The German Suevi adored Isis, and also introduced a ship in her worship, for which Tacitus[4.21.47] is at a loss to account, and with his usual candour says he has no materials whence to investigate the origin of a worship denoting the foreign origin of the tribe. This Isis of the Suevi was evidently a form of Ertha, the chief divinity of all the Saxon races, who, with her consort Teutates or Hesus[4.21.48] (Mercury), were the chief deities of both the Celtic and early Gothic races: the [574] Budha and Ila of the Rajputs; in short, the earth,[4.21.49] the prolific mother, the Isis of Egypt, the Ceres of Greece, the Annapurna (giver of food) of the Rajputs. On some ancient temples dedicated to this Hindu Ceres we have sculptured on the frieze and pedestal of the columns the emblem of abundance, termed the _kamakumbha_, or vessel of desire, a vase of elegant form, from which branches of the palm are gracefully pendent. Herodotus says that similar water-vessels, filled with wheat and barley, were carried in the festival of Isis; and all who have attended to Egyptian antiquities are aware that the god Canopus is depicted under the form of a water-jar, or Nilometer, whose covering bears the head of Osiris. =The Agastya Festival.=—To render the analogy perfect between the vessels emblematic of the Isis of the Nile and the Ganges, there is a festival sacred to the sage Agastya, who presides over the star Canopus, when the sun enters Virgo (_Kanya_). The _kamakumbha_ is then personified under the epithet _kumbhayoni_, and the votary is instructed to pour water into a sea-shell, in which having placed white flowers and unground rice, turning his face to the south, he offers it with this incantation: “Hail, Kumbhayoni, born in the sight of Mitra and Varuna (the sun and water divinities), bright as the blossom of the _kusa_ (grass), who sprung from Agni (fire) and the Maruts.” By the prefix of Ganga (the river) to Gauri, we see that the Ganggor festival is essentially sacred to a river-goddess, affording additional proof of the common origin of the rites of the Isis of Egypt and India. The Egyptians, according to Plutarch, considered the Nile as flowing from Osiris, in like manner as the Hindu poet describes the fair Ganga flowing from the head of Iswara, which Sir W. Jones thus classically paints in his hymn to Ganga: Above the reach of mortal ken, On blest Coilasa’s top, where every stem Glowed with a vegetable gem, Mahesa stood, the dread and joy of men; While Parvati, to gain a boon, Fixed on his locks a beamy moon, And hid his frontal eye in jocund play, With reluctant sweet delay; All nature straight was locked in dim eclipse, Till Brahmins pure, with hallowed lips And warbled prayers, restored the day, When Ganga from his brow, with heavenly fingers prest, Sprang radiant, and descending, graced the caverns of the west [575]. [Illustration: COLUMNS OF TEMPLES AT CHANDRĀVATI. _To face page 670._ ]