CHAPTER IV.

The Author takes a retrospective View of his Subject, and unfolds his future Plan in regard to the Indian Hiftory. He enumerates the various Doctrines and fuperftitious Rites of the Brahmins not yet confidered; be traces the Progrefs of the Brahmin Candidate through the CHAR ASHERUM, or four Degrees of Hindoo Probation; he takes an extenfive View of the Myfteries of Mithras; he defcribes the excrutiating Severities enjoined during initiating into thofe Myfteries; and he concludes with an Account of the fill more horrible PENANCES voluntarily undergone by the DEVOTEES of India.

AVING now confidered the Theology of

HAY

India, under the general divifions into which that comprehenfive fyftem naturally branches itself forth; having, in the first place, investigated the nature of the mystic rites, celebrated by this fuperftitious race in confecrated

groves

I

groves and caverns; their devotion, in every age, to the Sabian fuperftition, and veneration immemorially paid by them to the mundane elements, but principally to the all-pervading fire; having confidered that religion, in a phyfical, mythological, and moral, view, as well as in what points it resembled or appeared to be connected with the Egyptian, Perfian, Grecian, and, finally, with our own more elevated fyftem of theology; muft now descend from more general observation to notice a few particulars by which it is diftinguished from every other ecclefiaftical establishment in the known world. A peculiar form of vestment, and an appropriated mode of shaving the hair of the head and beard, have distinguished most religious fects: but where in ancient history do we find a race so infatuated as to fufpend themselves aloft in cages upon trees confidered facred, that they might not be infected by touching the polluted earth, refufing all fuftenance, but fuch as may keep the pulfe of life just beating; or hanging aloft upon tenter-hooks, and voluntarily bearing inexpreffible agonies; fometimes thrusting themselves by hundreds under the wheels of immenfe machines that carry about their unconscious gods, where they are

inftantly

inftantly crushed to atoms; and, at other times, hurling themselves from precipices of ftupendous height; now standing up to their necks in rivers, till rapacious alligators come and devour them; now burying themselves in fnow till frozen to death; measuring with their naked bodies, trailed over burning fands, the ground lying between one pagoda and another, diftant perhaps many leagues, or braving, with fixed eyes, the ardor of a meridian fun between the tropics; and all this in the transporting hope of immediately transmigrating into paradife. Where do we fee an otherwife-polished nation staining their faces according to their different religious cafts, and, as I am inclined to believe, according to the imagined colour of the planets, with long ftrokes of faffron and vermilion; although fprung from one common head, yet divided into innumerable cafts, each separated from the other by an eternal barrier; and all uniting to fhun, as death, the contaminating intercourse of strangers. To detail these and many other curious particulars, relative to the brahmin and yogee penitents, will be the business of this laft and concluding chapter of the Indian Theology.