1 INVASION BY OSIRIS. 51
2 adheres rigidly to the Hindu system of caste, so repugnant to Buddhists,
3 and has rules connected with purification, weddings, death, inheritance, the
4 worship of gods, closely analogous to those of the Hindus. The Jains
5 revere the cow, keep fasts and consider the killing of any living creature
6 an unpardonable sin. The Jains in the Panjab belong to the Vasaya, or
7 mercantile class, and are generally educated. They are divided into two
8 sects, the Sardogis ahd Aswals. The great mass of the Jain population
9 is to be found in the eastern districts of Delhi, Rohtak and Hissdr.
10 CHAPTER VIII.
11 INVASION OF THE PANJAB BY OSIRIS, KING OF EGYPT.
12 Na ancient Hindus called Egypt Misrasthan,* from its being first inhabit-
13 ed by Misraim, the son of Ham. This is the appellation given to it
14 in Scripture, and the name Misra is preserved to this day at Cairo,
15 the capital of the country, which surpasses all the kingdoms of Asia in
16 antiquity. Menes, its earliest ruler, was regarded as the first sovereign
17 of the human race; and the credit of having been the first invader of India
18 is also given to one of its earliest kings. The name of this monarch was
19 Osiris, who was considered by the writers of antiquity to be the original
20 Dionysius, or Bacchus. His genealogy is lost in fable; but he is acknow-
21 ledged to have flourished at a period long before the Greeks emerged from
22 barbarism, and is praised not only as a great warrior, but as a zealous promo-
23 ter of the useful arts. Accounts of his memorable expedition to India have
24 been given by Herodotus, Diodorus, Siculus and Strabo, who had all visited
25 Egypt, and derived their information from its priests, as well as from Plutarch.
26 The tradition is that, after founding the city of Thebes and conferring on the
27 Egyptians the blessings of civilization and the useful sciences, he directed
28 his attention to the conquest of the East. He is said to have been accom-
29 panied in his expedition by his mail-clad sons, Anulus and Macedo, and to
30 have had in his train Apollo and Pan,f Triptolemus, skilled in husbandry,
31 Maro, a planter of vines, and the Muses skilled in music. He conquered
32 Ethiopia and Arabia, in which countries he instituted various measures of
33 reform, among others the construction, in the former, of vast embankments
34 which prevented the overflow of the Nile and saved the surrounding country
35 from desolation. Having completed his conquests in those regions, he
36 marched at the head of his forces in the direction of India, and entered
37 the Panjtbt by the Persian frontier. According to the writers already
38 * Sthdn, in Shastri, means a place. Thus, the word Misrasthdn signifies the “place of
39 Misraim.” Misr, pean, & Hebrew word, means “large city.” In the Puranas the names of large
40 towns invariably end in sthdn, which is tantamount to the modern pia or pir. Thus, Mecca,
41 in Arabia, is called Mochoasthan, from its being the place of Mocsh-Iswara, an ancient
42 deity, and Bactria, the modern Balkh, Varnisthan.
43 + They subsequently came to be worshipped as gods. ;
44 t The Greek writers do not expressly mention the Indus as the region invaded by the
45 Egyptian king; but, from the facts that he entered India by the Persian route, that he first
46 crossed the mountains, and that he visited the vine groves, it is natural to conclude that the
47 regions of the Indus were the chief scene of his exploits. Again, the Greeks tell us that he
48 prshed his conquests as far as the source of the Ganges. Others say that he was stopped in
49 his career only by the bounding ocean. This also points to the north as the gateway whence
50 he made his descent into the fertile plains of the Panjab. The vine, the cultivation of which
51 is attributed with so much emphasis to Dionysius, is unquestionably the product of Kabul and
52 other Himalayan regions north-west of the Panjab.
53 Egypt the Misra-
54 sthan of the ancient
55 Hindus.
56 Its undoubted anti-
57 quity.
58 Osiris supposed to
59 be the original Diony-
60 sius or Bacchus.
61 His celebrated ex-
62 pedition to the East
63 His march to India.
64 Sri Satguru J agjit Singh Ji eLibrary NamdhariElibrary@ gmail.com