Abstract
I HAVE been following with much interest your notices of anthelia, and was about to add my mite to the information given, when, by the mail just in, I have your issue of October 25 last, wherein is a notice of the phenomenon as observed in Ceylon. I have witnessed it there scores and scores of times in my early tramps bird collecting, and I have also seen it at the Cape, in Brazil, on the Amazon, in Fiji, and in this island. On turning up my dear old friend Sir E. Tennant's book on Ceylon, I find that at p. 73, vol. i., he gives a very fair figure of the effect produced. It may be, as he says, that the Buddhists took from it the idea of a “halo” or “flame” for the head of Buddha, but there is one peculiarity about these flames that always struck me. In whatever position you find the Buddha, the flame is invariably in a straight line with the body even if the figure is recumbent. In form it always resembles the “tongues of fire” depicted by old painters as falling on the apostles on the Day of Pentecost.
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LAYARD, E. Anthelia. Nature 39, 413 (1889). https://doi.org/10.1038/039413a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/039413a0
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