the floor, the roots
of which are said to be in the centre of the earth.

The Indian Buddhists, of course, denied that China could be the Middle
Kingdom, as the place where Buddha lived must necessarily be the centre.
Nevertheless, the centre is now found by Chinese Buddhists in the Temple
of Heaven at Pekin, where is one circular stone in the centre of circles
of marble terraces, on which the Emperor kneels surrounded by
circles--including that of the horizon--and believes himself to be in
the Centre of the Universe and inferior only to Heaven.

But in the sixth century a certain Chinese traveller, called Sung-Yun,
went to India for Buddhist studies, and he made his way by the Pamirs,
the watershed of the great Asiatic rivers Indus and Oxus. And of this
country he wrote:

'After entering the Tsung Ling mountains, step by step, we crept upwards
for four days, and reached the highest point of the range. From this
point as a centre, looking downwards, it seemed just as though we were
poised in mid-air. Men say that this is the middle point of heaven and
earth.'

This was written more than thirteen hundred years ago, and men to-day
still call this part of Asia the Roof of the World.

INDEX.

INDEX.

A

Aaron's rod, 25

Aeschines, 18

Agricola, 29

Albertus, 84

Animal instinct of cure by plants, 161

Anthropomorphon, 84

Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, 193

Ahmed, Prince, 42

Aristotle, 153

Arthurian legends, 23

Asterodia, 2

Australian legends, 8, 20, 21

B

Baaras, root of, 80

Bacchus, 73

Bacon, 68, 85

Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, 37-39, 60, 61, 88

Barth, 52

Benjamin's sack, 49

Beryl, the, 48
the spirits of the, 48

Bhasa, 71

Bion's Lament, 124

Black Kaspar, 48

Bodhi Tree, 199

Book of Days, 73, 75

Brand's Popular Antiquities, 97, 100, 107

Breton legends, 8

British Guiana legends, 8-20

Britomart, 50

Browne, Sir Thomas, 28, 29, 83

Browning's, Mrs., Dead Pan, 80

Buddha's foot, 11

'Bull-roarer,' the, 17, 18

Bushman legend, 63

C

Cagliostro, 51

Cain in the Moon, 62

Cambuscan's mirror, 49

Camelon, 27

Capnomancy, 13

Cat and the Well, 6

Catoptromancy, 50

Celestial Paradise, 189

Chaldaeo-Babylonian legends, 92

Chaucer, 49, 62

Chinese legends, 20, 95

Cingalese legends, 11