a sort of high-priest,
but he also exercises sovereignty over the country of Tibet ruling the
laity as well as the clergy and being only subordinate to the lord
paramount, the Emperor of China" (Edkins, Religion in China, p. 8).

"The form of the Buddhist temples exemplifies in a striking manner the
relative positions of Buddha and the gods. Four kings of the gods are
represented in the vestibule. Their office is to guard the door by which
entrance is obtained to the presence of Buddha.... The central position is
that of Buddha, who is seated on the lotus flower in the attitude of a
teacher...." (Edkins). In this attitude an ancient American high-priest
would see the graphic representation of one of the titles of the star-god
Polaris, "the teacher of the world."

The association of Buddha with the north and with the number seven is
curiously shown in the mythical account that "when Buddha was born a lotus
blossomed where he touched the ground; he stepped seven steps northward
and a lotus marked each footfall."

Distinct evidence of the ancient cult of Polaris is yielded by the Hindu
marriage custom, which I have found described thus in Meyer's
conversations Lexikon: "In the evening the bride and bridegroom seat
themselves on the hide of a red ox, after making the usual offerings....
Then the bridegroom points out the pole-star to the bride and says: 'the
heaven is firm, also the earth; the universe is stedfast, so mayest thou
be stedfast in our family'...." The symbolism of the act of sharing the
ox-hide as a seat becomes apparent when it is realized that the name for
cow or ox=go, also signifies possessions and riches, a conception which is
traceable to a period when cattle constituted the chief and most valued
possession of pastoral tribes. The veneration accorded in India to the cow
is well known and travellers have frequently described the sacred statue
of a cow, which is seven feet in height and stands next to the sacred well
of the temple at Benares.

In connection with the reference to the pole-star made by the Hindu
bridegroom, it is noteworthy that the Sanscrit for star is stri, tara, for
stara; Hindu sitara, tara and Bengal stara and that variants of the same
word constitute the name for star in Latin, Greek, Gothic, Old and Anglo
Saxon, Welsh, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish and Basque, in which language it
appears as izarra, recalling the Hindu sitara and, if I may venture to say
so, the Nahuatl word for star,