pile, he looks round with an intrepid counte nance on the flaming fcaffold and admiring populace; and then, plunging into the flame, is, without a struggle, confumed to ashes.* With this folemn and public act, performed in expectation of the glorious immunities promised in the Vedas, the journey of the METEMPSYCHOSIS by no means concludes, but rather the real birth is now commenced, and the gate of immortality is thrown open. Thus, happily released from its terrestrial incumbrance, the foul, fublimed, purified, exulting with holy transport, immediately mounts in its chariot of flame to the ætherial regions, or manfions prepared for the reception of departed fpirits, all varying in their splendor and delights, according to the various degrees of fanctity and excellence attained to during its earthly probation. By these manfions, I must still adhere to my first-declared opinion, the brahmin aftronomical theologians, following the Sabian notions of their ancestors, mean the orbs of heaven; conceiving that their departed ancestors shall blaze forth in thofe celestial abodes with different degrees of fplendors, even as one ftar differeth from another in glory: but those who have Ancient Accounts of India and China, p. 8o. been been fupremely devout, and have been inflexibly rigid in their penances, shall shine forth as the fun for ever. This fact is, I conceive, incontestably proved by innumerable quotations from Sanfcreet authorities, interspersed throughout the preceding volumes; for the foul that has only been moderately pious is ordained to leave the body at the time that the fun advances towards the fouth, on the night of fome day when the moon is in her fecond quarter, and will go to the world of the moon. By the fun's fouthern tract, they mean the other hemifphere and its stars, which, in relation to them, appears to be beneath, and is, as I before obferved, the hell, or Naraka, of the Afiatic mythologifts, where the ferpent Sefhanaga with his thousand heads, every head adorned with a radiant gemmed crown, (a ftar,) holds his gloomy infernal fceptre.* The world of the moon denotes the orbit of that planet. The foul ardently devout, whofe aufterities, daring its earthly pilgrimage, have vanquished and even annihilated the action and influence of See the defcription of this Indian Pluto, the king of the NAUGS, or ferpents, extracted from the Afiatic Researches, in vol. i. p. 241. of the corporeal fenfes upon the intellectual faculties, is liberated from the body precifely at the period in which the fun begins to bend its course towards the north, and on the morning of fome day when the moon is in her firft quarter. Immediately on its liberation from the prison of clay, it becomes a free denizen of infinite fpace, traversing at large the cerulean fields, and floating about in a form of fubtile æther. After a long enjoyment of this celestial liberty, the reward of virtue long held struggling in terrestrial bonds, the foul feeks a permanent abode, and is now borne on a refulgent fun-beam to the paradife of Brahma, the sphere of the good deutahs, who have finished their earthly probation in the form of a brahmin, and is there plunged in an abyss of inexpreffible delights. It remains there for an immenfe period of time, after which it fprings up with native energy to the Surya-logue, or fphere of the fun; whence, perfectly cleansed from all material drofs, and clothed in robes of pureft light, it paffes to the Vaicontha, or paradife of Veefhnu, where it perpetually bathes itself in ftreams of light ten times more brilliant than the meridian fun, and it finally mingles with, and is absorbed into, the essence of the fupreme fupreme Brahme, who, the veil of mythology being laid afide, is no other than the INEFFABLE, INFINITE, AND ETERNAL, GOD. THE CONCLUSION OF THE Indian |