the eagle of Pondicherry, or the Briffon; he defcribes its head and neck as white, and the reft of the body as of a dufky red colour. These birds are confidered by the brahmins as facred, and are fed by them at stated periods, when the priests of Veefhnu fummon them to their repaft by the found of two plates of copper ftruck against each other. There can scarcely be a doubt, as before-intimated, that Veeshnu, with his chacra and garudi, gave to the mythologists of Greece their Jupiter Tonans and his thunder-bearing eagle; whom, during the early commercial intercourse that subsisted between them, they might have seen thus defignated in the Indian temples. I defer any particular account of the nine incarnations of Veefhnu, till the ancient history of India fhall commence, of which they form a very large and interefting portion. It is fufficient in this place to observe, that those incarnations—it is with reluctance I use the word, but there is no other that can convey my meaning, and it is used by Sir William Jones, and many other writers, who retain for the Chriftian doctrines the profoundest veneration represent the Deity, defcending in a human shape, either to accomplish certain awful and important events, as, in the instance of the Iii

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three first: to confound blafpheming vice, to fubvert gigantic tyranny, and to avenge oppreffed innocence, as in the five following: or, finally, as in the ninth, to establish a glorious fyftem of benevolent inftitutions upon the ruins of a gloomy and fanguinary superstition. These, surely, are noble actions; these are worthy of a god; and it is principally to thefe different defcents of Veefhnu, and for fuch illuftrious purposes, that all the allegorical sculpture and paintings of India have reference. The religion, therefore, of the Veeshnu fect is, as already has been observed, of a chearful and focial nature; their's is the feftive fong, the sprightly dance, and the refounding cymbal: libations of milk and honey flow upon his altars; the gayeft garlands decorate his ftatues; aromatic woods eternally burn before him; and the richest gums of the East disperse fragrance through the temples of

THE PRESERVER.

Diametrically oppofite to all this is the fombrous fuperftition of the relentless Seeva; a superstition darkened by gloomy terrors and enfanguined by excruciating penances. Seeva, however, is differently reprefented, according as the temple is confecrated to him in his avenging or in his reproductive capacity. I

fhall

fhall for the prefent confider him in the former character, in which he is portrayed with a fierce and menacing aspect; his features are distorted, and his tongue is protruded from his mouth. He bears in his hand a trident, by whose three tines is fymbolized FIRE, that destroys all things.

On this fubject I cannot forbear remarking, that it appears to me, in the course of these inquiries, that a fpecies of fuperftition, very diffimilar in feature from that which prevailed on the shores of the peninsula of India, seems very early to have flourished in the remote and lofty regions of Upper Hindoftan. It was a religion that delighted not in the fprightly notes of the tabor, nor was soothed with the melodious warbling of the dancing fyrens of the pagoda. It was a religion of gloom and melancholy, that loved to act its unfocial rites in the folemn recefles of the deep forest, under the covert of the night, and by the pale light of Chandra, the conscious moon, that bore witness to the nocturnal orgies of the fequestered and penitentiary Saivites. Indeed it can by no means be an object of wonder to any reader of reflection, who has travelled through the entertaining volume of Bernier to the fecluded valley of Cafhmire, a

valley furrounded with mountains, the moft ftupendous in height and the most rugged in form, from whose lofty steeps a thousand cataracts on every fide rufh down into the peaceful bosom of that valley, that the mind of the Hindoo, intimidated by the grand and majestic objects with which he is encircled, fhould be the sport of fuperftitious terrors. The whole range of mountains, in most places, covered with eternal fnow, that skirt Hindoftan to the North, and rise one above the other in a style of horrid grandeur; and the vast and dreary deferts of Sirinagur, through the long extent of which the Ganges winds in its paffage to Lower India; the impenetrable forests that in fome places clothe those mountains, deepening the shadow thrown by them into the fubjacent plains, and the fteep abrupt denuded rocks that have braved the fury of every ftorm fince the deluge; all together form a contrast, at which human nature may well fhudder, and by which human fortitude may be well staggered. These regions were a proper refidence for the austere fect of the Saivites: men, accustomed to fuch gloomy objects, view religion and every other object through a falfe medium; the Deity is invefted with the darkness which enwraps his

works:

works they fee him only in his dreadful attributes, they perpetually hear his awful voice in the thunder, and contemplate him only in the ftorm that howls above them. They haften, therefore, to propitiate him by unexampled feverities, and they deluge his altars with facrificial blood.

The investigation of this very curious, though unpleafing, fubject, which I am about to confider, the detail of these penitentiary fufferings and voluntary facrifices, inftituted by timid fuperftition in the earlieft ages of the world, opens a scene at once novel and interefting. So deep, however, in the abyss of time runs back the period to which I allude, fo thick a veil hath oblivion diffused over the events of that diftant æra, that, at the prefent moment, I can scarcely collect any pofitive or connected intelligence relative to the nature of those myfterious orgies, or the exact place of their celebration. It is evident, however, from the Ayeen Akbery and the History of Ferishtah, that both ferpents (that most ancient fymbol of the Deity in Egypt, to whose body, in their myfterious hieroglyphics, they added the head of the sharp-fighted hawk, to denote his all-obferving vigilance in the government of the world) and facred fountains

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