[ 1073 ] "There are also others who appear in publis quite naked, and that to fhew that they are no longer susceptible of any paffion, and are re-entered into a state of innocence fince they have given their bodies to the Divinity. The people, perfuaded of their virtue, esteem them as faints, and imagine they can obtain of God whatever they ask: they also believe that they perform a work of piety in haftening to carry them victuals, to put it in the mouths of those who are prohibited the use of their hands, and to cleanse them. The number of these more rigid penitents is much leffened fince the Indians have been oppreffed and reduced to a state of flavery. The only perfon of this kind I ever faw pierced his cheeks with an iron, which went through his tongue, and was rivetted on the other fide of the cheek with another piece of iron, which formed a circle underneath the chin. "The characteristic of these penitents is, great pride, felf-love, and a belief that they are faints. They avoid being touched by people of a low caft, and Europeans, from a fear of being defiled; they will not even let them touch their goods, but fly at their approach. They have a fovereign contempt for all who are not in their state, and esteem them as pro fane; fane: there is also nothing belonging to them but what is thought to contain fome mystery, and that is not also esteemed worthy of great veneration. "The Indian hiftory has preferved the memory of a great many of these penitents, celebrated in ancient times, and whom the penitents of this day glory in imitating." The Chaldeans, it has been obferved, had a feaft of fire. The Indians, likewife, have a feaft of fire, during which, the zealous devotees among them walk on that element. It was inftituted in honour of DARMA-RAJA, and should be more properly called a fast than a feaft; for, thofe devotees are to refrain from food during all the eighteen days which it lasts, forbear all connection with women, fleep on the bare ground, and walk on a brisk fire. The laft, or eighteenth, day, they assemble to the found of inftruments, their heads crowned with flowers, and their bodies besmeared with faffron, and follow the image of Darma-raja and Drobede his wife, which are carried in proceffion three times round a fire, kindled to the honour of those deities. After this, the devotees actually pass through the fire, which, M. Sonnerat aflerts, is extended to about for * Sonnerat's Voyages, vol. i. p. 176. ty ty feet in length, walking through the flames flowly or quickly according to their zeal, and often, like the fuperftitious votaries of Moloch, carrying their children in their arms.* On those most holy festivals, on which their greater gods are carried about on vast machines, drawn by several thousand devotees, our author has feen fathers and mothers of families, bearing also their children in their arms, throw themselves headlong under the broad and ponderous wheels, in hopes of gaining immediate admiffion into heaven, by fo exalted a fate as that of being crushed to death by the chariot of the god. By these fuicidal executions, he informs us, the proceffion is never impeded, nor the people shocked. The machine is drawn over the bodies of these unfortunate wretches without emotion, and its weight, in paffing, pounds them unlamented to atoms.† Mr. Haftings, in his prefatory letter to the Geeta, mentions his having feen one of these abstracted Yogees at his devotions, and adds fome judicious obfervations on the abforption of the brahmins, which the reader will not be displeased to fee. "It is to be observed, fays • Sonnerat's Voyages, p. 453 ↑ Ibid. vel. i. P. 121. Mr. ་ Mr. Haftings, in illustration of what I have premised, that the Brahmins are enjoined to perform a kind of spiritual discipline, not, I believe, unknown to fome of the religious orders of Chriftians in the Romish church. This confifts in devoting a certain period of time to the contemplation of the Deity, his attributes, and the moral duties of life. It is required of those who practise this exercise, not only that they diveft their minds of all fenfual defire, but that their attention be ab ftracted from every external object, and abforbed, with every fenfe, in the prescribed fubject of their meditation. I myself was once a witness of a man, employed in this fpecies of devotion, at the principal temple of Benares. His right hand and arm were enclosed in a loose fleeve or bag of red cloth, within which he paffed the beads of his rofary, one after another, through his fingers, repeating, with the touch of each, as I was informed, one of the names of God; while his mind laboured to catch and dwell on the idea of the quality which appertained to it, and fhewed the violence of its exertion to attain this purpose by the convulfive movements of all his features, his eyes being at the same time closed, doubtless to affifl: the abftra&ion. The The importance of this duty cannot be better illustrated, nor ftronger marked, than by the last fentence with which Kreefhna closes his instruction to Arjoon, and which is properly the conclufion of the Geeta: "Hath what I have been speaking, O Arjoon, been heard with thy mind fixed to one point? Is the dif traction of thought, which arofe from thy ignorance, removed ?” Mr. Crauford, in his Sketches of Indian Mythology, a book which merits a more important title than the modesty of the author has permitted him to bestow upon it, mentions an instance of an Indian penitent, who not long ago finifhed measuring the distance betwen Benares and Jaggernaut with his body, by alternately ftretching himself upon the ground, and rifing; which, he obferves, if faithfully executed, must have taken up fome years to have accomplished. He adds another of an aged father of a numerous offspring, who, like Calanus, recently devoted himself to the flames. He committed the fatal act in the hope of appeafing the wrath of a divinity, who, as he imagined, had for fome time paft afflicted his family and neighbours with a mortal epidemical difeafe; a proof that • Sketches, vol. i. p. 243. the |