destroyer in Upper India. In twelve different descents did the unfeeling Mahmud of Gazna scatter death and desolation over the ravaged plains of Hindostan ; nor till the benevolent Akbar ascended her imperial throne, did the torrent of destruction cease to roll. That politic monarch set the first example to the princes of his dynasty, of a mild and paternal government, and substituted the soothing arts of conciliation for the irritating and avenging despotism of his sanguinary predecessors. That atrocious bigot, Aurungzebe, revived the ancient Tartar barbarity; carried sword and fire into the peninsula; every where demolished or polluted the temples; and, in one instance, went so far as to cause their most revered animal, the Cow, to be slaughtered in the very sanctuary of one of their principal pagodas.* It was never afterwards entered by a Hindoo, and became a celebrated Mahomedan mosque. From the writers of that sect (except from Abul Fazil, in the Ayeen Akbery), we have no unprejudiced accounts of the Hindus; and although the French travellers, Tavernier and others of the seventeenth century, faithfully narrated facts as they beheld them; yet their short stay in any particular region of India, forbade their entering so minutely into the Hindu character as the British, their more modern conquerors, from their long residence and domestication among them, have been enabled to do. The greatest part of these relations of our countrymen we have attentively perused, and various praise is due to their performances for their, in many respects, correct accounts of the customs and manners of the natives in the particular districts in which they have resided. But as a GENERAL SURVEY of whatever is connected with Hindustan-we mean in the most essential concern

See Thevenot's Indian Travels, p. 10, folio adit. 1687.

of MORALS and RELIGION-the singular book which we are now about to review, will be found the most luminous and comprehensive of any ever published in this country, speaking to facts, and to facts only, upon the evidence of the senses; the scrutinizing eye and the attentive ear, whose accuracy could not be deceived. Those facts, indeed, are, in some instances, of an astonishing and an appalling nature; but till a solid reason can be given why a set of men, who profess to be solely guided by the stern dictates of truth and conscience, and who, braving every danger of a foreign clime, have subjected themselves to a voluntary exile for ever from their native country, in order to propagate the doctrines of Christianity among a race more blind and bigotted to their nefarious superstitions, than any nation on the face of the globe :-we repeat, that till a solid and satisfactory reason be assigned, why these men should have the audacity to palm a deliberate falsehood upon the British public, in a gross misrepresentation of the Hindu character and prac. tices, we shall not refuse our be lief to their frank and artless statements.

A residence of many years at Serampore, near a great temple of Jagahnat, and in the very centre of the bloody superstitions of the Hindus, gives the author a claim to respect and belief, far beyond all who have gone before him in this line of enquiry; and the disin terestedness of himself and his brethren, evinced in a gratuitous devotion of their whole time and labour to the promotion of the great object they have in view, deserves the warm admiration and gratitude of both Asiatics and Europeans. They are indefatigably industrious in pursuing the most efficient plan recommended by Sir W. Jones, for the conversion of the Hindus, by translating the sacred, Scriptures into the Sanskrit and Persian tongues; which by the

aid of a printing-office set up on their own premises, where no less than ten presses are kept constantly at work, many thousand copies, in the different dialects of Asia, have been taken off, and widely and successfully distributed. A printing-press set up in the immediate vicinity of the vast slaughter, house of Jagahnat, to illumine, with the light of Christianity, the darkness and bigotry of the priestdeluded Hindus, who, for ages, have annually immolated their sons and their daughters on the bloodstained altars of that Indian MoLOCH! In what a glorious cause have these gentlemen embarked their time and their valuable talents! Who, that is a friend to civil and religious liberty, can deny them that high, that just applause their labours so imperiously demand? Who would be so ungenerous as, by base iusinuations and unfounded calumnies, to obstruct their progress in so noble and so patriotic an undertaking?

The work under consideration consists of two parts; an Introductory Dissertation, or, as it is modestly termed, Remarks; containing a vast combined mass of information of the most interesting kind, and discussions, under distinct heads, respecting the various objects of worship of this infatuated people in this terra Sculptilium, this land of sculptured imagery, from Brahma to a log of wood, The universe, and every thing in it, seems to have occasionally shared their devotion. Besides a thousand idols, the fabrication of his fancy and his fears, beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes, trees, and stones, of various kinds and imagined properties, have alternately received the homage of the ductile Hindu. Through all this immense farrago of divinities, it is impossible for us to wade; but the sensible dissertation, in which the substance of the book is condensed, has, in the first instance, a strong claim to our attention; and we shall, then, consider in detail some

of the more prominent features on the history of the idols and their worship, here submitted to the view of the astonished reader. The dis-. tinguishing, the sterling merit of this publication is, that direct translations from the original Sanskrit accompany all the assertions, however apparently incredible, made in the course of it. To the versions already published by Mr. Colebrooke, Mr. Paterson, and other members of the Asiatic Society, are added those made by the missionaries, assisted by learned Brahmins, from the Vedas and the Sastras, illustrative of each object discussed; so that the authenticity of the facts narrated can admit of no doubt, however revolting may be the enormities displayed to the mind of refined sentiment.

In these pages it will be seen and proved by the authentic documents just alluded to, that the Hindu theological doctrines are by no means of that pure and sublime nature which we were taught, even by the most respectable writers, to believe that they were; for the direct system, inculcated in those books, is PANTHEISM, or, according to the philosophy of the Greek schools, that the Divine Spirit is the soul of the world; a doctrine bordering upon Atheism, and attempted to be revived, with all its monstrous absurdities, by Spinoza, in the 17th century. The Ve danta philosophers teach, that God exists in a million of forms, from the ant to Brahma, the father of the Gods, as one moon is seen at once in twenty different vases of water. What then, is the object of worship among the Hindus? Mr. Ward answers thus-"It is not the ONE GOD, but this compound being, the soul of the world inclosed in matter, the primeval energy, the prolific and vivifying principle dwelling in all animated existences, or, in other words, the personification of whatever the disordered imaginations of the Hindus have attributed to this God,

encompassing himself with Maya, or delusion. This energy is said to have created the universe; and therefore this, as displayed in the grandest of the forms it assumes, is the object of worship. Hence the Gods, the heavens collectively, the sun and moon, as well as the stars, the sea, mighty rivers, and extraordinary appearances in nature, receive the adorations of the Hindoos "-Introductory Remarks, p. 18. This doctrine, we beg leave to add, is exactly in unison with the old Chaldaic superstition, practised by the fire-worshippers who erected the Tower of Babylon, who supposed the sun and stars to be animated beings, guided in their course by a celestial regent, the soul of the orb; and proves, among many other strong arguments, their immediate descent from that primeval and idolatrous race.

But to proceed with our inquiry respecting the notions entertained by the Vedanta philosophers of GOD and the SOUL, or that vivific innate principle which they consider as such. On this important subject we shall again quote Mr. Ward's own words,

Not only is God thus declared to be the soul of the world, but the writer of the above work affirms, that the world itself is God--God expanding himself in an infinite variety of forms: All things past, present, and to come; all that is in the earth, sky, &c. of every class and description; all this is Brumhu, who is the cause of all things, and the things themselves? Yet this writer, in another part of this work, seems to affirm, that the universe is the work of God::The principle of life is Brumhu; that which is animated is the work of Brumhu, who directs every thing, as the charioteer directs the chariot. Brumhu is everlasting and unchangeable; the world, which is his work, is changeable.'

This work represents Brumhu, in his state of repose, as destitute of ideas or intelligence, and entirely separated from all intelligences. It describes this repose by comparing it to whatever may communicate the idea of undisturbed tranquillity; to the bosom of the unruffled ocean; or to the rest enjoyed in a-deep sleep, in which there is an entire cessation even of the faculties of the mind.

What a degrading idea of the deity does this representation afford! Instead of the ever-watchful providence ascribed by Christianity to the supreme disposer of all events, he is here pourtrayed as totally estranged from the creatures he has made; as a sullen, lethargic, inaccessible being, existing through an immense revolution of ages in the abyss of barren and boundless solitude. After a succession, however, of these revolutions, Brahma, waking from his repose, unites to himself his own energy, and creates the universe; for it is their maxim, that when Brahma withdraws his energy, the destruction of the world succeeds; when he employs it, creation springs forth to new birth. Hence the prevalent doctrine in so many ancient systems of theology, and particularly in that of the Hindus, of the destruction and regeneration of unnumbered worlds, from whom in all probability the dogma was diffused through Asia and Greece. Their opinion of the SOUL, while imprisoned in the body, is given in the subsequent page.

The soul then, by these writers, is considered as separated from the source of happiness when it takes mortal birth, and as remaining a miserable wanderer in various births and states, till it regains its place in the divine essence. A devotee, sighing for absorption, is described as uttering his feelings in words to this purport: When shall I be delivered from this world, and obtain God!'

That

In consonance with these ideas, a system of devotion has been formed, to enable men to emancipate themselves from the influence of material objects, and thus to prepare them for absorption. In the first place, the devotee is to acquire the right knowledge of Brumhu, namely, that God and matter are the same; that Brumbu is the soul of the world. error which excites earthly desires, and impels to worldly exertions, is destroyed,' says the writer of the work already quoted, by the knowledge of Brumhu.' The person possessed of these ideas of God, is called the wise man,' Brumhu gnanee; and he who is destitute of this knowledge, is considered in a state of pitiable ignorance, like an insect incrusted with matter.

Further to enable him to subdue his