Chambers's papers for the people - 1851 Author:Chambers W. and R. ltd Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: colossal car, ornamented with mythological paintings of the most demoralising tendency; and the car is then dragged through the streets by the multitude, many of... more » whom voluntarily throw themselves under the wheels, and are either crushed to death or horribly mangled. Religious pilgrimages to the sources of the Ganges and the Jumna, to the junction of these rivers at Allahabad, to the holy city of Benares, and other places, arc also frequently performed; and at Allahabad half a lac of rupees (£5000 sterling) has been received in one year for permission to bathe at the junction of the sacred rivers. The sun appears to have been in all countries the first object deified—in India as Crishna, in Persia as Mithra, in Syria as Baal, and in Assyria and Babylonia as Belus. The remains of a large and beautiful temple of the sun still exist at Balbec or Baalbec, and the temple of Belus at Babylon is described by classic historians as the oldest and most magnificent in the world. Its towers were remarkably lofty, and among its riches were several images of massive gold, one of which is said to have been forty feet high. In a chamber at the summit of the highest tower was a magnificent bed, to which the priests nightly conducted a female to remain in the society of the god. The Syrians, besides Baal, had a female divinity named Astarte, who is considered to be the same as the Venus of the Greeks, and in whose grand temple at Hieropolis three hundred priests were daily engaged in offering sacrifices upon her altars. In Egypt, the sun was personified by Osiris, and the moon by Isis, who is represented as his sister and wife. Typhon, who holds the same place in the Egyptian mythology as Sheva does in the Indian, and Ahrimanes in the Persian, was called the brother of Osiris, and is the same ...« less