་

ties in India were called after that name, ought to lead to fome discovery in regard to the real character alluded to under the name of Bacchus, or Dionyfos. It is in vain, however, that we seek for any name analogous to thefe words in the places mentioned in the Indian history of this deity, if we except the two inftances specified by Sir William Jones of Naifhada, or Nyfa, and Meru, the one a mountain and the other a city of Northern India; but, if we caft our eyes over the map of Hindoftan, or over Mr. Rennel's most useful index to that map, we may find the appellative of Ram blended with a very large proportion of the proper names of cities and places in India, either as an initial or as a termination. Two places, diftinguished by this name, near the southern extremity of the Malabar coaft, which was the scene of his mightiest atchievements, when waging war with the giant Ravan, king of Lanca, have been already specified in page 25 of the geographical differtation, to which may be added Ramafferam, an island fituated between Ceylone and the continent celebrated for its pagoda, and much corroborative evidence of a fimilar kind will hereafter be adduced, which apparently establishes, beyond a doubt, our pofition that Bacchus and Ram

were

were the fame perfons. Not the least probable is a circumftance which I have not yet seen noticed, that the very name of Sefoftris, the supposed Bacchus, who invaded India, was Ramefis or Rameftes. Indeed if we allow the ftrong and reiterated affertion of Sir Ifaac Newton, in his Chronology of ancient kingdoms, that Bacchus was the Egyptian Sefoftris, to be well founded, the matter is at once decided; for, the more diftinguished title by which that conqueror was denominated in the Egyptian records, and on the obelisks which Manetho faw, was RAMESES or RAMESTES.

The whole relation of Diodorus, as well as the relations of most of the ancient claffical writers, only tend to throw over the early history of India the veil of inextricable confufion. The readiest way of folving the enigma is to fuppofe, that, what the Indians related of their great hero and god RAM, the Greeks applied in their ufual way to their equally-venerated warrior and divinity. In fact, if we examine with attention the peculiar religious ceremonies obferved by this wonderful caft, we shall find them, like all those before recapitulated, strangely tinctured with Egyptian manners; and, if the difficulty is not allowed to be folved

L113

folved by the plan I have above sketched out, we must wait for the full folution of the queftion from our indefatigable countrymen, who are fo laudably bufied in exploring the monuments of antiquity in Afia.

It is an invariable rule with the brahmins. to perform their devotions three times every day; at fun-rife, at noon, and at fun-fet. This is a practice fo entirely confonant with what Plutarch relates concerning the Egyptian priefts, that I must be excused for once more adverting to his Ifis and Ofiris, especially as that writer adds fome curious particulars relative to this triple adoration of the fun, or rather, as I conceive, of the deity, who, our own Scriptures inform us, pofuit tabernaculum ejus in fole. The Egyptians then resembled the brahmins, not only in offering facrifice and burning incense to the fun THREE TIMES in the day, but, in those facrifices, they made use of fuch things as suited best with the nature of a worship involved in mystery, with their speculations in phyfics, and with their notions of health and perfonal purification. Thus in the morning they threw into the facred vafe of incenfe a quantity of RESIN, whofe fubtle and penetrative vapour at once rarefied and refined the air, enveloped with

the

the fogs of the past night, and cheared the fpirits funk down under oppreffion and languor from the fame caufe. At noon, he tells us, they burned MYRRH for incenfe, in order to diffipate the grofs exhalations drawn up from the humid foil of Egypt by the intense heat of a vertical fun. MYRRH, he adds, is in the ancient Egyptian dialect called BAL, which means the diffipation of melancholy, and that burning MYRRH, according to physicians, is the means of dispersing noxious vapours, and often even of curing peftilential difeafes, occafioned by them, as was evidenced at Athens in the plague. The incenfe offered at the evening-facrifice is compofed of no less than fixteen different ingredients; not, fays this writer, because the number of thofe ingredients forms the fquare of a square, and is the only number, which, having all its fides equal the one to the other, makes its perimeter equal to its area; but on account of the rich aromatic nature of those ingredients. The evening-incenfe formed of this mixture, the natives themselves call KUPHI. Now refinous gums, aromatic woods, and confecrated graffes of various kinds, are the ufual oblations in the Indian temples. Our best myrrh is known to come from the Eaft Indies, and

L114

and aloes is the favorite perfume of the inhabitants, but the richer and more extenfive country of India producing a greater quantity of valuable drugs than Egypt, the altars of their gods are confequently covered with more abundant variety of precious offerings of this kind. It fhall be our business to enumerate a few of them; and, in the first place, let us treat of the vegetable productions offered up in facrifice, and the occafion of their being devoted to the deity.

Among the different forts of confecrated graffes, fruits, and flowers, offered on the altars of India, may be numbered, the graffes called cUSA and HERBE by the brahmins, both highly venerated for virtues which their facred books describe;* the fruit of the mango, grains of gengely, the root and leaves of beetel, Indian spikenard, flowers of faffron, the herb bilva, renowned in Hindoo fables, and grains of all kinds, but particularly of rice in great abundance. These vegetable productions form a fpecies of oblation the most ancient and pure of all others. To offer to the deity the first-fruits of the tender herbage, fpringing up in the vernal season, and of the different kinds of grain and fruits matured by a warm fun,

See a preceding quotation from the Sacontala, p. 587.