round the image singing hymns, some in honour of the goddess of abundance, others on love and chivalry; and embodying little episodes of national achievements, occasionally sprinkled with _double entendre_, which excites a smile and significant nod from the chiefs, and an inclination of the head of the fair choristers. The festival being entirely female, not a single male mixed in the immense groups, and even Iswara himself, the husband of Gauri, attracts no attention, as appears from his ascetic or mendicant form begging his dole from the bounteous and universal mother. It is taken for granted that the goddess is occupied in bathing all the time she remains, and ancient tradition says death was the penalty of any male intruding on these solemnities; but the present prince deems them so fitted for amusement, that he has even instituted a second Ganggor. Some hours are thus consumed, while easy and good-humoured conversation is carried on. At length, the ablutions over, the goddess is taken up, and conveyed to the palace with the same forms and state. The Rana and his chiefs then unmoor their boats, and are rowed round the margin of the lake, to visit in succession the other images of the goddess, around which female groups are chanting and worshipping, as already described, with which ceremonies the evening closes, when the whole terminates with a grand display of fireworks, the finale of each of the three days dedicated to Gauri. Considerable resemblance is to be discerned between this festival of Gauri and that in honour of the Egyptian Diana[4.21.44] at Bubastis, and Isis at Busiris, within the [573] Delta of the Nile, of which Herodotus says: “They who celebrate those of Diana embark in vessels; the women strike their tabors, the men their flutes; the rest of both sexes clap their hands, and join in chorus. Whatever city they approach, the vessels are brought on shore; the women use ungracious language, dance, and indelicately throw about their garments.”[4.21.45] Wherever the rites of Isis prevailed, we find the boat introduced as an essential emblem in her worship, whether in the heart of Rajasthan, on the banks of the Nile, or in the woods of Germany. Bryant[4.21.46] furnishes an interesting account from Diodorus and Curtius, illustrated by drawings from Pocock, from the temple of Luxor, near Carnac, in the Thebaid, of ‘the ship of Isis,’ carrying an ark; and from a male figure therein, this learned person thinks it bears a mysterious allusion to the deluge. I am inclined to deem the personage in the ark Osiris, husband of Isis, the type of the sun arrived in the sign of Aries (of which the ram’s heads ornamenting both the prow and stem of the vessel are typical), the harbinger of the annual fertilizing inundation of the Nile: evincing identity of origin as an equinoctial festival with that of Gauri (Isis) of the Indu-Scythic races of Rajasthan.