that exalted sphere of perfection and happinefs, which they enjoyed before their defection. Animated by the defire of obtaining that final boon, and fired by all the glorious promises of the Vedas, the patient Hindoo fmiles amidst unutterable mifery, and exults in every dire variety of voluntary torture. In the hope of expiating former crimes by adequate penance, and of regaining speedily that fancied elyfium, he binds himself to the performance of vows which make human nature fhudder and human reason stagger. He passes whole weeks without the smallest nourishment, and whole years in painful vigils. He wanders about naked as he came from the womb of his parent, and fuffers, without repining, every viciffitude of heat and cold, of driving ftorm and beating rain. He stands with his arms croffed above his head, till the finews fhrink and the flesh withers away. He fixes

his eye upon the burning orb of the fun, till its light be extinguished and its moisture entirely dried up. It is impoffible to read the following minute defcription of one of these devotees in the act of stationary penance, as given in the Sacontala, without shuddering. Every circumstance enumerated fills the mind with encreafing horror, and freezes the aftoPPP 3 nished

nifhed reader to a ftatue, almost as immoveable as the fuffering penitent. Dushmanta asks; "Where is the holy retreat of Maricha?"---- Matali replies, "A little beyond that grove, where you fee a pious YOGEE, motionlefs as a pollard, holding his thick bushy hair, and fixing his eyes on the folar orb. - Mark, his body is half covered with a white ant's` edifice, made of raised clay; the skin of a Snake supplies the place of his facerdotal thread, and part of it girds his loins; a number of knotty plants encircle and wound his neck, and furrounding birds nefts almoft cover his shoulders."*

From the whole of the preceding statement it must be evident to every reader that the brahmins are no strangers to the doctrine, efteemed abfurd in fome Christian countries, but admitted by them from time immemorial, that of ORIGINAL SIN. It is their invariable belief that MAN IS A FALLEN CREATURE. Upon this very belief is built the doctrine of the migration of the foul through various animal bodies, and revolving BOBUNS, or planetary spheres: and I have already endeavoured to prove, that they could only have been united in this uniform belief by fome ancient, but mutilated, tradition, relative to the defection of

* Indian Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 354.

man

man in paradife from primeval innocence and virtue.

The doctrine just alluded to, as fo universally prevalent in Afia, that man is a fallen creature, originally gave birth to the perfuafion, that, by fevere fufferings and a long series of probationary discipline, the foul might be restored to its primitive purity. Hence oblations the most costly, and facrifices the most sanguinary, in the hope of propitiating the angry powers, for ever loaded the altars of the pagan deities. They had even facrifices denominated those of regeneration, and those sacrifices were always profufely stained with blood. The Taurobolium of the ancients, a ceremony in which the high priest of Cybele was confecrated, was a ceremony of this kind, and might be called a baptifm of blood, which they conceived imparted a spiritual new birth to the liberated fpirit. In this dreadful and fanguinary ceremony, according to the poet Prudentius, cited at length by Banier on the ancient facrifices, the high priest about to be inaugurated was introduced into a dark excavated apartment, adorned with a long filken robe and a crown of gold. Above this apartment was a floor perforated in a thoufand places with holes, like a fieve, through which the blood of a facred bull, flaughtered PPP 4

for.

for the purpose, defcended in a copious torrent upon the inclosed priest, who received the purifying stream on every part of his dress, rejoicing to bathe with the bloody shower his bands, his cheeks, and even to bedew his lips and his tongue, with it. When all the blood had run from the throat of the immolated bull, the carcafe of the victim was removed, and the priest iffued forth from the cavity a fpectacle ghaftly and horrible, his head and vestments being covered with blood, and clotted drops of it adhering to his venerable beard. As foon as the pontifex appeared before the affembled multitude, the air was rent with congratulatory fhouts; fo pure and fo fanctified however was he now efteemed, that they dared not approach his perfon, but beheld him at a distance with awe and veneration.*

It has been before observed, that, by these initiations, or baptifms of blood, the ancients conceived that they obtained an eternal regeneration, or new birth; nor were they confined to the priests alone, for perfons, not invested with a facred function, were fometimes initiated by the ceremony of the Taurobolium, and one invariable rule in these initiations was to wear the stained garments as long as poffible,

Prudentius apud Banier's Mythology, vol. i, p. 275,

poffible, in token of their having been thus regenerated. This facrifice of regeneration was alfo fometimes performed for the purification of a whole nation or the monarch that governed it. The animal facrificed was not obliged to be always of one fpecies; inftead of a bull, a ram was frequently facrified, when the ceremony was called Criobolium, and fometimes a fhe-goat, when it obtained the name of Ægibolium. Some of these regenerations were valid only for twenty years, when they were to be renewed for the acquifition of renovated virtue, and the celebration of them often continued for many days. The reader will find in Mountfaucon engravings of feveral of these Taurobolia and Criobolia, and in particular he will there meet with the defign of a very curious one, dug up at Lyons, with an inscription importing, that it was celebrated there for the health of the emperor Antoninus Pius.*

But to return to that country which is the immediate scene of our investigation, whence this doctrine is with great probability asserted in the most ancient periods to have spread over all the kingdoms of Afia: we there find it at this day flourishing with uncommon vigour;

See Antiquities Explained, vol. ii. p. 108.

all