lections. On these sculptures Pfyche is invariably designated with the wings of a butterfly, and fometimes a Cupid is reprefented as burning her wings, thofe wings on which he should mount to heaven, with his flaming torch. Sometimes fhe is drawn kneeling, with her hands tied behind her; a certain mark of the abject slavery into which a foul is brought by the power of the paffions. At other times she is to be seen bound to a tree, while Cupid is severely beating her with rods. In an engraving published by Spon, he is even armed with a hammer and chiffel to bruise and torment her tender limbs. Thefe gems and sculptures fufficiently mark the parallel fentiments entertained on this fubject by the philofophers of Greece and of India; but in no country ever yet heard of, except the latter, have aufterities been actually put in practice of fuch a dreadful and fanguinary complexion, as thofe voluntarily inflicted upon themselves by the penitents of the latter country.

The truth is, that the Indians, at all times, carried their notions concerning the metempfychofis to a point of greater extravagance than the Pythagoreans and Platonists; and those more extravagant notions impelled them to adopt leverer modes of expiation and pe

nance.

nance. The philofophers of Greece, at least those who alone truly merited that appellation, believed and felt that the foul was a degraded and fallen spirit, that the body was its terreftrial prison, that life was a state of expiation and difcipline, and they confidered death only as a paffage to a more perfect and happy state, in which they should be reunited to the eternal fource whence that foul emaned, the fupreme BEATITUDE. It was this belief that fupported the foul of Socrates in his dying moments, and disarmed of its terrors the poisoned bowl. It was the propagation of this fublime doctrine, which fhines forth with fuch luftre in the Phædo of Plato, that procured to that philofopher the envied title of Divine. brahmins conceiving, as was before observed, that, by the power of abstracted meditation and abforption, they are able to penetrate into paft as well as future fcenes, have indulged on this fubject speculations far more bold and extensive, and formed the result of those speculations into a regular fyftem of religious belief and action. By this power, the contemplatift can trace his spiritual genealogy through fucceffive fpheres and animals for a hundred generations, and knows what particular punifliment in one ftate unalterably attends the X X X 2 perpetration

The

perpetration of crimes in another. Endued with this imaginary power, and incited by the wild phrenzy of fuperftition, he is for ever rolling back his eye upon the past periods of existence, and, for every calamity endured in the present state, he can inftantly find a cause in the vices and follies of the state preceding. Difeafe imbibed with the breath of life is thus accounted for, and rendered tolerable; fince men, blind and lame from the womb, are only fuffering penance for former crimes, and therefore fuftain their hard fate with chearfulness and refignation. Physicians (fays the Hindoo Saftra) affert that fickness originates in the animal conftitution, but thofe skilled in the mystery of the metempsychofis maintain that it is a punishment for crimes committed in a former ftate."* It 'cannot fail of gratifying curiofity, however it may fometimes provoke laughter, to specify a few of those causes for prefent fuffering enumerated in the fame Saftra.

Thus, in regard to men, epilepfy is a punishment for one who has, in a previous exiftence, poifoned another. Blindness and madnefs are punishments, the firft for murdering your parents, the laft for having been difobedient

dient and negligent of them; dumbness for having killed a fifter; the stone for having committed inceft; fevers, afthmas, indigeftion, &c. &c. have also their whimsical caufes affigned them, and the expiations are, in fome inftances, as whimsical as in others they are extremely fevere, but in general are too tedious to be here enumerated. They confift, for the most part, of vaft fums, given away in charity to the brahmins, or in the long and dreadful faft of the Chanderayan. In respect to women, upon whom thefe uncivil brahmins, impotent through age or aufterities, seem to be uncommonly fevere, it is afferted,* that a woman who furvives her husband, which in India is a difgrace, was false to her husband in the preceding state. The expiation: fhe must pass all her life in aufterities, or put an end to her existence by burying herfelf in fnow. The woman, whose child dies, has, in a former ftate, expofed her child, which died in confequence of that exposure. The expiation: a cow of gold, with hoofs of filver, bestowed in charity.-A woman, who has only daughters, was inflamed with pride in her former existence, and was disrespectful to her husband. The expiation: let her feed X X X 3 fifty

c

Ayeen Akbery, vol. iii. p. 172.

fifty brahmins.-I fhall not torture the reader's patience with any more of thefe abfurd details. Abfurd, however, as they appear to us, they form the creed of the pious in India, who, confidering the brahmins as a portion of the deity, are not in the leaft fhocked by this barefaced monopoly of sacred donations by the avaricious brahmins. So barefaced indeed is it, that, in a following page, it is afferted, that whofoever fhall give to the brahmins fufficient ground for a house to stand upon, fhall enjoy ten kulehs in paradife before he returns again to the earth; but, if he should be fo generous as to bestow upon them a thousand head of cattle, their grand reward will be ten thousand years of blifs in paradife before he revifits earth.* How different is the selfish maxim here inculcated from the following very enlarged and liberal fentiment in the Geeta. The difparity may, in fome measure, be accounted for, by confidering that it is the deity, not the priest, that speaks. They, who serve even other gods with a firm belief, in doing fo, involuntarily worship me, I am he who partaketh of all worship, and I am their reward."+

We

* Ayeen Akbery, v. iii. p. 135,

† Geeta, p. 81.