I've been occasionally dipping into
Mission des juifs by Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre, and today I read a passage in which he mentioned the similarity between the names
Abraham and
Brahma, and between those of Abraham's sister/wife
Sarah and Brahma's sister/wife
Sarasvati. Once this idea had been brought up -- to look for Sanskrit names in the story of Abraham -- it made me think of the "First Facsimile from the Book of Abraham." This was an incomplete Egyptian funerary papyrus, "restored" and "translated" by Joseph Smith in a way that is very obviously incorrect by the standards of modern Egyptology. For example, the four canopic jars representing the four sons of Horus (Imsety, Duamutef, Hapi, and Qebehsenuef) were said by Smith to represent four otherwise unknown pagan gods called Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmachrah, and Korash.
There have been various fanciful attempts by Mormon apologists to make these names archaeologically respectable. Elkenah must be derived from El-Cana, meaning the Canaanite god El (who of course was not one of the sons of Horus, didn't have a falcon's head, and was not worshiped in Egypt); Libnah is connected to a Hebrew (not Egyptian!) root meaning "white," and it is said that that particular son of Horus was associated with the color white; that sort of thing.
Well, if we're going to go Sanskrit on the Abraham story, isn't it obvious that
Mahmachrah must be
Maha-makara, the Great Makara?
Makara is a Sanskrit name for, among other things, the crocodile, and a crocodile appears in Facsimile 1. Perhaps Smith just misnumbered the figures, and it is the crocodile that he intended to call
Mahmachrah. I'm not proposing any of this seriously, of course; it just popped into my mind when I read about the supposed Sanskrit derivation of the names
Abraham and
Sarah.
Makara doesn't just mean "crocodile," though. It is also the Sanskrit term for the zodiac sign of Capricorn and refers to a sea creature which is variously depicted, but one of the most common forms it takes is that of a huge fish with the trunk of an elephant.
I hadn't said or written any of this; I had only been thinking about it, and picturing the elephant-nosed makara in my mind -- a very distinctive image, I think, and not one that comes to mind very often -- when I walked into my classroom and found that one of my students had drawn this on the whiteboard:
I still find this whole phenomenon baffling. It's happened
enough times, and with such weirdly specific content, that I would ordinarily dismiss "coincidence" as an explanation -- but on the other hand, seemingly impossible coincidences are pretty much an everyday occurrence in my life!
If it's not just another manifestation of "synchronicity" -- that infuriating non-explanation! -- I do tend to think it must be some sort of subconscious telepathy on the kids' part rather than precognition on my own. My mental images in these cases don't just pop into my head inexplicably; the train of thought can be traced back with little effort. When I ask the kid why he happened to draw an "elephant fish," though -- or a king holding an apple, or whatever the image may be -- there's never any explanation. I think they just cast about in the ether for something to draw and sometimes "pick up" something from my mind without realizing that that's where it came from.
I never tell the kids about these incidents, and they are none the wiser. As far as this young artist knows, he just happened to think of an "elephant fish" for no particular reason. Likewise, if some of the random ideas or images that pop into my head were actually pilfered from the private thoughts of other people, I would normally have no way of knowing that. I wonder just how common this sort of thing is.
