THE chapter on this subject in Arthur Watson's admirable and long awaited monograph on the Early Iconography of the Tree of Jesse (Oxford, 1934) is of particular interest. Let me say in the first place that although the formula appears rather suddenly in Christian art in the eleventh century, I have no wish to demonstrate or even to argue for an Indian or otherwise specifically Oriental origin at that time, my view being rather that we have here a single example of the many close parallels between mediaeval Christian and Oriental thought and symbolism which are best understood by an ultimate derivation of both from a common source (of which our earliest knowledge is, perhaps, Sumerian); diversities of formulation representing as it were the dialects of one spiritual tradition common to humanity. From this point of view there is no difficulty in assimilating Isaiah, XI, 1–3 to the Vedic texts cited in my “Tree of Jesse and Indian Parallels or Sources” (Art Bulletin, Vol. XI), without suggesting any derivation of one text from the other. In just the same way Exodus XIV corresponds to Kg Veda III, 33 and VII, 18 (in both cases the chosen people cross the Waters in chariots, the Waters lending themselves to easy passage, while the enemy attempting to follow is destroyed by the returning torrent); and Genesis, 1, 2, especially as understood by some mediaeval writers, e.g. Ulrich Engelberti “the Spirit of God moves over the Waters warming (foveas) and forming all things,”1 with Aitareya Āranyaka, II, 4, 3, “He glowed upon the Waters, and from the Waters that were set aglow a form was born,” and ib. II, 2, 1, “He who glows is the Spiritus.” Parallels of this sort could be indefinitely multiplied, and cannot be accidental.2