victim, who offers up himself alive on the altar of facrifice. In fearching the claffical page of antiquity, we find the first instance of the kind in Arrian, the authentic biographer of the hero of Macedon.

Calanus, who burned himself before the whole affembled army of Alexander, was one of a body of penitents whom that prince saw and converfed with at Taxila, the modern Attock, fituated on a branch of the Indus, tỏ which it gives its name, and the only one whom he could prevail with to accompany his army back to Perfia.* It is difficult to conceive him to have been a brahmin, as, in that cafe, he would scarcely have left a country, of which every fpot to the brahmins is confecrated ground; or have croffed a frontier river, whose very name fignifies forbidden, i. e. to be paffed by the natives of India. Soon after his arrival in Perfia, being difordered with a flux, he refolutely refused the proffered affistance and prescribed regimen of a foreign race of phy ficians, and folicited Alexander, that a funeral pile, for the purpose of burning himself, might be erected; which Alexander at firft ftrenuously refufed; but, finding him inflexible, he at length gave orders for the deathful folemnity;

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• Arrlan, lib. vii. p. 276, edit. Grónovii.

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folemnity; when every thing was prepared after a manner becoming the grandeur of fo great a monarch. The funeral fcaffold was built of the richest woods; cedar, cypress, and myrtle: the richest gums and aromatics were feattered over it; and it was adorned with rich vestments and veffels of gold and filver. A litter, decorated with garlands after the Indian fashion, bore to that pile the venerable fage, who all the way fang hymns of exultation and triumph in the dialect of his country. Arrived at the pile, he ordered the coftly furniture of all kinds, and the golden and filver vafes with which it was adorned, to be taken away and diftributed among his difciples and attendants; after which he af cended the pile, and, laying himself down upon it, was confumed. The inftant that the pile was fired, according to his own exprefs defire to have his funeral confidered as a festival, the trumpets were founded, and the whole army gave a fhout, as in the moment of victory; being filled with equal admiration and aftonishment at the fight of a man confuming to afes without any perceptible motion. So powerful, fays Arrian, are the force of habit and the impulfe of education.*

Arrian, lib. vii. p. 377.

The

The only other inftance which we find in claffical antiquity of an Indian devoting himfelf to the facrificial flame, is that of Zarmanochagas, who ranked in the train of a numerous embaffy, fent by king Porus, a monarch who reigned, as the letters brought by them fet forth, over fix hundred tributary fovereigns, and therefore must have been the fupreme BALHARA of India, to enter into an alliance with Auguftus, and cultivate his friendship. Numerous, however, as they were when they left India, all but three perished through the exceffive fatigues endured in fo diftant a journey, and those three were feen by Nicolas Damafcenus at Antioch. Int the very name of this philofopher we discover the title of the ancient fect of the Indian Sarmanes, or Samanæi, mentioned by Porphyry; and his conduct proves him to have been a true gymnosophist, aspiring after the honours of brahmanian diftinction. Zarmanochagas far exceeded Calanus in the value and merit of his facrifice, fince the former afcended the blazing pile when in the highest vigour of health, as well as when enjoying the full gale of profperity: the latter when under the preffure of a painful disease, which he conjec-: tured might destroy him. It was at Athens

that he fet the Grecian philofophers this heroic example of indifference for life and contempt of its most valued bleffings; for, in the prefence of all the learned and renowned of that celebrated city, having newly bathed and being anointed with rich unguents, as it were for a gay wedding rather than a funeral, with resolute step and fmiling countenance he mounted the funeral pile, and suffered himself to be gradually confumed, while the Stoics of Greece ftood mute and aftonifhed fpectators of a scene equally novel and wonderful.*

Although it must be fuppofed that a custom fo ancient, and entitling the devotee to fo exalted a reward, is by no means laid afide in India; yet I can find no particular detailed account of this ceremony in the page of any author, except that of the Mohammedan travellers, often referred to, as having visited India fo early as the ninth century. What they have related on this interefting fubject is, in fubftance, as follows. When a man has refolved to commit himself to the facrificial flame, he first goes to the palace and afks permiffion to burn himself from the reigning fovereign. Having obtained that permiffion, on the day appointed for.

Suetonius in Vita Augufti, cap. 21.

for the facrifice, he makes a folemn and public proceffion through the fquares of the city where he refides to the place where the fune ral fire, already kindled, and blazing to a vast height, awaits the destined victim of his own infatuation. An immenfe concourfe of peo ple furround the pile, and feed it with every kind of combuftibles. In the mean time the cavalcade, confifting of the friends and relations of the devotee, proceeds flowly on, he himself marching firft, and diftinguished by the GARLAND OF FIRE that conspicuously adorns his head. This garland, esteemed more honourable by the Hindoos than ever was the laurel-wreath worn by a Greek or Roman victor after a campaign of glory, is formed of ftraw or dried herbs, upon which, when placed upon his head, they heap burning coals, and invigorate the flame by pouring SANDARAC upon them, which catches fire like Naphtha, and flames as fiercely. Though the blazing garland circles his temples, and the crown of his head be all-on fire, too well evidenced to the fpectators by the offenfive ftench arising from his burnt flesh, he purfues his way exulting, nor is the fmallest symptom of pain feen to distort the features of his unchanged countenance. Arrived at the fatal

pile,