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copper struck against each other. There can scarcely be a doubt, as before-intimated, that Veeshnu, with his chacra and garoori, gave to the mythologists of Greece their Jupiter Tonans and his thunder-bearing eagle; whom, during the early commercial intercourse that subsisted between them, they might have seen thus designated in the Indian temples. I defer any particular account of the nine incarnations of Vecshnu, till the antient history of India shall commence, of which they form a very large and interesting portion. It is sufficient in this place to observe, that those incarnations it is with reluctance I use the word, but there is no other that can convey my mcaning, and it is used by Sir William Jones, and many other writers, who retain for the Christian doctrines the profoundest veneration represent the Deity, descending in a human shape, either to accomplish certain aweful and important events, as, in the instance of the three first: to confound blaspheming vice, to subvert gigantic tyranny, and to avenge oppressed innocence, as in the five following: or, finally, as in the ninth, to establish a glorious system of benevolent institutions upon the ruins of a gloomy and sanguinary superstition. These, surely, are noble

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actions; these are worthy of a god; and it is principally to these different descents of Veeshnu, and for such illustrious purposes, that all the allegorical sculpture and paintings of India have reference. The religion, therefore, of the Veeshnu sect is, as already has been observed, of a cheerful and social nature; theirs is the festive song, the sprightly dance, and the resounding cymbal: libations of milk and honey flow upon his altars; the gayest garlands decorate his statues; aromatic woods eternally burn before him; and the richest gums of the East disperse fragrance through the temples of THE PRESERVER.

Diametrically opposite to all this is the sombrous superstition of the relentless Seeva; a superstition darkened by gloomy terrors and ensanguined by excruciating penances. Seeva, however, is differently represented, according as the temple is consecrated to him in his avenging or in his re-productive capacity. I shall for the present consider him in the former character, in which he is portrayed with a fierce and menacing aspect; his features are distorted and his tongue is protruded from his mouth. He bears in his hand a trident, by whose three tines is symbolized FIRE, that destroys all things.

On

On this subject I cannot forbear remarking, that it appears to me, in the course of these inquiries, that a species of superstition, very dissimilar in feature from that which prevailed on the shores of the peninsula of India, seems very early to have flourished in the remote and lofty regions of Upper Hindostan. It was a religion that delighted not in the sprightly notes of the tabor, nor was soothed with the melodions warbling of the dancing syrens of the pagoda. It was a religion of gloom and melancholy, that loved to act its unsocial rites in the solemn recesses of the deep forest, under the covert of the night, and by the pale light of Chandra, the conscious moon, that bose witness to the nocturnal orgies of the sequestered and penitentiary Saivites. Indeed, it can by no means be an object of wonder to any reader of reflection, who has travelled through the entertaining volume of Bernier to the secluded valley of Cashmire, a valley surrounded with mountains, the most stupendous in height and the most rugged in form, from whose lofty steeps a thousand cataracts on every side rush down into the peaceful bosom of that valley, that the mind of the Hindoo, intimidated by the grand and majestic objects with which he is encircled,

should

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should be the sport of superstitious terrors. The whole range of mountains, in most places, covered with eternal snow, that skirt Hindostan to the north, and rise one abore the other in a style of horrid grandeur; and the vast and dreary deserts of Sirinagur, through the long extent of which the Ganges winds in its passage to Lower India; the impenetrable forests that in some places clothe those mountains, deepening the shadow thrown by them into the subjacent plains, and the steep abrupt denuded rocks that have braved the fury of every storm since the deluge; all together form a contrast, at which human nature may well shudder and by which human fortitude may be well staggered. These regions were a proper residence for the austere sect of the Saivites; men, accustomed to such gloomy objects, view religion and every other object through a false medium; the Deity is invested with the darkness which enwraps his works; they see him only in his dreadful attributes, they perpetually hear his aweful voice in the thunder, and contemplate him only in the storm that howls above them. They hasten, therefore, to propitiate him by unexampled severities, and they deluge his altars with sacrificial blood.

The

The investigation of this very curious, though unpleasing, subject, which I am about to consider, the detail of these penitentiary sufferings and voluntary sacrifices, instituted by timid superstition in the earliest ages of the world, opens a scene at once novel and interesting. So deep, however, in the abyss of time runs back the period to which I allude, so thick a veil hath oblivion diffused over the events of that distant era, that, at the present moment, I can scarcely collect any positive or connected intelligence relative to the nature of those mysterious orgies or the exact place of their celebration. It is evident, however, from the Ayeen Akbery, and the History of Ferishtah, that both serpents (that most antient symbol of the Deity in Egypt, to whose body, in their mysterious hieroglyphics, they added the head of the sharp-sighted hawk, to denote his all-observing vigilance in the government of the world) and sacred fountains were immemorially holden throughout Cashmire in the profoundest veneration. In a passage, cited before, it has been evinced, that in no less than 700 places of that province sculptured figures of serpents were worshipped; and that, at KEHROW, in the same province, 360 fountains, the number of

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