gled with innumerable ftars. At the fame time, their great attachment to aftronomy would induce them to confider the priests, who officiated around him, as representing the planetary train moving in their several stations by his immediate command and influence, and clothed with brightness from the reflection of his own transcendent glory.

After having thus defcribed, as far as they have been revealed to us by Apuleius and other ancient writers, the Mithriac mysteries, I come at length to detail the yet unparalleled fufferings endured in

THE FOURTH ASHERUM, OR STATE OF SANIASSI; AND THE SERIES OF EXQUISITE TORTURES VOLUNTARILY INFLICTED HIMSELF BY THE PENITENT YOGEE.

ON

These two states may be confidered as the laft stage of the terrestrial journey of the Me→ tempfychofis. With them the dreadful period of probation closes; with them the fire of the human ordeal is finally extinguished. The word Saniaffi, as explained in the Geeta, p. 124, fignifies the forfaking of all actions which are defirable. If we might judge from

the conduct of thofe who bear the name, it might with more truth be rendered the performing of all actions that can excite disgust and impress horror on the human foul. The word YoGEE, or, as fome write it, JOGUE, is derived from a root fignifying devotion. By the Saniaffi is properly to be understood the brahmin in his fourth and highest degree of fpiritual discipline, prescribed in the Vedas for those of that cast who may poffefs fortitude of mind and vigour of body fufficient to undergo those excruciating feverities, which, when refolutely perfevered in to the last, have power to unbar the gates of eternity, and introduce the performer immediately into paradise. The Yogee is properly a voluntary penitent, who afpires to the honours and distinction of a Saniaffi, and who endeavours to rival, if not exceed, him in the number and degree of his aggravated fufferings. All the writers of the ancient world, and most of the moderns, have confounded the two characters; and the name of Saniaffi and Yogee have been promiscuously applied. The ancients, indeed, ranked all the race of these auftere penitents under the title of gymnosophists, or naked philofophers. The brahmin Saniaffi, however, does not wander about entirely naked, although the Yogee re

jects

jects all covering, fcorning, amidst his divine abforption, to beftow one thought on the contemptible clay that holds in bondage his ftruggling foul. I shall first delineate the rigid principles and deliberate cruelties inflicted on himself by the Saniaffi. I fhall then enter into rather an extenfive detail of what claffical writers have related concerning the ancient gymnofophift, and what, from modern writers and authentic living witneffes, I have been able to collect relative to the romantic doctrines and eccentric practices of those furious maniacs, the Yogees of the present day.

There is, as we have just intimated, an immenfe difference in the conduct of the devotee of the brahmin caft and that of a devotee of an inferior tribe. The Saniaffi is distinguished by the calm, the filent, dignity with which he fuffers the series of complicated evils through which he is ordained to toil: the Yogee is wild and defultory in his devotion, and oftentatious of the penances to which he voluntarily condemns himself. The former buries himself in the folitude of the defert, and is content that God and his own foul are confcious to the aufterities which he endures: the latter feeks the crouded bazar, or market

place,

place, and delights to fcourge and lacerate himself in the fight of innumerable spectators. The profeffed design of both, however, is to detach their thoughts from all concern about fublunary objects; to be indifferent to hunger and thirst; to be infenfible to fhame and reproach; and, as far as it is poffible for beings who have not yet paffed the bourn of mortality, to emancipate the foul from its tabernacle of clay.

The leading principle that fways the mind of the Saniaffi is by unexampled aufterities to fubdue the body, because he is convinced that fubjugation of the paffions will neceffarily folJow that conqueft. He exults, therefore, in making the most painful facrifices that can fhock agonizing nature. On entering this degree, he instantly, and without fcruple, difcards for ever the dearest friend and the tenderest relative. The affectionate wife, the blooming daughter, (for the Saniaffi is not always advanced in years,) in vain clasp his knees, and folicit him to relax in his dreadful purpose: he is deaf to their cries and callous to their tears; he throws away every article of dress, except a scanty linen cloth of a yellow colour which girds his waist; and, with a pitcher in one hand and a pilgrim's staff in the other,

he

he hurries away to the defert, never to return. Famine and misery are the companions of his folitude. Abforbed in profound meditation on the Deity, he never violates the facred filence in which his lips are fealed, except to pronounce the myftic word AWAN, which is the commencement of the Vedas. His food is the fruits and herbage that spontaneously spring up in the defert: if these fail him, the laws of his fevere order permit him to go to the nearest village and beg a handful of boiled rice, or other food, which he eats on the spot; if they throw it on the ground, he takes it up with his mouth, fwallowing only as much as will serve to sustain life. The fole business of that life is inceffant mental prayer and intense contemplation. These they confider as u niting them intimately to the Deity, and enduing them with a portion of his power. Their energy is inexpreffible: it is felt through all the works of nature, and through all the claffes of existence. It can call down the stars. from heaven, and bring up dæmons from the lowest bobun of Naraka. To such a length does their fanaticifm on this point extend, as to lead them to conceive, that they can, by their united power, actually difembody the foul, which

• Ayeen Akbery, vol. iii. p. 224.