[70] “These rocky shrines, the formation of which Mr. Grose supposes to have been a labor equal to that of erecting the Pyramids of Egypt, are of various height, extent, and depth.  They are partitioned out, by the labor of the hammer and the chisel, into many separate chambers, and the roof, which in the pagoda of Elephanta is flat, but in that of Salsette is arched, is supported by rows of pillars of great thickness, and arranged with much regularity.  The walls are crowded with gigantic figures of men and women, engaged in various actions, and portrayed in various whimsical attitudes; and they are adorned with several evident symbols of the religion now prevailing in India.  Above, as in a sky, once probably adorned with gold and azure, in the same manner as Mr. Savary lately observed in the ruinous remains of some ancient Egyptian temples, are seen floating the children of imagination, genii and dewtahs, in multitudes, and along the cornice, in high relief, are the figures of elephants, horses, and lions, executed with great accuracy.  Two of the principal figures at Salsette are twenty-seven feet in height, and of proportionate magnitude; the very bust only of the triple-headed deity in the grand pagoda of Elephanta measures fifteen feet from the base to the top of the cap, while the face of another, if Mr. Grose, who measured it, may be credited, is above five feet in length, and of corresponding breadth.”—­MAURICE, Ind.  Ant. vol. ii. p. 135.

[71] According to Faber, the egg was a symbol of the world or megacosm, and also of the ark, or microcosm, as the lunette or crescent was a symbol of the Great Father, the egg and lunette—­which was the hieroglyphic of the god Lunus, at Heliopolis—­was a symbol of the world proceeding from the Great Father.—­Pagan Idolatry, vol. i. b. i. ch. iv.

[72] Zoroaster taught that the sun was the most perfect fire of God, the throne of his glory, and the residence of his divine presence, and he therefore instructed his disciples “to direct all their worship to God first towards the sun (which they called Mithras), and next towards their sacred fires, as being the things in which God chiefly dwelt; and their ordinary way of worship was to do so towards both.  For when they came before these fires to worship, they always approached them on the west side, that, having their faces towards them and also towards the rising sun at the same time, they might direct their worship to both.  And in this posture they always performed every act of their worship.”—­PRIDEAUX. Connection. i. 216.

[73] “The mysteries of Ceres (or Eleusis) are principally distinguished from all others as having been the depositories of certain traditions coeval with the world.”—­OUVAROFF, Essay on the Mysteries of Eleusis, p. 6.

[74] The dadouchus, or torch-bearer, carried a symbol of the sun.