the head of the first creature he could find lying with his crown to the northward. This creature chanced to be an elephant, and his head, trunk and all, was accordingly placed on the neck of Vighneswara. Parvata was terrified when she first saw the proboscis, but by degrees became reconciled to it, and soon after, wishing to secure to her son the pleasures of domestic life, proposed to him to marry, and asked him what sort of a wife he should like. The son, who had long indulged for his mother a warmer affection than their mutual relation warranted, replied that he should wish to marry such an one as herself.

'Alarmed at his answer, she exclaimed in her wrath, 66 a wife like me! go then and seek for her, and never mayst thou marry, until thou findest exactly such an one." From that time, though Vighneswara has diligently visited all places frequented by women, he has never found one to suit his condition in the curse; or rather, no woman will unite with so unseemly a husband.'

The Bhagavata is a sort of poetical history of their gods and goddesses. Our author thus describes it.

In obscenity, there is nothing that can be compared with the Bhagavata. It is nevertheless the delight of the Hindus, and the first book they put into the hands of their children when learning to read; as if they deliberately intended to lay the basis of a dissolute education.'

One great difference between the Hindu idolatry and the paganism of Athens and Rome is, that the populace in India appear to recognise no other gods than the idols to which they offer sacrifice—the plant or animal which gives them foodthe consecrated stream or forest; while the inhabitants of those cities worshipped the lord of the ocean and not the element which obeyed him; fountains and forests were sanctified to them by the naiads and fauns whose dwellings they were; they burnt their incense and offered their sacrifices to the present deity, and not to the place of his habitation.

The idolatry of India is of a grosser kind, at least in many circumstances. It is the water itself which they worship; it is the fire, men or animals; it is the plant, or other inanimate object. In short they are led to the adoration of things from the consideration of their being useful or deleterious to them. A woman adores the basket which serves to bring or to hold her necessaries, and offers sacrifices to it; as well as to the rice-mill and other impleVol. IX. No. 1.

7

ments that assist her in household labour. A carpenter does the like homage to his hatchet, his adze, and other tools; and likewise offers sacrifice to them. A Brahman does so to the style with which he is going to write; a soldier to the arms he is to use in the field; a mason to his trowel; and a labourer to his plough. "Sailors, fishermen, and others who frequent the sea and the rivers, never fail, upon stated occasions, or as circumstances require, to hold a solemnity on the bank, where they sacrifice a ram, or other suitable offering. But, to whom do they offer this worship? To that god, they will answer, pointing to the water of the sea, or of the river or pond near which they stand." The homage and worship which the Brahmans offer directly to the elements, may be remarked in several of their daily rites.'

Familiarity, says the proverb, breeds contempt; and never was the maxim more happily illustrated than among the Hindus. It is no uncommon thing to hear the Brahmans, the priests consecrated to God, speak with the utmost contempt of the objects of their worship. They enter the temples without the least symptom of respect or reverence for the deities who reside there. Indeed, they generally prefer those places for their quarrels and contests.

6

'Their faith and their devotions are sometimes excited by human interests and motives. They exhibit a great reliance on those gods, through whom they get their bread; but where they have nothing to gain, or where they are not observed by the profane, they seem to care little about them.' It is very edifying to observe the profusion with which they heap their curses upon the scoundrel gods,' who send them too much rain; the women, too, scold with great unction on similar occasions- may the gods perish! my clothes are all wet,' is a very temperate expression of their wrath. Loud and violent thunder, which is as apt as most things to inspire respect and reverence for the Deity, is answered by them with some such expression as this, which it would seem they use not more in sorrow than in anger 'the rascally gods are dying.'

The insatiable superstition of the Hindus has added to the countless multitude of their gods, an equally numerous race of deutas, or evil genii-so called, in opposition to the good spirits whose characters and offices we have described-temples are built for their residence, and victims are slain upon their altars, but the ingenuity of their worshippers, fertile in

horrible absurdities as it is, has been exhausted upon their gods; and they have endeavoured in vain, to people their hell with monsters more terrible and disgusting than the inhabitants of their heaven. Nor do the rites and sacrifices by which they would express their gratitude for the protection of their deities and supplicate its continuance, differ much from those by which they deprecate the wrath, or propitiate the favour of their demons. They have giants, too, cast in the same mould with their gods and devils. Some of the anecdotes by which they would illustrate the size of these last mentioned personages are amusing.

'The giants of India are represented to be of a size so enormous, that, in order to wake one who had fallen asleep, they were obliged to make several elephants walk over him at once; and, even then, it was a long time before he was sensible of their weight. The hairs of his body were like the trunks of the largest trees. At one time, in a skirmish with some gods with whom he was at war, he fixed a rock upon each hair, and advancing into the midst of his enemies, with a sudden twirl of his body, he made the huge stones project around him, with such fury as to overwhelm them all.

The giant Ravana, the same who ravished the wife of Rama, that is to say, of Vishnu, personating that prince, had ten heads. The palace which he possessed in the island of Ceylon, of which he was king, was so prodigiously lofty, that the sun passed every day at noon under one of the arches.

All the giants were extremely debauched, and of a very malevolent disposition; particularly those that were Brahmans; for some there were of that cast, and they were the most wicked of

all.

"Sometimes they devoted themselves to an ascetic life, but with no view of reformation. The giant Rasmeswara supported a life of penitence so long as to compel Siva to grant him at last the power he had long and earnestly solicited, of reducing to cinders all persons on whose heads he might lay his hands. The ruffian was willing to make the first experiment of this miraculous power upon Siva himself. The hapless god knew not whether to fly from the pursuit of the giant. But Vishnu, the Preserver, seeing his distress, came up to his relief, and saved him, by artfully engaging the giant inadvertently to raise his hand to his own head; by which means he was consumed to ashes. With stories like this, the Hindu Mythology is filled.'

The hypothesis which regards the ancient Brahmans as the

instructers of Pythagoras, is, we think, much confirmed by the account which our author gives of the Hindu doctrines of the metempsychosis; especially as he appears to be wholly ignorant of the conclusions which naturally follow from the facts he states, and consequently cannot be supposed to have related them from an undue fondness for the theory they support. There is much reason for supposing that a belief in the metempsychosis was once universal. It has left deep and visible traces in the superstitions of every country. Charlevoix has discovered them among the Indians of South America. As this system was once so widely spread, its present prevalence among the Hindus is not sufficient to prove that Pythagoras learned it in their country; but there is one important peculiarity in the Brahman tenets, which we believe can be found no where else but in those held by Pythagoras. It is well known that the Italian philosopher taught that the transmigrations of souls after death were retributive, and would reward or punish according to the preponderance of virtue or vice during life. This was the use he made of this doctrine,-it was in this light he appeared to the world to regard it, and it was for this purpose he adopted it. But it is equally well known, that this was his exoteric doctrine; and differed much from the esoteric truth he taught in the inmost recesses of his school to the favoured few who were admitted there. To them he declared that the migration of the soul from one body to another was produced by a physical necessity, and was consequently exclusive of all moral consideration whatever.

The reason why he concealed this doctrine from the world is obvious; he was a lawgiver as well as a philosopher, and his esoteric principle was directly opposed to the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments, which he with every other ancient lawgiver, according to the famous maxim of Warburton, made the foundation of their political institutions. Now we know that this distinction was introduced in the west by Pythagoras;* and every system in which it has

* A passage of Diogenes Laertius, which Warburton quotes to prove that Pythagoras instructed the initiated by the physical necessity of transmigration, proves also that this doctrine was unknown in Europe until it was taught by

him.

“ΠΡΩΤΟΝ δὲ φασὶ τοῦτον ἀποφῆναι τὴν ψυχὴν ΚΥΚΛΟΝ ΑΝΑΓΚΗΣ ΑΜΕΙΒΟΥΣΑΝ, ἄλλοτε ἄλλοις ἐνδεῖσθαι ζώοις.” L. viii. S 14.

since appeared may be traced back through a longer or shorter course to the schools of Crotona. In the eastern countries we believe no traces of it have been hitherto discovered; but the Abbe's account of the Hindu metempsychosis affords a strong presumption, if it does not prove, that it still exists in India. We must believe that he does not intentionally deceive, for we have no right to charge him with an invention or a misrepresentation which, conscious as he certainly is of the conclusion to which it leads, would be perfectly gratuitous. There is throughout his relation, an indistinctness, a confusion, exceedingly unlike the precision of premeditated falsehood. He is evidently telling something which is too singular to be disregarded, but which he does not comprehend. He talks of two sorts of metempsychosis occasioned by different causes; one being retributive, rewards the good and punishes the bad; the other is caused by a necessity which arises from something, he cannot tell what, from the defilement produced by eating animal food or the violation of the Hindu ritual law in some other similar point. One inference alone can be drawn with certainty from what he says upon the subject; and this is, that the peculiar and esoteric system of Pythagoras, has been long known to, and professed by the Brahmans.

There is yet another hypothesis which we think an acquaintance with the Hindu mythology strongly disposes one to believe; we mean that which refers all religion to direct revelation from its object.

The religious institutions from the Indus to cape Comorin, while they differ from each other in some particulars, yet are too much alike, have too many features in common, to permit us to doubt for a moment that they are members of one family. Nor does it seem less easy to ascertain, the parent stock from which they have derived their common origin ; we do not mean that it is a matter of no difficulty to ascertain from what spot they came ;-the question never has been satisfactorily answered, and perhaps never will be, whether the smoke of incense and sacrifice first ascended to the true God from the altars of India or Egypt. Most of the records of the world's infancy are lost or illegible, and it is almost too late to inquire, whether we may stop at the banks of the Nile or the Ganges, or must journey on still further towards the rising sun, before we come to the land where that lumi