chiefest of the nine sorts of Gods. To none hath the divine Lord given, in whose hand is the victorious sword; who is like the fiery-armed God of Battails, to the most illustrious. The second is as blasphemous as the first, though hardly swells so far out of sense. sea. A The highest PADUCCO SYRY SULTAN, NELMONAM WELGACA, NELMOCHADIN MAGIVIITHA, JOUKEN DER EAUTEN ALLAULA FYLAN, King of the whole world; who makes the water rise and flow. A King that is like a God, and shines like the sun at noon-day. A King that gives a glance like the Moon when it is at full. Elected of God to be worthy as the North Star, being of the race and offspring of the great Alexander; with a great understanding, as a round orb, that tumbles hither and thither, able to guess at the depth of the great A King that hath amended all the funerals of the departed Saints, and is as righteous as God, and of such power, that all the world may come and shelter under his wings. King that doth right in all things, as the Kings of old have done. A King more liberal than all Kings. A King that hath many mines of gold that God hath lent him; who hath built temples half gold and half brass; sitting upon a throne of pure gold, and of all sorts of precious stones. A King of the white Elephant, which Elephant is the King of all Elephants, before whom many thousands of other Elephants must bow and fall upon their knees. He whose eyes shine like the morning-star. A King that hath Elephants with four teeth, red, purple, and pied. Elephants, ay, and a BYYTENAQUES Elephant; for which God has given him many and divers sorts of apparel wrought with most fine gold, ennobled with many precious stones: and, besides these, so many Elephants used in battel, having harnesses of iron, their teeth tipt with steel, and their harnesses laid over with shining brass. A King that has many hundred horses, whose trappings are wrought with fine gold, and adorned with precious stones of every sort that are found in the universal world where the Sun shines, and these shod with fine gold: besides so many hundred horses that are used in war of every kind. A King who has all Em perours, Kings, Princes, and Sovereigns in the whole world from the rising to the going down of the sun, under subjection; and such as can obtain his favour are by him promoted to great honour; but, on the contrary, such as revolt, he burns with fire. A King who can show the power of God, and whatever God has made. And so, by this time, I hope you have heard enough of a King of Elephants and Horses, though not a word of his Asses. STRUYS. The Sacrifice. -VIII. p. 59. The Aswamedha, or sacrifice of a horse. Considerable difficulties usually attended that ceremony; for the consecrated horse was to be set at liberty for a certain time, and followed at a distance by the owner, or his champion, who was usually one of his near kinsmen; and, if any person should attempt to stop it in its rambles, a battle must inevitably ensue; besides, as the performer of an hundred Aswamedhas became equal to the God of the firmament, Indra was perpetually on the watch, and generally carried off the sacred animal by force or by fraud. WILFORD. Asiat. Res. Mr. Halhed gives a very curious account of this remarkable sacrifice: "The Ashum-meed-Jugg does not merely consist in the performance of that ceremony which is open to the inspection of the world, namely, bringing a horse and sacrificing him; but Ashum-meed is to be taken in a mystic signification, as implying that the sacrificer must look upon himself to be typified in that horse, such as he shall be described, because the religious duty of the Ashum-meed-Jugg comprehends all those other religious duties, to the performance of which all the wise and holy direct all their actions, and by which all the sincere professors of every different faith aim at perfection: the mystic signification thereof is as follows: "The head of that unblemished horse is the symbol of the morning; his eyes are the sun; his breath the wind; his wide-opening mouth is the Bishwaner, or that innate warmth which invigorates all the world: his body typifies one entire year; his back paradise; his belly the plains; his hoofs this earth; his sides the four quarters of the heavens; the bones thereof the intermediate spaces between the four quarters; the rest of his limbs represent all distinct matter; the places where those limbs meet, or his joints, imply the months and halves of the months, which are called peche (or fortnights): his feet signify night and day; and night and day are of four kinds. 1. The night and day of Birhma, 2. The night and day of angels, 3. The night and day of the world of the spirits of deceased ancestors, 4. The night and day of mortals; these four kinds are typified in his four feet. The rest of his bones are the constellations of the fixed stars, which are the twentyeight stages of the moon's course, called the Lunar year: his flesh is the clouds; his food the sand; his tendons the river; his spleen and his liver the mountains; the hair of his body the vegetables, and his long hair the trees; the fore part of his body typifies the first half of the day, and the hinder part the latter half; his yawning is the flash of the lightning, and his turning himself is the thunder of the cloud: his urine represents the rain, and his mental reflection is his only speech. The golden vessels, which are prepared before the horse is let loose, are the light of the day, and the place where those vessels are kept is a type of the Ocean of the East; the silver vessels which are prepared after the horse is let loose, are the light of the night; and the place where those vessels are kept is a type of the Ocean of the West: these two sorts of vessels are always before and after the horse. The Arabian horse, which on account of his swiftness, is called the Hy, is the performer of the journies of angels; the Tajee, which is of the race of Persian horses, is the performer of the journies of the Kundherps (or good spirits); the Wazba, which is of the race of the deformed Tazee horses, is the performer of the journies of the Jins (or demons); and the Ashoo, which is of the race of Turkish horses, is the performer of the journies of mankind. This one horse, which performs these several services, on account of his four different sorts of riders, obtains the four different appellations. The place where this horse remains is the great ocean, which signifies the great spirit of Perm-Atma, or the Universal Soul, which proceeds also from that Perm-Atma, and is comprehended in the same PermAtma. The intent of this sacrifice is, that a man should consider himself to be in the place of that horse, and look upon all these articles as typified in himself; and, conceiving the Atma (or divine soul) to be an ocean, should let all thought of self be absorbed in that Atma."-HALHED, from Darul Shekuh. Compare this specimen of eastern sublimity with the description of the horse in Job! Compare it also with the account of the Bengal horses, in the very amusing work of Captain Williamson, -“which said horses," he says, "have generally Roman noses, and sharp narrow foreheads, much white in their eyes, ill-shaped ears, square heads, thin necks, narrow chests, shallow girths, lank bellies, cat hams, goose rumps, and switch tails."- Oriental Sports, vol. ii. p. 206. The Bowl that in its vessel floats.—VIII. p. 62. The day and night are here divided into four quarters, each of six hours, and these again into fifteen parts, of twenty-four minutes each. For a chronometer they use a kind of dish of thin brass, at the bottom of which there is a little hole; this is put into a vessel with water, and it runs full in a certain time. They begin their first quarter at six in the morning. They strike the quarters and subdivisions of time with a wooden hammer, upon a flat piece of iron or steel, of about ten inches in diameter, which is called a garnial, and gives a pretty smart sound, which can be heard at some distance. The quarters are first struck, and then as many times as the brass dish has run full in that quarter. None but the chief men of a district are allowed to have a garnial, and still they may not strike the first division of the first quarter, which is a privilege reserved to the nabob alone. Those who attend at these clocks must be of the Bramin cast.-STAVORINUS. Lo! the time-taper's flame, ascending slow, Creeps up its coil. VIII. p. 63. They make a sort of paste of the dust of a certain sort of wood, (the learned and rich men of sandal, eagle-wood, and others that are odoriferous,) and of this paste they make sticks of several sorts, drawing them through a hole, that they may be of an equal thickness. They commonly make them one, two, or three yards long, about the thickness of a goosequill, to burn in the pagods before their idols, or to use like a match to convey fire from one thing to another. These sticks or ropes they coil, beginning at the centre, and so form a spiral conical figure, like a fisherman's wheel, so that the last circle shall be one, two, or three spans in diameter, and will last one, two, or three days, or more, according as it is in thickness. There are of them in the temples that last ten, twenty, and thirty days. This thing is hung up by the centre, and is lighted at the lower end, whence the fire gently and insensibly runs round all the coil, on which there are generally five marks, to distinguish the five parts of the night. This method of measuring time is so exact and true, that they scarce ever find any considerable mistake in it. The learned travellers, and all others, who will rise at a certain hour to follow their business, hang a little weight at the mark that shows the hour they have a mind to rise at, which, when the fire comes thither, drops into a brass bason set under it: and so the noise of it falling awakes them, as our alarum-clocks do.. - GEMELLI CARERI. At noon the massacre begun, And night closed in before the work of death was done. Of such massacres the ancient and modern history of the East supply but too many examples. One may suffice: After the surrender of the Ilbars Khan, Nadir prohibited |