all ranks and ages inflicting on themselves fevere mortifications in hopes of speedy reftitution, and preffing forward to the goal of immortality. From the poffibility of this envied reftitution to priftine purity and happiness none in India are excluded, but those who have been either fo unfortunate or abandoned as to have forfeited their caft; the unhappy and rejected, even though repentant, race of Parias or Chandalahs, who, by the unalterable laws of Brahma, are doomed to be the everlafting drudges of the other tribes, excluded from even the hope of rifing to a higher rank in the creation, or ever amending their forlorn and desperate ftate. In such abomination are these Chandalahs holden, that, on the Malabar fide of India, if they chance even to touch one of a fuperior tribe, he draws his fabre and cuts him down on the spot, without any check from the laws of the country. Even the fhade, which the wretched body of a Chandalah in paffing throws upon any object, imparts pollution, pollution not to be wiped away but by a particular procefs of purification. Destined to mifery from their birth, bowed down with inceffant toils, which, to any but the patient and unrepining ChandaJah, would make life an intolerable burthen ;

death

death itself, that last refuge of the unfortunate, opens no dawn of comfort to his mind, and unfolds no fcenes of future felicity to reward his past fufferings. The gates of Jaggernaut itself are to him for ever closed; and he is driven, with equal disgrace, from the fociety of men and the temples of the gods. Human policy or caprice might have given birth to the other fingular institutions of this great empire; but to what principle of human policy can we attribute a law so contrary to the general principles of benevolence, that reigns through the inftitutions afcribed to Brahma, and fraught with fuch a diabolical spirit of revenge and malignity?

Like their neighbours, the Indians, the ancient Chinese, also, according to Couplet, believed not only in the immortality, but in the tranfmigration, of the human foul, occafioned by its primeval defection. They confidered the departed fpirits of their most virtuous ancestors, who had performed the planetary journey, as engaged in the celestial regions, in the benevolent office of interceffion with the Supreme Being for their progeny, fojourning, like weary pilgrims, on the bobun of earth; and therefore, fays our author, at their feftival entertainments, before the banquet com

menced,

1

menced, they made offerings to them of the choiceft viands, and poured out libations to their honour; a practice very similar to the ceremony of the Indian STRADHA.* The Chinese theologians, however, while they conclude all men to be involved in vice and error, do not go the dreadful length of anathematizing for ever any of the inferior cafts, and barring them out at once from the gates of heavenly mercy and every benefit of earthly compaffion. It is doubtless a relic of the abominable Cuthite doctrines, of that relentless race, whose bloody worship outraged all the dictates of humanity, and who, in their infernal orgies, offered up even their fons and their daughters to devils.

Befides the promise of entering at large into the brahmin initiations, I have repeatedly pledged myself in the course of this extensive review, or rather history, of the Afiatic theology, to compare the greater Mithratic mysteries, as far as they are known, with those which were celebrated in the cavern-temples of India, and there cannot be a better opportunity for making that comparison than what the prefent chapter affords, in which we are confidering the brahmin doctrine of the regeneration

* Couplet Scientiæ Sinicæ, lib. ii, p. 103.

neration of the foul, by a fevere course of progreffive penances rifing above each other in horror and anguish. The principal feature of fimilitude is the unexampled tortures which the respective candidates underwent in their progrefs through either dreadful ordeal. I shall begin with describing the probationary discipline endured by the brahmin during his progress through the four degrees of the Char Asherum. I fhall then proceed to detail the severities fubmitted to by the Mithriacs, and the reader, who will take the trouble of turning, while he reads these accounts, to the description in the first chapter of the Indian Theology of the Grecian myfteries in honour of Ceres, celebrated at Eleufis, and to that of the Egyptian pomp facred to Ofiris and Ifis at Philaë, in the fecond, will find that he has nearly the whole of the myfteries, performed in the ancient world, brought at once before his view in this differtation, detailed from the best authorities, and pourtrayed with no unanimated, but I truft with no exaggerating, pencil.

Abul Fazil, the fecretary of Sultan Akber, from the facred books of the brahmins, to which he had accefs, as well as from the oral accounts of those brahmins, who repofed

a

a confidence in the minifter of their most lenient monarch of Mohammedan extract, has inferted, in the third volume of the Ayeen Akbery, a very ample description of the Char Afherum, of which I fhall immediately submit the fubftance to the reader.

The veneration anciently entertained both in India and Perfia for the sun and FIRE, together with many of their confequent fuperftitions, engaged a confiderable portion of the first chapter of the Indian Theology. I did not prefume to determine in which of those nations that worship first commenced, but referred it to a Chaldaic origin; to that people who earlieft practised the Sabian idolatry. I cited claffical authority in proof that horses were, in Perfia, facrificed to the fun, in addition to which, I might have added that direct affertion of Justin, from Trogus Pompeius; folem unum Deum effe credunt et equos Deo facratos ferunt. From Sanfcreet books, I also produced evidence of the existence, in ancient æras, of an ASWAMMEDHA-JUG, or horfe-facrifice, in India. It is to be feared that both the Mithratic and the Suryatic rites were stained with a more horrid fpecies of facrifice, the blood of men. This abominable rite, fo univerfally prevalent in the ancient world,

took