Untitled - Sabrizain.org

BIRMAH. 255
Deeong hill is about 100 feet in height, and is composed
of strata of schistus : it is completely surrounded with
water even when the tide is ebb.
" Surrounding the outer wall of one of the principal
and most ancient of the Arracan temples, is observed
amongst the weeds and jungle, which in many places
obscure those interesting relics, a series of very sur-
prising mutilated sculptures, placed in interstices
resembling embrasures, constructed in the ruined wall
enclosing the court of the temple. Upon one of those
stones is sculptured the Tauric man, or Bucephalus
Siva, the Mithra of the Persians, or, in other words,
the sun in Taurus. Another distinctly exhibits the
Sphinx, consisting of the bust of a woman attached to
the body and feet of a lion, or the solar luminary
having passed Leo and entered Virgo. The dragon's
head and tail, shewn in the headless volume of an immense
snake's body, are conspicuous upon another
stone in the series. Another contains a groupe appa-
rently comprising the crow and Sagittarius, and representing
a man aiming with an arrow at an evident
figure of a raven. Another exhibits a woman seem-
ingly in the acf of striking a sleeping man with a stone ;
which representation I take to form an allusion to
the sun leaving Virgo, (under the figure of a man
slain by a woman, and perhaps mixed up with a perversion
of the historical fact of Jael and Sisera,) and
entering Libra, the first of the lower or southern signs,
and thus, slain by Virgo, or the woman, becoming
dead and cold to the inhabitants of the northern hemisphere.
I imagine the whole of the sculptures which
are cut on both sides of those stones (a sort of dark,
friable sandstone) to afford representations of the con-
stellations, and thus to exhibit the remains of a very
ancient and curious zodiac, differing totally, in some