vision.

On Mount Meru itself there were four lakes respectively filled with milk,
butter, coagulated milk and sugar. Four great rivers flowed from the
mountain towards the cardinal points, namely, the Ganges, issuing from the
mouth of a cow, the Sita from the head of the elephant; the Bhadra from a
tiger or lion and the Chaksu from a horse. According to Buddhistic
mythology, the sacred mountain Meru, which constitutes the centre of the
world, is guarded by four hero "kings of demons." Their names are as
follows: 1. Kubera or Vaisranana, the god of wealth, who lives in the
north, whose attributes are the lance and banner, the rat which throws
forth jewels from its mouth. 2. Virudhaka, who rules the south, and whose
attributes are the helmet in the form of an elephant's head, and a long
sword. 3. Virupaksha, the guardian of the west: attributes, the jewel and
the serpent. 4 Dhrtarashtra, the ruler of the east: attribute, the
mandoline.

An interesting parallelism is brought out by a comparison between the
ancient Mexican mode of producing the sacred fire by means of a reed and a
piece of wood and its symbolism of the mystic union of the two principles
of nature, to the origin of fire as told in the Veda and the ceremonial
mode employed in India to produce the sacred fire by means of the mystic
arani and the pramantha. The difference between the ancient American and
Indian apparatus should be noticed. The two arani, made of the wood of
_Ficus religiosa_, were placed crosswise. "At their junction was a
fossette or cup-like hole and there they placed a piece of wood upright,
in the form of a lance (the pramantha), violent rotation of which by means
of whipping, produced fire, as did Prometheus, the bearer of fire in
Greece" (Bournouf, Des Sciences et Religions and Prof. Thomas Wilson, The
Swastika, p. 777). A remarkable relation unquestionably exists between the
two mystic arani, which, crossed, form a four-branched cross from the
centre of which fire is produced by rotation and the almost universal
identification of Polaris and Ursa Major, as the central source of life,
power extending to four directions, rotation and duality underlying
quadruplicity. In my opinion no more graphic presentation of the rotation
of Ursa Major around Polaris, the central ruler of heaven, could have been
devised than the cross figure from the centre of which fire was
perpetually obtained.

It is all the more significant, therefore, to find it