that the Buddhists perform to ancestors and Buddhas. We find also the same veneration paid to the actual corpse and its fragments. And, oddly enough, the parallel does not stop here. As at Sanchi and Bhârhut, at every martyr's shrine is an empty stone throne or Bodhimanda.1 With the Buddhists, as I think, I have proved this throne was supposed to be used by the Buddha whilst he was being worshipped. With Catholics it is explained that the bishop sate here whilst the worshipper knelt at the shrine and prayed for a miraculous cure. At any rate, the

coincidence is curious.

2

The "Pastor of Hermas " throws some light on this saintworship. Every mortal has two spirits, a good one and a bad one, constantly by him; and the evil genius is only to be frustrated by the associated influence, or, to use the Pastor's own simile, a bench of good spirits. Hence the importance of securing aid from martyrs and conspicuous departed saints. These, according to St. Paul, “judge " even the angels. Perhaps the most common feature that strikes a modern Christian on first entering the Catacombs is their essentially Jewish decoration. Instead of finding bleeding Christs suspended on the cross and other wellknown symbols, he sees Moses striking the rock, Jonah saved from drowning by Leviathan, the dove of the ark with its olive branch. These symbols constantly repeated must have had some subtle purpose. They probably were intended to inculcate and also to conceal vital Christian truths.

I will treat the latter point first. From whom were these mysteries to be concealed? Not from the Roman inquisitors, or the symbolism would have been externally pagan. Were the Catacombs modelled upon any secret crypts or caves of the Essenes or early Christians in Palestine? The word "temple" in the Acts seems to mean two distinct places. Certainly St. James could never have had the Jewish Temple all to himself daily for his prayers. 1 Formby, pp. 380, 392, designs.

2 1 Cor. vi. 2, 3.

And yet this is the assertion of Hegesippus. And if Peter cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest, he could scarcely have exposed himself with impunity daily in

the Jewish Temple.1 Christ talks of the "church" or assembly almost as soon as he begins to preach. And it is difficult to understand why it was necessary to bribe Judas except on the hypothesis that Christ and his secret teaching could not be got at in any other way.

Fig. A.

Mr. Formby, in his innocence, explains that this (fig. A) constantly recurring Jonah shows the reverence of the early

Fig. B.

Christians for scriptural subjects. If he had studied Buddhism he would have known that Jonah here is the symbol of the solar Godman; the ship and the water both typify the Holy Spirit; and the whale, half - serpent half-Makara, with his' Mani in the tail, is the

symbol of the Supreme. The mystic Jonah in one picture in the Catacombs can scarcely be two years old (fig. B).

In Moses, the rock, and the Holy Spirit or water we again get the symbolism of the triad. The dove with the olive-branch is everywhere. The dove is an ingenious Jewish representation of the Mani or Trisula outline. I was convinced of this before I came across fig. 1, plate ii.,2 which plainly exhibits the Triratna outline. The mysticisms of the past hang very closely together. This descending dove is a Buddhist idea. Burnouf gives a

1 Matt. xviii. 17.

2 See p. 18.

story from the work "Sumâgadha Avadâna," where a girl, Sumâgadha, is invited by her mother-in-law to come and see for the first time certain Buddhist holy men whose high virtues had been much extolled to her. Confronted with a number of beggars, stark naked, dirty, wearing their hair "in the shape of wings of pigeons," the poor girl is much shocked.1 This passage confirms a suspicion which the early Buddhist sculptures excitethat the earliest Buddhist beggars were a little more

like Philo's Gymnosophists in the matter of clothing than modern Buddhist prudery will admit. The wings of pigeons' headdress is further illustrated by the accompanying cut. The top-knot of this figure, an infant Christ from a fresco of the Catacombs, is probably the mode of dressing the hair alluded to in the story. Something similar is to be seen in some of the Bactrian busts of Buddha. This infant in the lily or lotus is plainly

1 Introd., p. 278. Since the above was in print I have learned that Professor Beal, before the Anthropological Section of the British Association in 1877, gave an account of a statue of Buddha with a descending dove over his head.

P

identified with the Lotus-born (the Padmapâni). A lotus sprang up immediately Buddha saw the light, and the lotus throne is a favourite subject of Buddhist art.

In the same chapel is another figure standing on a lily. Plainly we here have Sophia or Prajnâ: "On a lotus sits

Prajnâ Pâramitâ."

Fig. A.

Her arms form the trident or Manithe same symbol as the descending dove (fig. A). The graves of the Catacombs have a similar female with outstretched arms, or else the dove with the olive-leaf, or the branch alone, or the vas or vase of the Eucharist; all these are her symbols. In one case this vas is coloured and the liquid blue. The annexed gem (fig. B) from Smith's "Christian Antiquities" shows Sophia with her olive

Fig. B.

By her is John iii. 14

branch and the sheaf of Ceres, the earth (Aditi). Agatho dæmon, and the lion of Judah. shows that with the early Christians the sometimes a symbol of a good divinity.

serpent was

The only Christian cross in the Catacombs is the Buddhist Swastica (fig. A). This brings me to the question of the derivation of the Christ monogram (fig. B). The early Christians were called "The Fish," as this was the earliest symbol of Christ and Christianity. What I have already written on Buddhist symbolism will show how these two ideas hold together.

Fig. A.

Fig. B.

Fig. C.

Here is a design of these "fish" from the Catacombs, (fig. C), and the following from Smith's" Christian Antiqui

X X X X X

Fig. D.

Fig. E.

Fig. F.

Fig. G.

Fig. H.

ties" I think show the development of the cross-fish or Swastica into the monogram (figs. D to H). The St. Andrew's cross of Buddhism is plainly these cross-fish. The upright is the Stambha, the "Branch" in Judaism. The mystic I.A.w. is interpreted by some students of symbolism to mean this "Branch," and the Alpha and Omega, the positive and negative principle.

I now come to a design constantly occurring in the Catacombs. Seven beings are by a table containing seven loaves, two fishes, and in front of the table are basketsful of loaves. "The feeding of the multitude with seven loaves and two small fishes!" This is the explanation of