The Eleusinian[121] rites themselves were essentially of this kind; for though the benefits of _agriculture_ were said to be chiefly there commemorated, this after all resolves itself into the above: for as the process of the earth’s bearing is similar to that of our own species, and indeed of all creatures that rest upon her,--no seed bringing forth fruit until, as the apostle has affirmed,[122] it first dies,--the representation of this miracle of nature’s vicissitudes led the mind to the contemplation of general fecundity. And hence the _culture_ of the ground, and the _propagation_ of human beings, being both viewed in the same light, and sometimes even named by the same epithet, viz. _tillage_, were inculcated no less as beneficial exercises than as religious ordinances. Did a doubt remain as to the accuracy of this connection between the worship of the ancients and their sexual correspondence, it would be more than removed by attending to the import of the terms by which they mystified those celebrations, and which, with the sanctity attached to the _parts_ themselves, will come consecutively under our review. One of them, however, is too apposite to be omitted here, and that is the term by which they designated a certain ceremony still practised on the coast of Guinea, and which neither the _blandishments_ of _artifice_ nor the _terrors_ of _menace_ could ever prevail upon them to divulge. This ceremony they call _Belli-Paaro_. The meaning they assign to it is _regeneration_, or the act of reviving from _death_ to a new state of existence; and when we see that the name itself is but an inflection of the _Baal-Peor_ of the Scriptures, the _Baal-Phearagh_ of our forefathers, and the _Copulative deity_ of the amative universe, it will not be hard to dive into its character, though so shrouded in types. But the Budhists, not content with this ordinary veneration, or with paying homage in _secret_ to that symbol of production which all other classes of idolators equally, though privately, worshipped,--I mean the Lingam,--thought they could never carry their zeal sufficiently far, unless they erected it into an _idol_ of more than colossal magnitude--_and those idols were the Round Towers_. Hence the name _Budhism_, which I thus define, viz. _that species of idolatry which worshipped Budh_ (_i.e._ the Lingam), _as the emblem_ of _Budh_ (_i.e._ the Sun)--Budh signifying, indiscriminately, Sun and Lingam. Such was the whole substance of this philosophical creed, which was not--as may have been imagined--a _ritual of sensuality_, but a _manual of devotion_, as simple in its exercise as it was pious in its intent--a Sabian veneration and a symbolical gratitude. I shall now give a summary of their moral code, couched in the following Pentalogue, as presented by Zaradobeira, chief Rahan at Ava, to a Catholic bishop, who expressed a wish some years ago to be favoured with a brief outline of their tenets; it is this:--