name affuredly derived from their great anceftor Cuth or Cufh; afterwards they were called Cutheri; and the present Kuttry tribe, one of the four great cafts into which the nation was divided, are probably their immediate defcendants. It has alfo been obferved, that the refidence of the Cuthæi was in the high northern latitudes of India, where, in fact, Alexander found them; and it is probable they had wandered, as is ufual with infant colonies, from the cold and bleak regions in the immediate neighbourhood of the Caucafus, to the warm and genial provinces lying nearer the fouthern tropic. I have given a glimpse of the manners of the gloomy Cuthite worship, in which the ancient Indians were immerfed. I have fhewn that they delighted in the deep fhade of trees of gigantic growth; rocks of immense magnitude; caverns of the profoundest depth; altars eternally fmoaking with the blood of men and beafts, poured out in barbarous facrifice to the evil dæmon; that in their facred ceremonies they used an infinite number of confecrated graffes, cautiously gathered under the benign aspect of some particular planet, with more.efpecial reference to that of the filver emprefs of the night; that their ablutions were innumerable; that they

were

were converfant with the moft dreadful rites of magic, devoting their enemies to destruction with tremendous imprecations; that they believed in the tranfmigration of the human foul; and were absorbed in astronomical fpeculations and phyfical researches. In addition to these confiderations, when we advert to the univerfal veneration for ferpents in India, fo congenial with the fuperftitious reverence entertained by the Druids for the Anguinum, or ferpent's egg; when we recollect the facred staff constantly borne by the Brahmins, so fimilar to the confecrated wand, or magic rod, of the Druids; their veneration for the chacra, wheel, or circle, which conftantly adorns the hand of Bramah, and was with the Druids alfo an emblem of eternity; the folemn rites of initiation adopted equally in the caves of Elephanta, and the fubterraneous receffes of Mona; the addiction of both to the folar worship, and their perpetual preservation of the facred fire in the depths of those caverns; and that, as the Brahmins were the firft and moft venerated tribe of India, fo the Druids formed the first order of nobility in Britain ; when we recollect the profound reverence of both for the white horfe of facrifice and the facred fteer, that were never to bear harness

or yoke; their devotion to vaft pyramidal heaps of ftones; and that the temples of India, at leaft those of the larger kind, are, for the most part, uncovered, like Stonehenge; that the priests of each nation were, during their folemn rites, arrayed in ftoles of virgin white, and, alike, wore that lofty tiara, which may be seen on the head of the Perfian Mithra, engraved in Hyde and Mountfaucon; when all these circumftances are attentively confidered, it is impoffible to doubt, that, at fome remote period, the two orders were united, or, at least, were educated, in the fame grand school with the magi of Perfia and the feers of Babylon. Upon a few of the more prominent features juft remarked, as having exifted between the Brahmins and Druids, I fhall presently enter at confiderable length, occafionally citing, as I proceed, the ancient claffical authors that treat concerning them, and those learned modern writers, whofe indefatigable refearches have made us beft acquainted with that wonderful and fecluded race of men. But let us here take a fhort retrofpective view of the gradual lapfe of mankind from the fublime purity of the primæval devotion into that abyss of idolatry in which a few centuries faw them plunged.

VOL. VI.

D

In

In the ages immediately fucceeding the general deluge, the memory of that tremendous punishment inflicted for crimes committed in the ante-diluvian world, undoubtedly for a long time, kept the primitive race, who peopled Afia, steady to the principles and practice of the virtuous branches of the family of Noah! In the line of Shem and of Japhet, it seems to be univerfally confeffed, by Jewish as well as Chriftian divines, that the doctrines of the true religion flourished unviolated till the ambitious Nimrod, or Belus, extending his dominion from Babylon through the neighbouring empires of Afia, introduced, with the arms of Affyria, the Sabian, or Chaldaic, fuperftition, and polluted the altars of the true God with the idolatrous fires that burned to the hoft of Heaven. At whatsoever period, however, fuperftition was first propagated, and debased them, it is a fact not to be controverted, that thofe grand and effential principia of all true religion, the immortality of the foul, and a firm belief in a fupreme prefiding Providence, formed the bafis equally of the Brahmin and the Druid codes of theology. That they also believed in the doctrine of the defection of the human foul from a state of original rectitude, its regeneration by penance,

and

and final happiness to be obtained by means of a mediator, is evinced beyond the poffibility of doubt, by an attentive confideration of the religious rites and practices prevailing among

them.

In respect to the first of these propofitions, a fupreme Deity and governing Providence are neceffarily fuppofed in the very formation of every religious inftitution. As to the fecond; their conviction of the immortality of the foul is proved, not only by their general belief in its tranfmigration, but in the eagerness, and often the criminal eagerness, with which they fought death; the release of that foul from the prison of the body. In regard to the third and fourth; their notion of its defection is proved by the unexampled severities of discipline and horrible penitentiary fufferings undergone by them and their belief in the doctrine of a mediatorial interceffion by the fuperftitious reverence paid by them to the Sun, Moon, and other inferior deities, whom, like their Sabian brethren of the Greater Afia, they confidered in the light of mediators, to waft their prayers, and render them acceptable to the throne of divine mercy, as well as by their dreadful facrifices of human victims, in the imagined prospect of propitiating the ven