state. The persons of Mani and Pout appear to be distinct. The former is decidedly the patriarch Noah. A late respectable Oriental scholar, Sir W. C. Rouse Boughton, Bart., was disposed to identify Pout with Phut, the third son of Ham; in illustration of which idea he observed, that as. Phut was third in descent from Noah, so Boudúas, Budyas, is named by Arrian as a king in India, third in descent from Dionysus. But I apprehend that Pout is much the earlier of the two, and that in fact he personates divine spirit. It would seem that the scarf with its legend presented in Tibet were an appeal to the patriarch Mani, accompanied by a solemn wish, that the person greeted might be admitted into the circle of renewed existence, in the same way as Mani had anciently been favoured.

"it is practised in China, and I doubt not reaches to the limits of "Mantchieux Tartary. I view it merely in the light of an em"blem of friendship, and a pledge of amity."

I have been much gratified by the particular attention paid by Captain Turner to this ceremony, and it were to be wished that every traveller would be equally accurate in relating even the most trifling customs of the distant nations he may visit. The meaning of the ceremony, I conceive, will be discovered upon the painted Greek vases. As the umbrella, and its use in the East, may be understood by a reference to these monuments of art, and records of ancient religious opinions, so, I conceive, may the present of the scarf, with its mystic legend, in Tibet. It is no more than the girdle presented by the vivifying agent, who calls him that accepts it into the circle of life. On vases it is marked with what denotes the seeds of existence. In Tibet it is impregnated with the mystic words, Oom maunee paimee oom, which are supposed to be equally efficacious.

The entrance into the regenerated state is expressed on a vase in the work of Passeri, by a seated female in the act of putting on the girdle. In the same work we read of a mystical dance, termed saltatio ad restim, where dancing youths, taking hold of the same rope, described a circle in their movements. When we hear of Ceres with her wheaten crown, we are reminded of that goddess, who instituting the mysteries, taught the admission of decayed nature into the circle of existence, of which the grain in her chaplet emblematically represented the seeds; and when a Grecian female had passed the pains of labour, a chaplet was suspended at her portal, to signify that a human being was newly admitted into the circle of life.

By way of concluding these remarks upon dotted circles, I will notice a singular vase of very homely workmanship and painting, preserved in the British Museum, and published, plate

LVII. in the third volume of D'Hancarville, which represents Cassandra slain by the Dioscuri. A female extends her arms ready to receive her after death, and another holds a taper, at the top of which, instead of flame, appears a circle of luminous spots. I do not hesitate to explain this emblem, as the circle of existence into which the slaughtered Cassandra is about to be re-admitted. To the left above, a female reaches out the branch of conversion; and to the right at top, the owl brings a hoop illumined with mystic spots. Other circular dotted emblems, disposed in the opaque parts of the scene, may imply future circles or stages of existence, in different planets. Mr. Böttiger has thought this painting worth notice in his dissertation upon another vase, whereon the story of Cassandra is differently represented. I presume the torch surmounted by a dotted circle, is what Mr. Böttiger has termed a key in the hand of the priestess, the warden of the temple; nevertheless the engraving given by D'Hancarville is correct; and the symbol cannot be mistaken. Upon the other circular emblems Mr. B. is silent. But with regard to that vase which has given occasion to the elaborate dissertation of Mr. Böttiger, I will observe by the way, the subject of it is of similar meaning with the other in the British Museum. The event succeeds to a very generally recorded destruction — the overthrow of Troy. The violence offered is not so much to Cassandra, as to inert, but repugnant nature; and I suspect, the embryo figure sketched upon the disk in the upper part of the painting commended by Mr. Böttiger, is no votive tablet, unless, indeed, it be to Artemis Lochia.

While speaking of Trojan history, an unpublished vase of the late Arthur Champernowne, Esq., occurs to me, exhibiting the flight of Æneas under circumstances that, I apprehend, no poet ever detailed, but aptly enough conceived, if we refer them to the initiators in Lower Italy. Æneas, bearing Anchises on