Atlantis: The Antedeluvian WorldDonnelly, Ignatius
History
Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World
Donnelly, Ignatius
Atlantis (Legendary place); Deluge; Ethnology
to those inscribed on the obelisks of Egypt and on the monoliths of this
country. The like figure occurs on the equally ancient Otrusco black
pottery. But by far the most remarkable example of this form of the
Cross in the New World is that which appears on a second type of the
Mexican feroher, engraved on a tablet of gypsum, and which is described
at length by its discoverer, Captain du Paix, and depicted by his
friend, M. Baradère. Here the accompaniments--a shield, a hamlet, and a
couple of bead-annulets or rosaries--are, with a single exception,
identical in even the minutest particular with an Assyrian monument
emblematical of the Deity....
"No country in the world can compare with India for the exposition of
the pyramidal cross. There the stupendous labors of Egypt are rivalled,
and sometimes surpassed. Indeed, but for the fact of such monuments of
patient industry and unexampled skill being still in existence, the
accounts of some others which have long since disappeared, having
succumbed to the ravages of time and the fury of the bigoted Mussulman,
would sound in our ears as incredible as the story of Porsenna's tomb,
which 'o'ertopped old Pelion,' and made 'Ossa like a wart.' Yet
something not very dissimilar in character to it was formerly the boast
of the ancient city of Benares, on the banks of the Ganges. We allude to
the great temple of Bindh Madhu, which was demolished in the seventeenth
century by the Emperor Aurungzebe. Tavernier, the French baron, who
travelled thither about the year 1680, has preserved a brief description
of it. The body of the temple was constructed in the figure of a
colossal cross (i. e., a St. Andrew's Cross), with a lofty dome at the
centre, above which rose a massive structure of a pyramidal form. At the
four extremities of the cross there were four other pyramids of
proportionate dimensions, and which were ascended from the outside by
steps, with balconies at stated distances for places of rest, reminding
us of the temple of Belus, as described in the pages of Herodotus. The
remains of a similar building are found at Mhuttra, on the banks of the
Jumna. This and many others, including the subterranean temple at
Elephanta and the caverns of Ellora and Salsette, are described at
length in the well-known work by Maurice; who adds that, besides these,
there was yet another device in which the Hindoo displayed the
all-pervading sign; this was by pyramidal towers placed crosswise. At
the famous temple of Chillambrum, on the Coromandel coast, there were
seven lofty walls, one within the other, round the central quadrangle,
and as many pyramidal gate-ways in the midst of each side which forms
the limbs of a vast cross."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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