a phenicopteros, or like a young elephant, whose hair and teeth are equally beautiful, and whose body has exquisite softness. A marriage, in any tribe below his own, degrades him, but still it may be contracted; he may legally espouse four wives according to the number of those tribes. There are eight forms of marriage, four are holy and four are impure. They are enumerated, and the latter are to be avoided, because it is declared that a guilty marriage invariably produces a miserable offspring. If a Brahmin marry a girl of the Kattry tribe, she must approach the nuptial fire bearing an arrow in her hand; if one of the Bice tribe, a whip; if one of the Sudra tribe, she must hold the skirt of a mantle; I presume as a mark of her being of the lowest class. The instructions of this pious book are so very minute as to descend to a description of the proper periods, that is, the auspicious nights, for conjugal embraces; and many other circumstances which it would be neither useful nor decent to insert in this epitome.

The Brahmin must be constant, affectionate, and indulge his wife in all the innocent diversions and all the personal ornaments suitable to his rank and abilities; and the perfection of nuptial felicity is thus summarily described and forcibly recommended. "In whatever family

the husband is contented with his wife, and the wife with her husband, in that house will fortune be assuredly permanent." Being now become a housekeeper, maxims, appropriate to his new station, are inculcated; the successive sacrifices and ablutions to all the gods and genii respectively; " by day, to the spirits who walk in the light; and by night to those who walk in darkness. The numerous and varied duties of hospitality, to different guests, according to their rank and consequence, are now laid down and strenuously recommended. They impress the mind with the liveliest idea of the generous liberality of the benevolent race of ancient Indians. This chapter concludes with a very ample and curious detail of the ceremonies customary at that particular sacrifice which the Indians denominate SRADDA, or oblation to the manes of their departed ancestors, who are represented as exulting in delicious repasts of rice, honey, and clarified butter, offered up to them by their grateful descendants; and as blessing the pious donors through a thousand generations,

CHAP. IV.

On Economics and private Morals.

The art of prudently managing domestic concerns, and the legal and honourable methods by which a Brahmin may increase a scanty income, are here discussed: his chief business is about the altar, he must constantly attach himself to some consecrated fire, he must duly and devoutly perform the offices of religion, and be particularly attentive to those rites which are performed at the end of the dark and bright fortnight, and at the solstices; another proof how early they knew the solstice, and had brought astronomy into the aid of religion. In his person he must, like the priests of Egypt, preserve a scrupulous cleanliness; his hair, nails, and beard must be clipped; his passions subdued, his mantle white, his body pure; carrying in his hand a staff, or wand, an ewer of water, a handful of cusa-grass, or copy of the Veda, with golden rings in his ears. The same rigid attention to cleanliness must be kept up in the minutest article of life and conduct; in his conjugal commerce, in the necessary evacuations, &c. (all described in very disgusting detail,) a more than Mahommedan

severity must be observed. His manners must always partake of the gravity of his profession; he must neither dance, nor sing, nor play on musical instruments, except in religious rites ; he must neither play at dice nor associate with any who do, or gain their livelihood by dishonourable and low means: the company even of a king, not a rajah by birth, is an eternal disgrace to the high-born Brahmin.

Having risen with the twilight, having performed his ablutions, repeated the Gayatri, and lighted the sacred fire, he must intensely, throughout the day, study the Vedas, and regulate his conduct by its sacred rules. Let him delight in truth, in justice, in benevolence; let him not give way to either arrogance or pusillanimity; neither be the votary of pleasure, nor the slave of gloom and despair. Let him walk in the path of good men, the path in which his forefathers delighted to walk. Let him honour his parents, respect his guest, be tender to his offspring, gentle to his servants. Let him avoid covetousness, and not be greedy of presents, of which the Brahmins receive many. Let him be scrupulously delicate in regard to what food he eats, and with whom he eats it: the most dreadful violation of his character is inseparable from eating with one of an inferior cast. Towards the conclusion of this chapter

there occur some very sublime passages concerning the soul, and the radiant rewards that will, in a future state, be the consequence of a life thus passed in unsullied piety; and the final verse is as follows: "a priest who lives always by these rules, and who is freed from the bondage of sin, shall be absorbed in the divine essence."

CHAP. V.

On Diet, Purification, and Women.

The precepts inculcated in this chapter are almost entirely of a local nature, and an enumeration of them, even in the most abridged way, would be little interesting or instructive to an European. Under the first article, the banquet of blood, the food of animals, is positively forbidden, except of those offered in sacrifice; for it is expressly declared that " as many hairs as grow on the beast, so many similar deaths shall the slayer of that beast, for his own satisfaction in this world, endure in the next from birth to birth." Under the second head are discussed the necessary purifications appointed for those who have been defiled by the touch of a dead body, for those who have had illicit concern with women; for