'Personal Narrative of a pilgrimmage to Al-Madinah and Meccah. Vol. II' [‎301] (336/568)

Appendix II.—The Bayt Ullah. 301
with the iron. This might possibly, as the learned Orientalist then
suggested, account for the mythic change of colour, its appearance
on earth after a thunderstorm, and its being originally a material
part of the heavens, Kutb al-Din expressly declares that, when the
Karamitah restored it after twenty-two years to the Meccans, men
kissed it and rubbed it upon their brows ; and remarked that the
blackness was only superficial, the inside being white. Some Greek
philosophers, it will be remembered, believed the heavens to be com
posed of stones (Cosmos, " Shooting Stars "): and Sanconiathon,
ascribing the aerolite-worship to the god Coelus, declares them to be
living or animated stones. " The Arabians," says Maximus of Tyre
(Dissert. 38, p. 455), " pay homage to I know not what god, which
they represent by a quadrangular stone." The gross fetichism of
the Hindus, it is well known, introduced them to litholatry. At
Jagannath they worship a pyramidal black stone, fabled to have
fallen from heaven, or miraculously to have presented itself on the
place where the temple now stands. Moreover, they revere the
Salagram, as the emblem of Vishnu, the second person in their triad.
The rudest emblem of the "Bonus Deus" was a round stone. It
was succeeded in India by the cone and triangle ; in Egypt by the
pyramid ; in Greece it was represented by cones of terra-cotta about
three inches and a half long. Without going deep into theory, it
may be said that the Ka'abah and the Hajar are the only two idols
which have survived the 360 composing the heavenly host of the
Arab pantheon. Thus the Hindu poet exclaims :—
" Behold the marvels of my idol-temple, O Moslem !
That when its idols are destroy'd, it becomes Allah's House."
Wilford (As. Soc. vols. iii. and iv.) makes the Hindus declare
that the Black Stone at Mokshesha, or Moksha-sthana (Meccah) was
an incarnation of Moksheshwara, an incarnation of Shiwa, who with
his consort visited Al-Hijaz. When the Ka'abah was rebuilt, this
emblem was placed in the outer wall for contempt, but the people
still respected it. In the Dabistan the Black Stone is said to be an
image of Kaywan or Saturn ; and Al-Shahristani also declares the
temple to have been dedicated to the same planet Zuhal, whose
genius is represented in the Puranas as fierce, hideous, four-armed,
and habited in a black cloak, with a dark turband. Moslem his
torians are unanimous in asserting that Sasan, son of Babegan,
and other Persian monarchs, gave rich presents to the Ka'abah;
they especially mention vwo golden crescent moons, a significant
offering. The Guebers assert chat, among the images and relics left
by Mahabad and his successors in the Ka'abah, was the Black
Stone, an emblem of Saturn. They ilso "all the city Mahgah