the notion of the efficacy of a human facrifice is not at this day wholly extinct in India.

In fact, the whole feries of dreadful penances above-described, in reading which the mind of the reader must have been filled with alternate indignation and horror, is nothing more than the relics of a vast system of fanguinary fuperftition, whice, from whatever quarter derived, is equally infulting to the Deity and destructive to his creatures. True religion, the religion which Christianity aims to establish in the world, impreffes the mind with fentiments widely different from these exalted benevolence, tender fympathy, and generous compaffion: it inculcates not an arrogant and prefumptuous fpirit to dare, but a humble and refigned spirit to endure, the evils allotted to the present state; a state, which, though a state of probation, has its SOCIAL PLEASURES as well as its DISTRACTING CARES, and in which, while we are taught to bear the latter with becoming fortitude, we are permitted to enjoy the former with hearts overflowing with beneficent affections to our fellow-creatures and fervent gratitude to the Almighty Donor.

ON

ON THE INDIAN CUSTOM OF BURNING THEM, SELVES, AND THE MOTIVES WHICH LED TO THAT CUSTOM.

Having accompanied the Hindoo penitent, whether Saniaffi or Yogee, thus far through a life of inceffant mifery and torture, but mifery and torture unfelt, let us attend him to the fatal bourn whence no traveller returns; let us mark the clofing fcene, and behold the curtain eternally drawn over human fuffering and terrestrial probation. By this I do not mean his diffolution, when he falls a victim to the languor and imbecility of age, when he perishes by the violence of difeafe, or finks a gradual martyr to his aggravated torments : →→→→ no; it is my intention to depict a more impreffive and awful picture: when, having gone through the prescribed penances of the four de grees, the Indian brahmin determines to afcend the flaming altar of facrifice; and, by a folemn and public act, devotes himself to the Deity. It is this refolute dereliction of life to which Cicero, cited in a former page, alludes, when he praises the fortitude of the Indians amidst confuming fire; and, though only an account of two inftances of this defperate kind of selfdestruction

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deftruction have defcended down to us from claffical antiquity, we know, not only that it is permitted in their facred books, but that the dreadful rite has been actually and frequently undergone in India. To gain, however, immediate poffeffion of paradise by this rite is the fplendid privilege of the Saniaffi and the obedient wife alone. For what reafon fo brilliant a reward is promised to nupțial conftancy, in India, falls not within the scope of my immediate inquiry; nor the fact itself, of women burning themselves with their deceafed hufbands, a ceremony which has been often and affectingly described by others my concern is with the devotee, who, animated by religious zeal, refolves to burn; to examine his motives; and to display the rewards promifed in the Vedas for an act which he stamps with the title of glorious and fublime.

This cuftom, fo immemorially ufed in India, and fo peculiar to it, had its origin, I am convinced, in the fyftem of phyfical theology, which, in the remoteft periods, fo universally prevailed in the Eaft. It was only one of the ancient and fymbolical ceremonies of the Mithratic myfteries realized. It was the last ftage of purification, after which, the ætherial

fpirit,

fpirit, purged of its earthly drofs, immediately ascended to the fublime fource from which it emaned. This, poffibly, as fome fenfible writers have imagined, might have been one reason that induced the Egyptians, wanting fuel in fufficient abundance for the general practice of this rite, to place the bodies of illuftrious men in pyramidal monuments, which were the fymbols of fire.

The deep immersion of the Indians in phyfical investigations is alfo to be traced in this as well as every other part of their theology. The notion, that they are to tranfmigrate through the elements to the Source of Being, induces them rather to wish for than retard the hour of diffolution of the elementary particles of which the body is compofed. They' are impatient, during their confinement int the tabernacle of clay; they mount on the wing of hope; and are eager to consign, not only ashes to ashes and duft to duft, but to reffore the igneous, the æthereal, and the humid, parts of the mortal frame to the respec tive elements. Hence they are, at this day, frequently brought from great distances to expire on the banks of the Ganges; and are precipitated into death by the quantity of facred mud and water of that river, which is

forced into the mouth of the dying perfon, in

order to purify him for the new scene of exiftence into which he is about to enter.

In

deed his body is often thrown into the stream, while as yet a confiderable portion of life remains, and is devoured by alligators. Thus, in fact, we fee the watery, hot less than the fiery, element is used as the medium through which the final tranfmigration is performed, The former method is principally adopted when diffolution takes place near any great and confecrated river: when it happens in fituations very remote from the Ganges, or other facred river, the body is generally burned. This cuftom, however, is not peculiar to the Hindoos, fince many other nations, both ancient and modern, have been accustomed to burn their dead. The Perfians, however, who of all antiquity held fire in the greatest veneration, never burned the bodies of perfons defunct: they thought the facred flame would be polluted by the injection of a putrid carcafe; and expofed their dead, as is done in Guzzurat at the prefent day, on lofty towers, to be eaten by ravenous birds of prey, to be drenched by the searching rains, and scorched by the blighting winds. But let us return from this digreffion to the confideration of the human

victim,