Of the Hindu heathen deity, Vishnu, Father Boushet mentions an Indian
tradition, concerning a flood which covered the whole earth, when Vishnu
made a raft, and, being turned into a fish, steered it with his tail.
Vishnu, like Dagon, was represented under the figure of a man and fish.

Strangely enough, the regions said to have been traversed by Dionysus,
Osiris, or Bacchus were, at different times, passed through by the
posterity of Ham, and in many of them they took up their residence. In
his journeyings the chief attendants of Osiris, or Bacchus, were Pan,
Anabis, Macedo, the Muses, the Satyrs, and Bacchic women were all in his
retinue. The people of India claim him as their own, and maintain that
he was born at Nusa in their country. Arrian speaks of the Nuseans as
being the attendants of Dionysus. In all traditions Dionysus appears as
the representative of some power of Nature.

The first who reduced Mythology to a kind of system were, in all
probability, the Egyptians. Egypt was ever the land of graven images,
and under the veil of Allegory and Mythology the priests concealed
religion from the eyes of the vulgar. In the beginning, brute animals
and certain vegetables were represented as the visible symbols of the
deities to which they were consecrated. Hence Jupiter Ammon was
represented under the figure of a Ram; Apis under a Cow; Osiris of a
Bull; Mercury or Thol of an Ibis; Diana or Babastis of a Cat; and Pan of
a Goat. From these sources are derived the fabulous transformation of
the gods celebrated in Egyptian Mythology, and afterwards imported into
Greece and Italy to serve as the subjects of the Grecian and Roman
Pantomimes.

Pantomime as we now know the term, means, not only the Art of acting in
dumb show, but also that of a spectacle or Christmas entertainment. (I