The evil eye. An account of this ancient and wide spread superstition

226 THE EVIL EYE chap.
Appendix I
A VERY short excursion in the field of comparative
rehgions will show how one idea seems to have come
from the far East in the early days of mankind, and to
have taken root in the minds of all races who came west-
ward. We have already referred to the faith which led
the Magi to follow the star to Bethlehem. Throughout
the East it was the primaeval instinct that a child was to
be born of a celestial mother, who should destroy the
spirit of evil and be the saviour of mankind. Not only so,
but the mother was to conceive and to bring him forth
from her own inherent power. ^^"^ With the triune male
deity we find a single female associated. " Her names
are innumerable, ' Mother of all the Gods,' The Lady, The
Queen, Mulita, Bilta, Ishtar, or the bright, pure being.
She is also Ri, Alitta, Elissa, Beltis, Ashtoreth, Astarte,
Saraha or Sara, Nana, Asurah, Tanith. All these and
more are Babylonish, but elsewhere she is Athor, Dea,
Syria, Artemis, Aphrodite, Rhea, Demeter, Ceres, Diana,
Minerva, Juno, Venus, Isis, Cybele, Ge, Hera. As
' Anaitis she is The Mother of the Child ; reproduced
'
again as Isis and Horus, Devaki and Christna, Aurora
and Memnon. Even in ancient Mexico the mother and
child were worshipped. In modern times she survives
as the Virgin Mary and her Son. There were Ishtar
of Nineveh and Ishtar of Arbela, just as there are now
Maria di Loretto and Marie de la Garde."
Indranee (and her child), consort of Indur from the cave
of Indur Subha, are again one and the same person. Fig.
74367 really represents Mary, whose name is synonymous
with maternity, but not with ordinary maternity occurring
on earth, inasmuch as throughout the ancient mytho-
^os Inman, Ancient Faiths, vol. i. p. 98 et seq.
^"^ From Asiatic Researches, vol. vi. p. 393. I am quite aware that
Lieutenant Wilford is said to have been imposed upon by stories invented for
him. Into that controversy I need not enter, and merely give his statements
for what they are worth. Prof. Max Muller refers to this in an article in Nine-
teenth Century, October 1894.