CHAPTER I.

The Author takes a general retrospective Survey of the various Subjects previously discussed in the INDIAN ANTIQUITIES; and apoligizes for the Desultoriness unavoidable in so vast a Field of Inquiry. The theological System of the Brahmins, in many Respects, contradictory.` -The necessary Result of the different Characters of their two principal Deities, VEESHNU and SEEVA. Their respective Symbols, Rites, and Worship, described. The subject historically investigated, and the varying Módes of Adoration paid them accounted for, by a Reference to the two great Sources whence they were probably derived, the benevolent Sons of SHEM and the gloomy Progeny of CUSH.

H

AVING now considered the Theology

of India, under the general divisions into which that comprehensive system naturally branches itself forth; having, in the first place, investigated the nature of the mystic rites, celebrated by this superstitious race in consecrated groves and caverns; their devoGg 3 tion,

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tion, in every age, to the Sabian superstition, and veneration immemorially paid by them to the mundane elements, but principally to the all-pervading fire; having considered that religion in a physical, mythological, and moral, view, as well as in what points it resembled, or appeared to be connected with, the Egyptian, Persian, Grecian, and, finally, with our own more elevated, system of theology; I must now descend from more general observation to notice a few particulars by which it is distinguished from every other ecclesiastical establishment in the known world. A peculiar form of vestment and an appropriated mode of shaving the hair of the head and beard have distinguished most religious sects; but where in antient history do we find a race so infatuated as to suspend themselves aloft in cages, upon trees considered sacred, that they might not be infected by touching the polluted earth, refusing all sustenance but such as may keep the pulse of life just beating; or hanging aloft upon tenter-hooks, and vo luntarily bearing inexpressible agonies; sometimes thrusting themselves by hundreds under the wheels of immense machines that carry about their unconscious gods, where they are instantly crushed to atoms; and, at other

times, hurling themselves from precipices of stupendous height; now standing up to their necks in rivers, till rapacious alligators come and devour them; now burying themselves in snow till frozen to death; measuring with their naked bodies, trailed over burning sands, the ground lying between one pagoda and another, distant perhaps many leagues; or braving, with fixed eyes, the ardor of a meridian sun between the tropics; and all this in the transporting hope of immediately transmigrating into paradise? Where do we see an otherwise-polished nation staining their faces according to their different religious casts, and, I am inclined to believe, according to the imagined colour of the planets, with long strokes of saffron and vermilion although sprung from one common head, yet divided. into innumerable casts, each separated from the other by an eternal barrier; and all uniting to shun, as death, the contaminating intercourse of strangers? To detail these and many other curious particulars, relative to the Brahmin and Yogee penitents, will be the business of this last and concluding portion of the Indian Theology.

When, in the preceding Dissertation, I contended that the Indian Triad of Deity was (what

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