One of the Mohammedan travellers, who vifited India in the ninth century, informs us, that" there are in the Indies certain men who profess to live in the woods and mountains, and to despise whatsoever is confidered valuable by the rest of mankind. They go all their life-time stark naked, and fuffer the hair of their head and beard to grow till it nearly covers their whole body. They religiously forbear to pare their nails, fo that they become pointed and sharp as fwords; and around the neck of each is suspended an earthen porringer, intended to contain the rice and other food which charity may fupply. They, for the most part, stand motionless as ftatues, with their faces always turned to the fun. I formerly faw one in the posture here described, and, returning to India about fixteen years afterwards, I found him in the very fame attitude, and was aftonished he had not loft his eye-fight by the intense heat of the fun."*

Baldæus, an excellent and authentic writer, who refided many years in India, fays, that, befides their usual purifications, fome of the Yogees carry huge iron collars about their necks, others travel about conftantly encumbered

* Renaudot's ancient Accounts of India and China, p. 32, edit. London, 1733.

bered with heavy fetters and chains of the fame metal, while fharp nails, with their points terminating inwards, line their wooden flippers or fandals. Others, he adds, have caufed themselves to be bound immoveably with ftrong ropes or chains to a tree, and in that posture expired, after lingering for many months in the greatest tortures; and that, in 1657, he himself faw a Yogee at Columbo, whose arms were grown together over his head from being kept long erect in that pofture.*

It is exceedingly remarkable that these men fhould poffefs fuch exalted notions of the purity of the Deity, and yet entertain such contemptuous and degrading ideas of the works created by him. According to them, all nature is contaminated, and the earth itself labours under fome dreadful defilement, a fentiment which, in my opinion, could only spring from certain corrupted traditions relative to God's curfing the ground, and condemning it to bring forth thorns and thistles, on the fall of man. To fuch an extreme point of extravagance, however, do they carry their conceptions on this point, that fome of them, accor

ding

* Baldæus, in Churchill's Voyages, vol. iii. p. 896, first

edit.

ding to Du Halde, impelled by the dread of terrestrial pollution, have embraced the refolution of never more touching the planet which they were born to cultivate, and caufe themselves to be fufpended aloft in cages upon the boughs of trees, to which elevation the admiring multitude raise the fcanty provision, neceffary to the fupport of the small portion of life that animates their emaciated carcafes.* Another of the ancient Jefuites, cited in Purchase, relates as follows: "These JOGUES, with admirable patience, endured the sunne's heat; and one among the reft enclosed the trunk of his body in an iron cage, while his head and feet alone were at liberty. In this fituation he could neither fit nor lie down at any time, and round the cage were fufpended a hundred lamps, which four other JOGUES, his companions, lighted at certain times. Thus walked he, in this his perpetual prifon, as a light unto the world, in his vain-glorious opinion."+

These

See Du Halde's Hift. of China, vol. i. p. 50.

+ See Purchase's Pilgrimage, p. 636, folio edit. 1617.Mafter Purchase ludicrously enough calls thefe JoVES fad rogues; and to the SANIASSI's he gives the facetious appellation of holy offer.

These fentiments and these practices are, I own, apparently very contradictory to fome others in vogue among the Indians, fuch as burying themselves in pits hollowed in the ground, with only a small hole left open at the top to breathe through, of which an example or two will be given hereafter; and the custom of purifying themselves, by paffing through a natural or artificial cavern, where the fpiritual pilgrims entered in at the South gate, and made their exit at the Northern one, as was anciently the custom in the Mythriac mysteries, for astronomical reasons already affigned, and, according to the remarkable instance which we have given of the famous Angria in modern times.* Apparently contradictory, however, as they are, they, in fact, originate in the fame prejudices, and are referable to the fame creed. The penitents being first inhumed, and afterwards emerging from the pit, as well as their paffage through the dreary cavern, were only emblems of terreftrial trials and struggles undergone and happily furmounted by the foul in its progrefs to perfection and glory through the various inferior spheres of purgation and purification; for, it should never be forgotten, that to those spheres, in the Hindoo aftronomical

* See the appendix to the preface, p. iii.

aftronomical theology, different degrees of purity and fanctity are attributed, or rather, to fpeak more properly, different degrees of impurity and guilt. Confonant to this idea, on one of their festivals that fall in June, and which, according to Mr. Holwell, is called the UMBOOBISSEE, (Ambuvachi is the Sanscreet word,) the earth itfelf, conformable to the Egyptian and Greek mythology, being converted into a prolific female, is left to her purgations from the feventh day to the tenth of that month, both days inclufive, during which period, neither plough, nor spade, nor any other agricultural inftrument, is permitted to moleft her.* I ought also before to have mentioned this author's account of the Sanniafs Pooja, or Hindoo Lent, which lafts from the first to the thirtieth of March, on which last day, the penance of the CHEREC, or wheel, is fubmitted to by the Yogee; a penance not the least painful and eccentric of those endured in India, and which is thus defcribed by Captain Hamilton, who has given an engraving of the fwing-machine on which the penance is performed. "On the coast of Canara, fays our humorous captain, whom the fevere pains of the penitents do not seem very fenfibly

* Holwell's Gentoo Fafts and Feftivals, part ii. p 125.