1nCnVqgFI

:
EGG AND ARK. 385
shows,* it was a symbol adopted among the Greeks, the Sj^ians, Persians,
and 'Egyptians. In the Egyptian Rittial, Seb, the God of Time
and of the Earth, is spoken of as having laid
an Egg, or the Universe,
Dual Force."!
The
an "Egg conceived at the hour of the Great One of the
Ra is shown like Brahma gestating in the Egg of the Universe.
Deceased is "resplendent in the Egg of the Eand of Mysteries." :|: For,
this is "the Egg to which is given Life among the Gods."§ "It is the
Egg of the great clucking Hen, the Egg of Seb, who issues from it like
a hawk."
||
Among the Greeks the Orphic Egg is described by Aristophanes, and
was part of the Dionysiac and other Mysteries, during which the Mundane
Egg was consecrated and its significance explained ; Porphyr}^ also
shows it to be a representation of the world: " 'Ep/x7;j/cu€t Sc to wov rov
Koa-fjLov." Faber and Bryant have tried to show that the Egg t5'pified
the Ark of Noah—a wild belief, unless the latter is
accepted as purely
allegorical and symbolical. It can only have t3-pified the Ark as a
synonym of the Moon, the Argha which carries the universal seed of
life; but had surely nothing to do with the Ark of the Bid/e. Anyhow,
the belief that the Universe existed in the beginning in the shape of an
Egg was general. And as Wilson says:
A similar account of the first aggregation of the elements in
the form of an Egg
is given in all the Purdnas, with the usual epithet Haima or Hiranj'a, "golden," as
it occurs in Manu, I.
9.II
Hiranya, however, means "resplendent," "shining," rather than
"golden," as is proven by the great Indian scholar, the late Svami
Dayanand Sarasvati, in his unpublished polemics with Professor Max
Miiller. As said in the Vishnu Purdna
Intellect [Mahat] . . . the [unmanifested] gross elements inclusive, formed
an Egg . . . and the Lord of the Universe himself abided in it, in the character
of Brahma. In that Egg, O Brahmana, were the continents, and seas and mountains,
the planets and divisions of the planets, the gods, the demons and mankind.**
Both in Greece and in
India the first visible male Being, who united
in himself the nature of either sex, abode in the Egg and issued from
it.
This "Fir.st-born of the World" was Dionysus, with some Greeks;
* iii. 165.
t Ch. liv. 3.
X Ch. xxii. I.
\ Ch. xlii. 13.
II Ch. liv. I, 2; ch. Ixxvii. 1.
IT Vishnu Piir&na, I. 39.
•• Op. cit., ibid. a6