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fountains were immemorially holden throughout Cashmire in the profoundest veneration. In a paffage, cited before, it has been evinced, that in no less than 700 places of that province fculptured figures of ferpents were worshipped; and that, at KEHROW, in the fame province, 360 fountains, the number of the days of the ancient year, before it was reformed by more accurate calculations, were facred to the MOON. As the moon is thus particularly mentioned, under the ferpentine figure they probably adored the SUN;

but

fince we read, in the fame page of the Ayeen Akbery, that few venomous reptiles are to be found in the Subah, it is evident that they must have derived the superstition from some other country.* I am not, however, inclined to deduce it from any connection with Egypt, fince the whole of this differtation tends to give the palm of originality to India rather than to Egypt, but from that country where the orbs of heaven, and the great ferpent Ов, or Python, were firft venerated ;† and where, according to Stanley on the Chaldaic philofophy, the whole fyftem, both of morals and phyfics, was explained by perpetual

Ayeen Akbery, vol. ii. p. 154.

+ See Stanley, upon the Chaldaic philofophy.

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tual allufions to fountains, imaginary or material, whose streams, like thofe of the Hebrew Sephiroth, were represented flowing into one another, and from whose mingled influences results the harmony both of the immaterial and material world.

Cashmire, which has been often called the terrestrial paradife, may indeed be justly denominated the holy land of fuperftition. In the Ayeen Akbery, forty-five places are stated to be dedicated to MAHADEO, fixty-four to VEESHNU, twenty-two to DURGA, and only three to BRAHMA. Many idolatrous temples alfo of brick or ftone are faid to be in Cashmire, of stupendous magnitude, and of unfathomable antiquity; fome of them yet perfect, but many in ruins. Speaking of one of these near Bereng, the Perfian historian says, "In the centre of the refervoir is an idoltemple of stone, a beautiful fabric. At this place, the devotees furround themselves with fire till they are reduced to afhes, imagining they are, by this act, pleasing the Deity."* In the fame book, the cataract of Wiffy is particularized, which falls from the enormous altitude of 200 ells, with a noise that inspires awe and aftonishment, and down which the Iii 4 devout

* Ayeen Akbery, vol. ii. p. 158.

devout Hindoos frequently precipitate themfelves, thinking, again obferves Abul Fazil, that, by thus ending their lives, they infure to themselves reward in another life. Thus again are we led back by infenfible degrees to the Metempfychofis, which, in fact, may be confidered as the leading principle in the religion of India; a principle that at once fires the hopes of the virtuous, and alarms, with unutterable terrors, the fouls of the guilty.

To the powerful influence over the mind of accidental fituations, dreary and romantic as those above-described, prefenting to view the most awful, and even terrifying, profpects in nature, much may be afcribed; and it is not to be wondered at, if, amidst such scenes, a religion of gloom and melancholy should be engendered and cherished. Since, however, the fame fevere rites are practised (though lefs extenfively, and generally) in regions of Hindoftan, very remote from the foreft of Gandharvas, in the fnowy mountains of Heemacot, or Imaus, on plains where the fun for ever fhines, and all nature looks smiling and gay, we must penetrate to a deeper fource for the origin of this amazing difference between the festive rites of Veefhnu and the fom

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brous and blood-ftained orgies of Seeva; we must explore the page of facred history, and endeavour to trace out fome primæval fountain whence the malady has flowed, and corrupted more than one half of a mighty nation. To folve the difficulty, we need not go to that remote period when the first murderer of the human race flew an amiable and unoffending brother. In the earliest events of the poft-diluvian ages, and in the adverse principles of Shem and Ham, we shall find the baneful, and what I cannot avoid calling the true, fource of this distinction of the Indians into two grand fects, each bearing a deadly and implacable hatred to each other, infomuch, that when a follower of Veeshnu meets one of the fect of Seeva, he thinks himself polluted, and flies to some rite of purification for release from the foul stain. The colours of these two deities are as oppofite as their opinions, for Veeshnu, in the pagodas, is painted blue, while Seeva is white. Brahma differs from both, being painted of a red colour.

Having referred back to those grand events that neceffarily form the basis of all ancient history, however unfashionable it may be with certain writers of a fceptical class to con

fider

fider them as fuch, I fhall now as concisely as poffible unfold to the reader the plan upon which I have ventured to proceed in the arduous undertaking of writing the ancient history of a country, whose annals are so deeply involved in allegory and fable as those of India. He will not confider the detail as entirely digreffive, fince the ancient religion and the ancient history of India are connected by an infeparable chain; many of the most venerated divinities of India being only their earliest fovereigns deified.

The aftonishing population of the Indians as well as of the Chinese, their great advance in civilization, and their cultivation of the sciences, at the most early periods which history records, offered to the hiftorian, at his very outfet, a difficulty fo irreconcileable to the chronology of the Bible, that some intelligent writers have extended the Scripture-term ARARAT, upon the fummit of which mountain the ark of NOAH is faid to have rested, to that whole range of mountains which runs across Afia; and have maintained, that the faid ark refted, not in Armenia, but on the Indian Caucafus, or one of the mountains to the North of India. In these Indian regions, ac

cording

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