In evidence of their fuperabundant wealth in bullion may be enumerated the expiatory obla tions for certain offences, ordained by the Hindoo code, to be made in that metal by the ancient rajahs, and which, in fact, were frequently made to atone for, or to avert, evil; as, for instance, the weight of the perfon presenting the offering, in gold or filver; TREES AND VINES OF GOLD; golden elephants; golden horfes and cows; and even chariots, drawn by horfes and elephants, entirely of gold.*

The principal ufe, to which the Indians seem to have applied the immense quantity of bullion, from age to age imported into their empire, was, to melt it down into statues of their deities; if, indeed, by that title we may denominate the perfonified attributes of the Almighty and the elements of nature. Their pagodas were anciently crowded with these golden and filver ftatues; they thought any inferior metal must degrade the Divinity, and the facred emanations that iffued from the Source of all Being. Every house, too, was crowded with the ftatues of their ancestors, caft in gold and filver; thofe ancestors that

Ayeen Akbery, vol. iii. p. 229.

were

were exalted to the stars for their piety or valour. This cuftom of erecting golden ftatues, in their houfes and temples, to brave and virtuous men, seems to have remained long after the time of Alexander; for, we are told, by the fame Apollonius, that he saw in India two golden statues of that hero, and two of brass, representing Porus, the conquered Porus, and therefore of inferior metal.* The very altar of the temple was of maffy gold; the incense flamed in cenfers of gold; and golden chalices an vafes bore the honey, the oil, the wine, and the fruits, offered at their blameless facrifice. I have already mentioned the temple of the Sun, or rather of Auruna, the day-ftar, described by Philoftratus, whose lofty walls of porphyry were internally covered with broad plates of gold, fculptured in rays, that, diverging every way, dazzled the beholder, while the radiant image of the adored deity burned in gems of infinite variety and unequalled beauty on the spangled floor. The floor, alfo, of the great temple of Naugracut, in the northern mountains, even fo late in time as the vifit of Mandefloe,

Philoftrat. lib. ii. cap. 11.

we

we have seen, was covered with plates of gold; and thus the Hindoo, in his purer devotion, trampled upon the god of half mankind. In ... the proceffions, alfo, made in honour of their idols, the utmost magnificence prevailed; they then brought forth all the wealth of the temple, and every order of people ftrove to Outvie each other in difplaying their riches and adding to the pomp. The elephants marched first, richly decorated with gold and filver ornaments, ftudded with precious frones; chariots, overlaid with thofe metals, and loaded with them in ingots, advanced next; then followed the facred fteers, coupled together with yokes of gold, and a train of the nobleft and moft beautiful beafts of the foreft, by nature fierce and fanguinary, but rendered mild and tractable by the fkill of man; an immenfe multitude of priests carrying veffels, plates, difhes, and other utenfils, all of gold, adorned with diamonds, rubies, and fapphires, for the fumptuous feast of which the gods were to partake, brought up the rear.* Duing all this time the air was rent with the found of various inftruments, martial and

festive, and the dancing girls difplayed, in their fumptuous apparel, the wealth of whole provinces exhausted to decorate beauty de voted to religion.

If the zeal of the Arabians to make profelytes, added to their insatiable avarice, had not burst upon India in fuch a torrent of widewafting deftruction, fo little did the Greeks and Romans know of the internal provinces of India, we should probably to this day have remained in ignorance of the riches with which their palaces and their temples overflowed. Their native monarchs, grey with age, and venerable for wifdom, would ftill have poised the equal balance, and still wielded the righteous fabre. But, when the crescent of Mohammed rofe to fhed its baleful luftre on the banks of the Seendhu, the order and har mony, immemorially established throughout that vaft empire, by the profound policy of its legiflator, inftantly fled; all the fanctities of religion, and all the bulwarks of ancient law, were alike trampled upon; the fortitude of the rajah availed him not, and the priest in vain thundered forth his anathemas. The tiara was rudely torn from the head of the former, and the golden flumber of the latter

was

was for ever broken. No palliation, no compromife, was admitted. The bigotted fury of the first invaders of India urged them to exterminate rather than fubdue; the tithe would not content them; their merciless grafp feized the whole spoil. The western provinces first felt that fury; and, in my account of Lahore, in the Geographical Differtation, I had occafion to intimate the enormous treasure found only on the person of the rajah of that province; who, when taken captive, had around his neck fixteen ftrings of jewels, each of which was valued at above a hundred and eighty thousand rupees, and the whole at three hundred and twenty thousand pounds fterling; a fum, however, comparatively trifling, compared with that of which the fultan of Gazna afterwards became master in his irruption into the same province, and which Mirkhond states at seven millions of coin in gold, feven hundred maunds of gold in ingots, together with an ineftimable quantity of pearls and precious ftones.* The maund is a Perfian weight, varying in different parts of the East, but never estimated below forty pounds.

* Mirkhond apud Texeira, p. 280,

Let