this worship are found in the most ancient
monuments, documents, and traditions,
stretching backwards into the past eternity,
from millennium to millennium, towards an
epoch beyond the records of the Deluge, and
almost co-eval with the loss of Eden.  The
Tentyrian planisphere of the ancient
Egyptians represents the Virgin and child rising
out of a lotus flower.  The Egyptian
hieroglyphics depict the goddess Asteria, or
Justice, issuing out of a lotus, and seating herself
upon the centre of the beam of Libra, or the
Scales.  Pictorial delineations of the Judgment
of the Dead, represent Osiris as Amenti
swathed in the white garments of the grave,
girt with a red girdle, and sealed upon a
chequered throne of white and black spots,
or good and evil.  Before him are the vase of
nectar, the table of ambrosia, the great
serpent, and the lotus of knowledge— the
emblems of Paradise.  There are Egyptian
altar-pieces upon which the lotus figures as
the tree of life.  The Hindu priests say that
the lotus rising out of the lakes is the type
of the world issuing out of the ocean of time.

Travellers who have observed the worship of
the Hindus and Parsees, tell us that they give
religious honours to the lotus.  The Budhist
priests cultivate it in precious vases, and
place it in their temples.  The Chinese poets
celebrate the sacred bean of India, out of
which their goddess Amida and her child
arose, in the middle of a lake.  We can be at
no loss to imagine the appearance of the
Budhist pagodas, for our Gothic cathedrals
are just those pagodas imitated in stone.
Their pillars copy the trunks of the palm-
trees and the effects of the creeping plants of
the pagodas; their heaven-piercing spires are
the golden spathes of palm-flowers, and the
stained glass reproduces, feebly, the many-
coloured brilliancies of the tropical skies.
Every pious Budhist, giving himself up to
devout meditations, repeats, as often as he
can, the words, " On ma ni bat me Klom."
When many worshippers are kneeling and
repeating the sound, the effect is like counter-
bass or the humming of bees; and profound
sighs mingle with the repetitions.  The
Mongolian priests say these words are
endowed with mysterious and supernatural
powers; they increase the virtues of the
faithful; they bring them nearer to divine
perfection, and they exempt them from the
pains of the future life.  When the priests
are asked to explain the words, they say
volumes would be required to tell all their
meanings.  Klaproth, however, says that the
formula is nothing but a corruption of four
Hindu words, " Om man'i padma houm,"
signifying " Oh! precious lotus!"

Without pretending that the volume of the
Hindu fakirs, on the significations of the lotus,
might not throw more light upon the use of
it as a symbol of conspiracy, there are hints
enough in the facts I have stated, to warrant
the conclusion that it serves as a sign of a
great and general rising on behalf of
Budhism.  The flower was circulated to rally
the votaries of the goddess of the lotus.

And the cakes have precisely the same
significance as the lotus flowers.  These cakes
are very ancient symbols.  Corn and lotus
seeds were baked into cakes, offered to Isis
the goddess of Fertility and Abundance.  The
principle which deems a god to be just what
his worshippers believe him, is the only
one likely to surmount the difficulties which
surround the study of the gods.  The
difficulties in identifying the divinities of mythology
come chiefly from their numerous
metamorphoses and their innumerable aliases.
The Grecian Jupiter, the Persian Ormuzd,
the Egyptian Osiris, are but different names
and modifications of the god of light and
darkness; and Venus, Astarte, and Isis, are
all names which designate the evening-star,
—the queen of heaven.  The worship of a
divine woman is of zodiacal origin. Students
of the picture language of the Egyptians
ascribe the invention of the zodiacal signs to
Seth the son of Adam.  Virgo and Leo are
united in the Sphynx, and their child is
Horus the sun-god, whose symbol was the
mistletoe branch of the Druids.  The epithet
virgin was particularly applied to Diana,
Minerva, and Themis—Chastity, Wisdom,
and Justice.  There can scarcely be a doubt,
I think, of the identity of the zodiacal
virgin with Kouan-Yin, the Budhist
Goddess of Mercy, and with the Queen of
Heaven, the object of the idolatries
described by the Prophet Jeremiah, in the
seventh chapter, and in the seventeenth
to the twentieth verse. " Seest thou not what
they do in the cities of Judah and in the
streets of Jerusalem?  The children gather
wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and
the women knead their dough, to make cakes
to the Queen of Heaven, and to pour out
drink offerings unto other gods, that they
may provoke me to anger.  Do they provoke
me to anger?  saith the Lord:  do they not
provoke themselves to the confusion of their
own faces?  Therefore, thus saith the Lord
God;  Behold, mine anger and my fury shall
be poured out upon this place, upon man, and
upon beast, and upon the trees of the field,
and upon the fruit of the ground;  and it
shall burn, and shall not be quenched."

Cakes and lotus flowers are the symbols of
the Queen of Heaven, the Hindu goddess of
mercy and mother of god.  Such is the meaning
of the symbols, and, in as far as they were
circulated, such is the purport of the
conspiracy.

The use of these ancient symbols to
prepare a plot against British sway, is well
fitted to strike the student of history.  For
there is in the incidents a junction of wonders,
the most picturesque emblems of the most
ancient and universally prevalent religions
being brought into collision with the most
marvellous empire the world has ever seen.